This volume of the Cambridge History of China considers the political, military, social, and economic developments of the Ch'ing empire to 1800. The period begins with the end of the resurgent Ming dynasty, covered in volumes 7 and 8, and ends with the beginning of the collapse of the imperial system in the nineteenth century, described in volume 10. Taken together, the ten chapters elucidate the complexities of the dynamic interactions between emperors and their servitors, between Manchus and non-Manchu populations, between various elite groups, between competing regional interests, between merchant networks and agricultural producers, between rural and urban interests, and, at work among all these tensions, between the old and new. This volume presents the changes underway in this period prior to the advent of Western imperialist military power.