The Manchu conquest of China had been unexpected by the Chinese, despite the ever-constant preoccupation of the Chinese with the fear of invasion--the reason why the Great Wall was originally built was to keep out invaders from the north.  Nurhaci (1559, reigned 1616-1626) was able to unite the Manchu tribes into eight armies and then gain the aid and support of the Mongols.  In 1644 a local Chinese official invited some Manchu forces across the Great Wall to help put down a local rebellion.  That proved to be a big, big mistake for the Chinese.  The Manchus quickly captured Beijing, the capital, and then slowly occupied the rest of China (by 1681).  The Manchu conquerors, being a very tiny minority in China, tried to keep in place the existing Ming governmental structure and make use of the scholar-gentry class as administrators.  Under Manchu rule, China reached an unprecedented level of imperial size and prosperity with a population of one hundred million by 1662 (415 million by 1850).

Some recommended online lectures and websites:

• Ming China
• Tokugawa Shogunate
• Timeline of Japanese History is a good overview of \the different periods of Japanese history.
• Secrets of the Samurai Sword, a PBS companion pwebsite, is very good.
• Man-houng Lin, The Ryukyus and Taiwan in the East Asian Seas: A Longue Durée Perspective is an interesting article about the role of the Ryukyu islands and Taiwan as an intermediarey between Japan and the Asian mainland.
• The Edo Period (1600-1868) is a decent overview.
• For extra credit please suggest to your instructor a relevant website for this unit of the course.
  Send the title of the site, the url and a brief explanation why you find the information interesting and applicable to the material being studied in this unit.