Draft History of the Qing Dynasty

The Draft History of Qing is an unfinished official history of the Qing dynasty, compiled by a bureau established by the Beiyang government in the early years of the Republic of China. The complete work consists of 536 volumes: 25 volumes of basic annals, 142 of treatises, 53 of tables, and 316 of biographies, organized primarily around the biographical format. It covers 296 years of history, beginning in 1616, when Nurhaci, the Qing dynasty's founding emperor, established a state and proclaimed himself khan at Hetu Ala, and ending with the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912.