His son Hong Taiji renamed the dynasty 'Great Qing' and elevated the realm to an empire in 1636. Nurhaci united clans to create a Manchu ethnic identity and officially founded the Later Jin dynasty in 1616. In the late sixteenth century, Nurhaci, leader of the House of Aisin-Gioro, began organizing ' Banners', which were military-social units that included Manchu, Han, and Mongol elements. With 419,264,000 citizens in 1907, it was the most populous country in the world at the time.

It was the largest imperial dynasty in the history of China and in 1790 the fourth-largest empire in world history in terms of territorial size. The multiethnic Qing dynasty lasted for almost three centuries and assembled the territorial base for modern China. In Chinese historiography, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The dynasty lasted until 1912 when it was overthrown in the Xinhai Revolution. It seized control of Beijing in 1644, then later expanded its rule over the whole of China proper and Taiwan, and finally expanded into Inner Asia. The dynasty was officially proclaimed in 1636 in Manchuria (modern-day Northeast China and Russian Manchuria). It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaking ethnic group who unified other Jurchen tribes to form a new 'Manchu' ethnic identity. The Qing dynasty ( English: / tʃ ɪ ŋ/ ching), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China (1636–1912) and the last imperial dynasty in Chinese history.

Dynasty definition