In classical Chinese, 'The Great Enterprise' means winning The Mandate of heaven to rule over China, the Central Kingdom. This first of a two-volume work on 'The Great Enterprise' of the Manchus is the first scholarly narrative in any language relating their conquest of China during the seventeenth century. (This book was originally published as a boxed two-volume set. It is now available as separate volumes with a plain hardcover. The page numbering continues from the first volume to the second.)