The Chinese Empire

Author : Chun-shu Chang
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 9780472115334
Total Pages : 516 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Rise of the Chinese Empire: Nation, state, & imperialism in early China, ca. 1600 B.C.-A.D. 8 written by Chun-shu Chang and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second and first centuries B.C. were a critical period in Chinese history—they saw the birth and development of the new Chinese empire and its earliest expansion and acquisition of frontier territories. But for almost two thousand years, because of gaps in the available records, this essential chapter in the history was missing. Fortunately, with the discovery during the last century of about sixty thousand Han-period documents in Central Asia and western China preserved on strips of wood and bamboo, scholars have been able, for the first time, to put together many of the missing pieces. In this first volume of his monumental history, Chun-shu Chang uses these newfound documents to analyze the ways in which political, institutional, social, economic, military, religious, and thought systems developed and changed in the critical period from early China to the Han empire (ca. 1600 B.C. – A.D. 220). In addition to exploring the formation and growth of the Chinese empire and its impact on early nation-building and later territorial expansion, Chang also provides insights into the life and character of critical historical figures such as the First Emperor (221– 210 B.C.) of the Ch’in and Wu-ti (141– 87 B.C.) of the Han, who were the principal agents in redefining China and its relationships with other parts of Asia. As never before, Chang’s study enables an understanding of the origins and development of the concepts of state, nation, nationalism, imperialism, ethnicity, and Chineseness in ancient and early Imperial China, offering the first systematic reconstruction of the history of Chinese acquisition and colonization. Chun-shu Changis Professor of History at the University of Michigan and is the author, with Shelley Hsueh-lun Chang, ofCrisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century ChinaandRedefining History: Ghosts, Spirits, and Human Society in P’u Sung-ling’s World, 1640–1715. “An extraordinary survey of the political and administrative history of early imperial China, which makes available a body of evidence and scholarship otherwise inaccessible to English-readers. The underpinning of research is truly stupendous.” —Ray Van Dam, Professor, Department of History, University of Michigan “Powerfully argues from literary and archaeological records that empire, modeled on Han paradigms, has largely defined Chinese civilization ever since.” —Joanna Waley-Cohen, Professor, Department of History, New York University

Author : Yuanchong Wang
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501730525
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.28/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Remaking the Chinese Empire written by Yuanchong Wang and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-15 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Remaking the Chinese Empire examines China's development from an empire into a modern state through the lens of Sino-Korean political relations during the Qing period. Incorporating Korea into the historical narrative of the Chinese empire, it demonstrates that the Manchu regime used its relations with Chosŏn Korea to establish, legitimize, and consolidate its identity as the civilized center of the world, as a cosmopolitan empire, and as a modern sovereign state. For the Manchu regime and for the Chosŏn Dynasty, the relationship was one of mutual dependence, central to building and maintaining political legitimacy. Yuanchong Wang illuminates how this relationship served as the very model for China's foreign relations. Ultimately, this precipitated contests, conflicts, and compromises among empires and states in East Asia, Inner Asia, and Southeast Asia – in particular, in the nineteenth century when international law reached the Chinese world. By adopting a long-term and cross-border perspective on high politics at the empire's core and periphery, Wang revises our understanding of the rise and transformation of the last imperial dynasty of China. His work reveals new insights on the clashes between China's foreign relations system and its Western counterpart, imperialism and colonialism in the Chinese world, and the formation of modern sovereign states in East Asia. Most significantly, Remaking the Chinese Empire breaks free of the established, national history-oriented paradigm, establishing a new paradigm through which to observe and analyze the Korean impact on the Qing Dynasty.

Author : Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674057341
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Early Chinese Empires written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-30 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 221 bc the First Emperor of Qin unified the lands that would become the heart of a Chinese empire. Though forged by conquest, this vast domain depended for its political survival on a fundamental reshaping of Chinese culture. With this informative book, we are present at the creation of an ancient imperial order whose major features would endure for two millennia. The Qin and Han constitute the "classical period" of Chinese history--a role played by the Greeks and Romans in the West. Mark Edward Lewis highlights the key challenges faced by the court officials and scholars who set about governing an empire of such scale and diversity of peoples. He traces the drastic measures taken to transcend, without eliminating, these regional differences: the invention of the emperor as the divine embodiment of the state; the establishment of a common script for communication and a state-sponsored canon for the propagation of Confucian ideals; the flourishing of the great families, whose domination of local society rested on wealth, landholding, and elaborate kinship structures; the demilitarization of the interior; and the impact of non-Chinese warrior-nomads in setting the boundaries of an emerging Chinese identity. The first of a six-volume series on the history of imperial China, The Early Chinese Empires illuminates many formative events in China's long history of imperialism--events whose residual influence can still be discerned today.

Author : Grant R. Hardy
Publisher : Greenwood
ISBN 13 : 031332588X
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Establishment of the Han Empire and Imperial China written by Grant R. Hardy and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 2005-03-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Han Dynasty created a Chinese empire that endures to this day.

Author : William T. Rowe
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674054555
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book China's Last Empire written by William T. Rowe and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a brisk revisionist history, William Rowe challenges the standard narrative of Qing China as a decadent, inward-looking state that failed to keep pace with the modern West. This original, thought-provoking history of China's last empire is a must-read for understanding the challenges facing China today.

Author : Edward L. Shaughnessy
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 9780195182873
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book China written by Edward L. Shaughnessy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2005 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To Western eyes, China is one of the most mysterious and intriguing of all civilizations. The legacy of its long dynastic rule, extending back more than 3,000 years, includes fascinating contributions to philosophy, religion, art, science, and mythology that continue to influence the modern world. China explores the ideas and achievements of this unique culture through a combination of authoritative, accessible scholarship and magnificent imagery. Drawing on the most recent discoveries and theories, the book presents China's history, society, and beliefs from the legends of prehistory to the end of imperial power in 1912. It investigates the key cultural, spiritual, and artistic traditions of this vast civilization and describes the country's major scientific and technological innovations, such as gunpowder, printing, and the compass. An investigation of trading routes, both by land and sea, challenges the conventional view of China as an isolated, insular civilization, stressing instead the impact of its sophisticated society upon the world. A final section discusses the continuing legacy of the imperial period through the turbulent years of the twentieth century up to the present day. A wealth of color photography and imaginative artwork, together with a lively and authoritative text, vividly evokes the pinnacles of Chinese civilization as well as the realities of everyday life, from life in the Imperial court to the most rural villages.

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 : 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 : Odd Arne Westad
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465029361
Total Pages : 536 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Restless Empire written by Odd Arne Westad and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2012-08-28 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the twenty-first century dawns, China stands at a crossroads. The largest and most populous country on earth and currently the world's second biggest economy, China has recently reclaimed its historic place at the center of global affairs after decades of internal chaos and disastrous foreign relations. But even as China tentatively reengages with the outside world, the contradictions of its development risks pushing it back into an era of insularity and instability -- a regression that, as China's recent history shows, would have serious implications for all other nations. In Restless Empire, award-winning historian Odd Arne Westad traces China's complex foreign affairs over the past 250 years, identifying the forces that will determine the country's path in the decades to come. Since the height of the Qing Empire in the eighteenth century, China's interactions -- and confrontations -- with foreign powers have caused its worldview to fluctuate wildly between extremes of dominance and subjugation, emulation and defiance. From the invasion of Burma in the 1760s to the Boxer Rebellion in the early 20th century to the 2001 standoff over a downed U.S. spy plane, many of these encounters have left Chinese with a lingering sense of humiliation and resentment, and inflamed their notions of justice, hierarchy, and Chinese centrality in world affairs. Recently, China's rising influence on the world stage has shown what the country stands to gain from international cooperation and openness. But as Westad shows, the nation's success will ultimately hinge on its ability to engage with potential international partners while simultaneously safeguarding its own strength and stability. An in-depth study by one of our most respected authorities on international relations and contemporary East Asian history, Restless Empire is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the recent past and probable future of this dynamic and complex nation.

Author : Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674060350
Total Pages : 351 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book China Between Empires written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-30 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the collapse of the Han dynasty in the third century CE, China divided along a north-south line. Mark Lewis traces the changes that both underlay and resulted from this split in a period that saw the geographic redefinition of China, more engagement with the outside world, significant changes to family life, developments in the literary and social arenas, and the introduction of new religions. The Yangzi River valley arose as the rice-producing center of the country. Literature moved beyond the court and capital to depict local culture, and newly emerging social spaces included the garden, temple, salon, and country villa. The growth of self-defined genteel families expanded the notion of the elite, moving it away from the traditional great Han families identified mostly by material wealth. Trailing the rebel movements that toppled the Han, the new faiths of Daoism and Buddhism altered every aspect of life, including the state, kinship structures, and the economy. By the time China was reunited by the Sui dynasty in 589 ce, the elite had been drawn into the state order, and imperial power had assumed a more transcendent nature. The Chinese were incorporated into a new world system in which they exchanged goods and ideas with states that shared a common Buddhist religion. The centuries between the Han and the Tang thus had a profound and permanent impact on the Chinese world.