[12] After overthrowing the Mongol Yuan dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, the first Ming emperor passed a law on mandatory hairstyle on 24 September 1392 mandating that all males grow their hair long and making it illegal for them to shave part of their foreheads while leaving strands of hair, which was the Mongol hairstyle.

It resembled a monk's hairstyle but was not exactly like their tonsure, it left the face to be framed on the sides and forehead by a fringe of hair by shaving the head top and leaving it bald.

[17] Khitan men left only two separate patches of hair on each of the forehead's sides in front of each ear in tresses while they shaved the top of their head.

[18] Khitan officials used gold ornamented ribbons to found their hair locks around their foreheads, covering their heads with felt hats according to the Ye Longli's (Yeh Lung-li) Qidan Guozhi (Ch'i-tan kuo-chih).

[19] Tomb murals of Khitan hairstyle show only some hair remaining near the neck and forehead with the rest of the head shaved.

[27] The queue was a specifically male hairstyle worn by the Manchu from central Manchuria and later imposed on the Han Chinese during the Qing dynasty.

[31] The Manchu hairstyle was forcefully introduced to Han Chinese and other ethnicities like the Nanai in the early 17th century during the transition from Ming to Qing.

Other Han Chinese generals in Liaodong proceeded to defect with their armies to Nurhaci and were given women from the Aisin Gioro family in marriage.

Han Chinese did not object to wearing the queue braid on the back of the head as they traditionally wore all their hair long, but fiercely objected to shaving the forehead so the Qing government exclusively focused on forcing people to shave the forehead rather than wear the braid.

[46] In 1644, Beijing was sacked by a coalition of rebel forces led by Li Zicheng, a minor Ming dynasty official turned leader of a peasant revolt.

The Han Chinese Ming general Wu Sangui and his army then defected to the Qing and allowed them through Shanhai pass.

[47] A year later, after the Qing armies reached South China, on 21 July 1645, the regent Dorgon issued an edict ordering all Han men to shave their foreheads and braid the rest of their hair into a queue identical to those worn by the Manchus.

Though Dorgon admitted that followers of Confucianism might have grounds for objection, most Han officials cited the Ming dynasty's traditional System of Rites and Music as their reason for resistance.

This led Dorgon to question their motives: "If officials say that people should not respect our Rites and Music, but rather follow those of the Ming, what can be their true intentions?

Han rebels in Shandong tortured the Qing official who suggested the queue order to Dorgon to death and killed his relatives.

[55] The imposition of this order was not uniform; it took up to 10 years of martial enforcement for all of China to be brought into compliance, and while it was the Qing who imposed the queue hairstyle on the general population, they did not always personally execute those who did not obey.

Li Chengdong, a Han Chinese general who had served the Ming but defected to the Qing,[56] ordered troops to carry out three separate massacres in the city of Jiading within a month, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths.

[71][72] However, after Jahangir Khoja invaded Kashgar, Turkistani Muslim begs and officials in Xinjiang eagerly fought for the "privilege" of wearing a queue to show their steadfast loyalty to the Empire.

[73] The purpose of the Queue Order was to demonstrate loyalty to the Qing, and refusing to shave one's hair came to symbolize revolutionary ideals, as seen during the White Lotus Rebellion.

[75] In 1645, the enforcement of the queue order was taken a step further by the ruling Manchus when it was decreed that any man who did not adopt the Manchu hairstyle within ten days would be executed.

[79] Cantonese outlaw bandit pirates in the Guangdong maritime frontier with Vietnam in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries wore their hair long in defiance of the Qing laws which mandated cutting.

[82][83][84] The Manchus' willingness to impose the queue and their dress style on the men of China was viewed as an example to emulate by some foreign observers.

[85] British author Demetrius Charles Boulger in 1899 proposed that Britain form and head an alliance of "Philo-Chinese Powers" in setting up a new government for China based in Shanghai and Nanking as two capitals along the River Yangtze, to counter the interests of other powers in the region like the Russians due to what he believed was the imminent collapse of the Qing dynasty.

The Yangtze valley was controlled by Qing officials such as Liu Kunyi and Zhang Zhidong, who were not under Beijing's influence and whom Boulger believed Britain could work with to stabilize China.

He proposed that at Nanjing and Hankou a force of Chinese soldiers trained by the British be deployed and in Hong Kong, Weihaiwei and the Yangtze valley and it would have no allegiance to the Qing, and as such they in his idea would forgo the queue and be made to grow their hair long as a symbolic measure to "increasing the confidence of the Chinese in the advent of a new era".

[88] English adventurer Augustus Frederick Lindley wrote that the beardless, youthful long haired Han Chinese rebels from Hunan in the Taiping armies who grew all their hair long while fighting against the Qing dynasty were among the most beautiful men in the world unlike, in his mind, the Han Chinese who wore the queue, with Lindley calling the shaved part "a disfigurement".

Along with comfortable, practical, well-fitting uniforms, his reforms introduced short, natural hairstyles for all, without wigs and long powdered hair tied in a queue.

While not always braided, the hair was pulled back very tight into a single tail, wrapped around a piece of leather and tied down with a ribbon.

[107] In the Prussian Army and those of several other states within the Holy Roman Empire, the wearing of soldier's queue was mandatory under the reign of Frederick William I of Prussia.

On the tour he donned a Revolutionary War officer's uniform and tied his long, powdered hair in a queue according to the old-fashioned style of the 18th century.