Born Then1644–1683
Life during the Ming–Qing transition
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
After rebels took Beijing in 1644, the Manchus entered China and founded the Qing dynasty. Ming loyalists held out in the south for decades; cities that resisted, such as Yangzhou, were massacred, and the head-shaving order provoked more resistance. Taiwan, the last loyalist base, fell in 1683.
Deaths: perhaps 25 million; the registered population fell sharply, including from massacres at Yangzhou and elsewhere.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.
Around the same time
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- Atlantic slave trade (West Africa) 1501–1799
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- Russian conquest of Siberia 1580–1700
- Tokugawa peace 1603–1780
- Thirty Years' War 1618–1648
- Late Ming famines and rebellions 1627–1644
- Italian plague of 1629–1631 1629–1631
- Deccan famine of 1630–1632 1630–1632
- Sugar slavery in the Caribbean 1640–1799
- Ming–Qing transition 1644–1683
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- Great Plague of London 1665–1666
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