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Challenges traditional views of the Qin dynasty as an oppressive regime by revealing cooperative aspects of its governance. This revealing book challenges longstanding notions of the Qin dynasty, China’s first imperial dynasty (221–206 BCE). The received history of the Qin dynasty and its founder is one of cruel tyranny with rule through fear and coercion. Using a wealth of new information afforded by the expansion of Chinese archaeology in recent decades as well as traditional historical sources, Charles Sanft concentrates on cooperative aspects of early imperial government, especially on the communication necessary for government. Sanft suggests that the Qin authorities sought cooperation from the populace with a publicity campaign in a wide variety of media—from bronze and stone inscriptions to roads to the bureaucracy. The book integrates theory from anthropology and economics with early Chinese philosophy and argues that modern social science and ancient thought agree that cooperation is necessary for all human societies.
Through an examination of archaeologically recovered texts from China’s northwestern border regions, argues for widespread interaction with texts in the Han period. 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. “Sanft’s analysis fills out what is still a rather sparse picture of life in non-elite, nonofficial social circles. For the first time ever, we learn how women might have been included in a literate community along the ancient northwestern frontier, and we also learn how soldiers and other members of the uneducated or semiliterate public made use of the extensive knowledge that texts conveyed in their work and lives. None of this information is apparent from traditionally received texts. Sanft therefore does the field a great favor by systematically laying the foundations for a broader understanding of all levels of society, as well as an understanding of how these levels interconnect through systems of knowledge expressed through text.” — Erica Fox Brindley, author of Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c. 400 BCE–50 CE
State Power and Governance in Early Imperial China delves into the governance and capacity of the state by providing an empirical historical study of the collapse of China's Qin Empire. In contrast to the popular view that the Qin fell suddenly and dramatically, this book argues that the collapse was rooted in persistent structural problems of the empire, including the serious resource shortages experienced by local governments, inefficient communication between administrative units, and social tensions in the new territories. Rather than reducing Qin rulers to heartless villains who refused to adjust their policies and statecraft, this book focuses on the changes that the regime did make to meet these challenges. It reveals the various measures that Qin rulers devised to solve these problems, even if they were ultimately to no avail. The paradox of the Qin Empire seemed to be that, although the regime's policies and reforms could theoretically have strengthened the state's power and improved the governance of the empire, their ramifications simultaneously exacerbated the misfunction of local governments and triggered the military failures that eventually destroyed the empire.
Law, State, and Society in Early Imperial China has been accorded Honorable Mention status in the 2017 Patrick D. Hanan Prize (China and Inner Asia Council (CIAC) of the Association for Asian Studies) for Translation competition. In Law, State, and Society in Early Imperial China, Anthony J. Barbieri-Low and Robin D.S. Yates offer the first detailed study and translation into English of two recently excavated, early Chinese legal texts. The Statutes and Ordinances of the Second Year consists of a selection from the long-lost laws of the early Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE). It includes items from twenty-seven statute collections and one ordinance. The Book of Submitted Doubtful Cases contains twenty-two legal case records, some of which have undergone literary embellishment. Taken together, the two texts contain a wealth of information about slavery, social class, ranking, the status of women and children, property, inheritance, currency, finance, labor mobilization, resource extraction, agriculture, market regulation, and administrative geography.
This book examines the emergence of imperial state in East Asia during the period ca. 400 BCE–200 CE as a network-based process, showing how the geography of early interregional contacts south of the Yangzi River informed the directions of Sinitic state expansion. Drawing from an extensive collection of sources including transmitted textual records, archaeological evidence, excavated legal manuscripts, and archival documents from Liye, this book demonstrates the breadth of human and material resources available to the empire builders of an early imperial network throughout southern East Asia – from institutions and infrastructures, to the relationships that facilitated circulation. This network is shown to have been essential to the consolidation of Sinitic imperial rule in the sub-tropical zone south of the Yangzi against formidable environmental, epidemiological, and logistical odds. This is also the first study to explore how the interplay between an imperial network and alternative frameworks of long-distance interaction in ancient East Asia shaped the political-economic trajectory of the Sinitic world and its involvement in Eurasian globalization. Contributing to debates around imperial state formation, the applicability of world-system models and the comparative study of empires, The Imperial Network in Ancient China will be of significant interest to students and scholars of East Asian studies, archaeology and history.
Although they existed more than a millennium apart, the great civilizations of New Kingdom Egypt (ca. 1548–1086 BCE) and Han dynasty China (206 BCE–220 CE) shared intriguing similarities. Both were centered around major, flood-prone rivers—the Nile and the Yellow River—and established complex hydraulic systems to manage their power. Both spread their territories across vast empires that were controlled through warfare and diplomacy and underwent periods of radical reform led by charismatic rulers—the “heretic king” Akhenaten and the vilified reformer Wang Mang. Universal justice was dispensed through courts, and each empire was administered by bureaucracies staffed by highly trained scribes who held special status. Egypt and China each developed elaborate conceptions of an afterlife world and created games of fate that facilitated access to these realms. This groundbreaking volume offers an innovative comparison of these two civilizations. Through a combination of textual, art historical, and archaeological analyses, Ancient Egypt and Early China reveals shared structural traits of each civilization as well as distinctive features.
The resurgence of modern China has generated much interest, not only in the country’s present day activities, but also in its long history. As the only uninterrupted ancient civilization still alive today, the study of China’s past promises to offer invaluable insights into understanding contemporary China. Providing coverage of the entire Imperial Era (221 BCE–1912 CE), this handbook takes a chronological approach. It includes comprehensive analysis of all major periods, from the powerful Han empire which rivalled Rome, and the crucial transformative period of the Five Dynasties, to the prosperous Ming era and the later dominance of the non-Han peoples. With contributions from a team of international authors, key themes include: Political events and leadership Religion and philosophy Cultural and literary achievements Legal, economic, and military institutions This book transcends the traditional boundaries of historiography, giving special attention to the role of archaeology. As such, the Routledge Handbook of Imperial Chinese History is an indispensable reference work for students and scholars of Chinese, Asian, and World History.
Two thousand years ago, the Qin/Han and Roman empires were the largest political entities of the ancient world, developing simultaneously yet independently at opposite ends of Eurasia. Although their territories constituted only a small percentage of the global land mass, these two Eurasian polities controlled up to half of the world population and endured longer than most pre-modern imperial states. Similarly, their eventual collapse occurred during the same time. The parallel nature of the Qin/Han and Roman empires has rarely been studied comparatively. Yet here is a collection of pioneering case studies, compiled by Walter Scheidel, that sheds new light on the prominent aspects of imperial state formation. This essential new volume builds on the foundation of Scheidel's Rome and China (2009), and opens up a comparative dialogue among distinguished scholars. They provide unique insights into the complexities of imperial rule, including the relationship between rulers and elite groups, the funding of state agents, the determinants of urban development, and the rise of bureaucracies. By bringing together experts in each civilization, State Power in Ancient China and Rome provides a unique forum to explore social evolution, helping us further understand government and power relations in the ancient world.
The legal institutions of the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BCE) have been vilified by history as harsh and draconian. Yet ironically, many Qin institutional features, such as written statutory law, were readily adopted by subsequent dynasties as the primary means for maintaining administrative and social control. This book utilizes both traditional texts and archeologically excavated materials to explore how these influential Qin legal institutions developed. First, it investigates the socio-political conditions which led to the production of law in written form. It then goes on to consider how the intended function of written law influenced the linguistic composition of legal statutes, as well as their physical construction. Using a function and form approach, it specifically analyses the Shuihudi legal corpus. However, unlike many previous studies of Chinese legal manuscripts, which have focused on codicological issues of transcription and translation, this book considers the linguistic aspects of these manuscripts and thus their importance for understanding the development of early Chinese legal thought. Writing Chinese Laws will be useful to students and scholars of Chinese Studies, as well as Asian law and history more generally.