The Manchus 滿洲 were a people living in what is today China's provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang, a region accordingly called Manchuria. The Manchus challenged the ruling Ming dynasty 明 (1368-1644) from the late 16th century on. With the collapse of the Ming dynasty, the Manchus took the chance to conquer China. They founded the Qing dynasty 清 (1644-1911), the last imperial dynasty of China. Ethnologically, the Manchus belong to the Altaic peoples, as distant relatives to the Turks and Mongols. Linguistically, Manchurian belongs to the Tungusic languages. The Manchu language is written with an alphabet script borrowed from the Mongols. The Manchus were the descendants of the confederation of the Jurchens that lived in the same area and had founded the Jin dynasty 金 (1115-1234). The Jurchens living in the prefectures of Jianzhou 建州 and Haixi 海西 were the most important of the Jurchen tribes and were the founding stock of the later Manchus. The rulers of the Ming dynasty appointed the chieftains of the various Jurchen tribes as native rulers to indirectly exert control over this region beyond the Great Wall. The designation Jurchen (Chinese: Nüzhen 女真, Ruzhen or Nüzhi 女直, Manchu: Jušen or Nioji). During the early 17th century one Jurchen chieftain, Nurhaci (Chinese: Nu'rhachi 努爾哈赤, dynastic title Qing Taizu 清太祖), was able to unite the various Jurchen tribes. In 1616 Nurhaci adopted the titel of Qan (Khan) and founded the Jin dynasty 金 (or Later Jin 後金). His son and successor officially adopted the name of Manchus for the tribal confederation of his empire. Scholars disagree about the origin of the term "Manchu". It might be the name of a creek, but might also be derived from the name of the Boddhisatva Mañjuśri. The tribal affiliations of the various Jurchen tribes were later artificially defined in the book Manzhou yuanliu kao 滿洲源流考 from 1777. After the conquest of China in the 1640s the Manchu dynasty established a rigorous system of ethnic separation from the Chinese, and the most important ethnics of China were classified in five groups: Manchus (Man 滿), Mongols (Meng 蒙), Chinese (Han 漢), Tibetans (Zang 藏) and Uighurs (Hui 回). The Manchu people was organised in the so-called Eight Banners (baqi 八旗), into which also some groups of collaborating Mongols and Chinese were integrated. The Banner Chinese, mainly from the region of Jianzhou joining the Manchus at an early point of time, were gradually expelled from the Banners during the 18th century. During the 19th century, Chinese nationalists increasingly put the blame for China's continuous defeat against foreign powers on the Manchus, the ruling foreign people. After the foundation of the Republic of China in 1911, persons of Manchu origin, as a consequence of public suppression, adopted Chinese names and concealed their identity. Only during the last decades it became again possible to openly declare oneself as descendant of Manchus. The People's Republic of China had declared the Manchus (Manzu 滿族) as on of her national minorities.

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