Military Culture In Imperial China

Author : Nicola Di Cosmo
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674262999
Total Pages : 468 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Military Culture in Imperial China written by Nicola Di Cosmo and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-04 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the relationship between culture and the military in Chinese society from early China to the Qing empire, with contributions by eminent scholars aiming to reexamine the relationship between military matters and law, government, historiography, art, philosophy, literature, and politics. The book critically investigates the perception that, due to the influence of Confucianism, Chinese culture has systematically devalued military matters. There was nothing inherently pacifist about the Chinese governments’ views of war, and pragmatic approaches—even aggressive and expansionist projects—often prevailed. Though it has changed in form, a military elite has existed in China from the beginning of its history, and military service included a large proportion of the population at any given time. Popular literature praised the martial ethos of fighting men. Civil officials attended constantly to military matters on the administrative and financial ends. The seven military classics produced in antiquity continued to be read even into the modern period. These original essays explore the ways in which intellectual, civilian, and literary elements helped shape the nature of military institutions, theory, and the culture of war. This important contribution bridges two literatures, military and cultural, that seldom appear together in the study of China, and deepens our understanding of war and society in Chinese history.

Author : Ralph D. Sawyer
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465023347
Total Pages : 576 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Ancient Chinese Warfare written by Ralph D. Sawyer and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of China is a history of warfare. Rarely in its 3,000-year existence has the country not been beset by war, rebellion, or raids. Warfare was a primary source of innovation, social evolution, and material progress in the Legendary Era, Hsia dynasty, and Shang dynasty--indeed, war was the force that formed the first cohesive Chinese empire, setting China on a trajectory of state building and aggressive activity that continues to this day. In Ancient Chinese Warfare, a preeminent expert on Chinese military history uses recently recovered documents and archaeological findings to construct a comprehensive guide to the developing technologies, strategies, and logistics of ancient Chinese militarism. The result is a definitive look at the tools and methods that won wars and shaped culture in ancient China.

Author : Ralph D. Sawyer
Publisher : Hachette UK
ISBN 13 : 1541674294
Total Pages : 468 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Seven Military Classics Of Ancient China written by Ralph D. Sawyer and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Seven Military Classics is one of the most profound studies of warfare ever written, a stanchion in sinological and military history. It presents an Eastern tradition of strategic thought that emphasizes outwitting one's opponent through speed, stealth, flexibility, and a minimum of force -- an approach very different from that stressed in the West. Safeguarded for centuries by the ruling elite of imperial China, even in modern times these writings have been known only to a handful of Western specialists. This volume contains seven separate essays, written between 500 BCE and 700 CE, that preserve the essential tenets of strategy distilled from the experience of the most brilliant warriors of ancient China.

Author : Ulrich Theobald
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004255672
Total Pages : 284 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book War Finance and Logistics in Late Imperial China written by Ulrich Theobald and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2013-07-11 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his book War Finance and Logistics in Late Imperial China, Ulrich Theobald shows how the Qing dynasty (1644 – 1911) overcame the tyranny of logistics and successfully enlarged the territory of its empire. A detailed analysis of the long and expensive second Jinchuan war (1771 – 1776) in Eastern Tibet demonstrates that the Chinese state ordered its civilian officials as well as the common people, merchant associations, and different ethnic groups to fulfil and to foot the bill for the “common cause”. With increasing military success the state gradually withdrew from its responsibilities, believing that a War Supply and Expenditure Code (Junxu zeli) might offset the decreasing skill in and readiness to imperial leadership.

Author : Michael Szonyi
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000283267
Total Pages : 215 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Chinese Empire in Local Society written by Michael Szonyi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-17 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) military, its impact on local society, and its many legacies for Chinese society. It is based on extensive original research by scholars using the methodology of historical anthropology, an approach that has transformed the study of Chinese history by approaching the subject from the bottom up. Its nine chapters, each based on a different region of China, examine the nature of Ming military institutions and their interaction with local social life over time. Several chapters consider the distinctive role of imperial institutions in frontier areas and how they interacted with and affected non-Han ethnic groups and ethnic identity. Others discuss the long-term legacy of Ming military institutions, especially across the dynastic divide from Ming to Qing (1644-1912) and the implications of this for understanding more fully the nature of the Qing rule.

Author : David Andrew Graff
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813135842
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Military History of China written by David Andrew Graff and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2012-03-09 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gaining an understanding of China's long and sometimes bloody history can help to shed light on China's ascent to global power. Many of China's imperial dynasties were established as the result of battle, from the chariot warfare of ancient times to the battles of the Guomindang (KMT) and Communist regimes of the twentieth century. China's ability to sustain complex warfare on a very large scale was not emulated in other parts of the world until the Industrial Age, despite the fact that the country is only now rising to economic dominance. In A Military History of China, Updated Edition, David A. Graff and Robin Higham bring together leading scholars to offer a basic introduction to the military history of China from the first millennium B.C.E. to the present. Focusing on recurring patterns of conflict rather than traditional campaign narratives, this volume reaches farther back into China's military history than similar studies. It also offers insightful comparisons between Chinese and Western approaches to war. This edition brings the volume up to date, including discussions of the Chinese military's latest developments and the country's most recent foreign conflicts.

Author : Charles Sanft
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438475144
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Literate Community in Early Imperial China written by Charles Sanft and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the role of meditation on the five elements in the practice of Yoga. This book examines ancient written materials from China’s northwestern border regions to offer fresh insights into the role of text in shaping society and culture during the Han period (206/2 BCE–220 CE). Left behind by military installations, these documents—wooden strips and other nontraditional textual materials such as silk—recorded the lives and activities of military personnel and the people around them. Charles Sanft explores their functions and uses by looking at a fascinating array of material, including posted texts on signaling across distances, practical texts on brewing beer and evaluating swords, and letters exchanged by officials working in low rungs of the bureaucracy. By focusing on all members of the community, he argues that a much broader section of early society had meaningful interactions with text than previously believed. This major shift in interpretation challenges long-standing assumptions about the limited range of influence that text and literacy had on culture and society and makes important contributions to early China studies, the study of literacy, and to the global history of non-elites. Charles Sanft is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the author of Communication and Cooperation in Early Imperial China: Publicizing the Qin Dynasty, also published by SUNY Press.

Author : Yuri Pines
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691134952
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Everlasting Empire written by Yuri Pines and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-27 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Established in 221 BCE, the Chinese empire lasted for 2,132 years before being replaced by the Republic of China in 1912. During its two millennia, the empire endured internal wars, foreign incursions, alien occupations, and devastating rebellions--yet fundamental institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural features of the empire remained intact. The Everlasting Empire traces the roots of the Chinese empire's exceptional longevity and unparalleled political durability, and shows how lessons from the imperial past are relevant for China today. Yuri Pines demonstrates that the empire survived and adjusted to a variety of domestic and external challenges through a peculiar combination of rigid ideological premises and their flexible implementation. The empire's major political actors and neighbors shared its fundamental ideological principles, such as unity under a single monarch--hence, even the empire's strongest domestic and foreign foes adopted the system of imperial rule. Yet details of this rule were constantly negotiated and adjusted. Pines shows how deep tensions between political actors including the emperor, the literati, local elites, and rebellious commoners actually enabled the empire's basic institutional framework to remain critically vital and adaptable to ever-changing sociopolitical circumstances. As contemporary China moves toward a new period of prosperity and power in the twenty-first century, Pines argues that the legacy of the empire may become an increasingly important force in shaping the nation's future trajectory.

Author : Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 067403306X
Total Pages : 367 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

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Download or read book China’s Cosmopolitan Empire written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tang dynasty is often called China’s “golden age,” a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity. Mark Lewis captures a dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Chinese rule, painting and ceramic arts flourished, women played a major role both as rulers and in the economy, and China produced its finest lyric poets in Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu. The Chinese engaged in extensive trade on sea and land. Merchants from Inner Asia settled in the capital, while Chinese entrepreneurs set off for the wider world, the beginning of a global diaspora. The emergence of an economically and culturally dominant south that was controlled from a northern capital set a pattern for the rest of Chinese imperial history. Poems celebrated the glories of the capital, meditated on individual loneliness in its midst, and described heroic young men and beautiful women who filled city streets and bars. Despite the romantic aura attached to the Tang, it was not a time of unending peace. In 756, General An Lushan led a revolt that shook the country to its core, weakening the government to such a degree that by the early tenth century, regional warlordism gripped many areas, heralding the decline of the Great Tang.

Author : Alastair Iain Johnston
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691213143
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cultural Realism written by Alastair Iain Johnston and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural Realism is an in-depth study of premodern Chinese strategic thought that has important implications for contemporary international relations theory. In applying a Western theoretical debate to China, Iain Johnston advances rigorous procedures for testing for the existence and influence of "strategic culture." Johnston sets out to answer two empirical questions. Is there a substantively consistent and temporally persistent Chinese strategic culture? If so, to what extent has it influenced China's approaches to security? The focus of his study is the Ming dynasty's grand strategy against the Mongols (1368-1644). First Johnston examines ancient military texts as sources of Chinese strategic culture, using cognitive mapping, symbolic analysis and congruence tests to determine whether there is a consistent grand strategic preference ranking across texts that constitutes a single strategic culture. Then he applies similar techniques to determine the effect of the strategic culture on the strategic preferences of the Ming decision makers. Finally, he assesses the effect of these preferences on Ming policies towards the Mongol "threat." The findings of this book challenge dominant interpretations of traditional Chinese strategic thought. They suggest also that the roots of realpolitik are ideational and not predominantly structural. The results lead to the surprising conclusion that there may be, in fact, fewer cross-national differences in strategic culture than proponents of the "strategic culture" approach think.