The brief period between the death in 1643 of Hung Taiji, who turned Nurhaci's banner confederation into the Ch'ing state, and the death of his successor at the age of twenty-two in 1661 is known as the Shun-chih reign. It is a poorly documented and not well understood period. The effects of the previous decade's devastation, including the collapse of the Ming economy and the resulting wars, were overwhelming. When the Ming capital at Peking fell to peasant rebels on April 25, 1644, the most effective fighting force on the continent belonged to the Manchus. But the ultimate success of the Ch'ing empire, the settling of the countryside, the stabilization and expansion of the economy, and the revitalization of the culture could not be predicted. The future rested primarily with a handful of mostly young men on horseback and a few multilingual academicians encamped in tents beyond the Great Wall at Shanhaikuan. Central among them was the Prince Regent, Dorgon, who was vilified after his death in 1650 for the imperial pretensions he displayed, and the small group of commanders and banner officials who vilified him.

The key to the emergence of the Ch'ing as one of the most successful imperial states the world has known was the ability of those young men who survived the continuous political intrigues of the period to maintain sufficient discipline and unity of purpose to complete the conquest. They were aided in their pursuit of conquest by important legacies of Nurhaci's banner confederation, such as consensus decisions in deliberative councils, blunt and open discussion of political issues, ruthless punishment of insubordination, lightning mobilization and dispersion of forces, the distinction between field commanders and banner-owning princes of the blood, and the momentum provided by the need to reward and use new allies and captives.