In the grand sweep of more than three thousand years of Chinese history, the period from roughly 1680 to 1780 has been celebrated as a prosperous age. From other perspectives, the period has been disparaged as a time when China's people were held down and held back by autocratic foreign rulers. Such dichotomies reveal that the possibilities remain open for both positive and negative assessments of the period of Chinese history from the founding of the Ch'ing dynasty to the end of the Ch'ien-lung emperor's life in 1799. Without promising to resolve the conflicting historical interpretations, this introduction explores some of the issues and problems that are raised in the chapters of this volume and by interpretations of Ch'ing history to 1800 in general.

Simple historical chronology locates the subject matter of this volume after 1644, the conventional date for indicating the fall of the Ming dynasty, and before the end of rule by the Ch'ing imperial house in 1911. In terms of the historiography of the Cambridge History of China series, this volume is located between Volumes 7 and 8, with the shared title of The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, and Volume 10, entitled Late Ch'ing, 1800–1911.

Volume 10 was the first volume of the entire series to be published (in 1978). In Volume 10's Introduction, titled “The Old Order,” the late John K. Fairbank, who was editor of the volume and a main organizer of the entire series, characterized the late Ch'ing period as the end of the “old China” in conflict with the “outside world,” especially as represented by Western and Westernizing nations pursuing imperialist interests.