Qing: Expansion, the Opium Wars, Collapse
The Manchu conquest, the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong emperors, territorial expansion and population growth, the Canton system and the Macartney embassy (1793), opium and the First and Second Opium Wars, the unequal treaties, the Taiping rebellion, the Self-Strengthening Movement, defeat by Japan, the Boxer uprising, the Empress Dowager Cixi, and the 1911 revolution.
From the height of empire to the century of humiliation
Chinese historiography calls the period from the First Opium War to 1949 the "century of humiliation", a framing that still shapes Chinese politics and foreign policy. Western historians debate how far Qing decline was caused by foreign aggression versus internal pressures: population growth outrunning land, corruption, and the cost of rebellions.
Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China (1990, 3rd ed. 2013); William Rowe, China's Last Empire: The Great Qing (2009); Stephen Platt, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom (2012) on the Taiping; Julia Lovell, The Opium War (2011).