Download Free Early Chinese Empires And The People Without History Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Early Chinese Empires And The People Without History and write the review.

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.
"Early Chinese Empires were colonial regimes. The major aim of my dissertation is to elaborate on previous interpretations of cultural change and to highlight the negotiation of identity between imperial and local agents in a colonial context. Colonial encounters not only have occurred in modern times, but also in early Imperial China. The state of Qin (778 BC-221 BC) conquered the entire land of Sichuan (316 BC). This region may well have been Qin's first colony before it finally unified China and created an empire (221 BC). Forceful military acquisitions of the land and the construction of a colonial landscape reshaped the indigenous cultures. The adoption of the metropolitan cultures (traditionally recognized as "sinicization") continued for more than five hundred years. In the past, historians have tended to view cultural change under Qin and Han colonial rule as a normative process, by which the superior metropolitan cultures were passively accepted by the "naturally" inferior, local peoples of ancient Sichuan. However, the society of ancient colonial Sichuan was dynamic, composed of complex interactions among mobile individuals and groups. Local and metropolitan identities emerged nearly simultaneously. Micro and macro identities developed in close relationship with each other and were mutually constitutive. The peoples in ancient Sichuan were not merely "sinicized," but rather that they often played an active role in constructing their local cultural identities within greater imperial world. Studies of ancient China often take cultural contact as monolithic and portray China as a state/empire with a monotonic voice. This dissertation seeks to deconstruct the Sino-centric identity through the investigation of the contact between China and her neighbor, ancient Sichuan. I see the cultural contacts as a set of diversified, uneven and heterogeneous interactions, rather than a one-way process. This dissertation deploys an interdisciplinary approach to address this question and to produce a critical synthesis based on the methods of history and archaeology; it analyzes textual sources in the form of standard histories, local histories and inscriptional evidence; and material cultures from burials and other sites. These approaches are well integrated with each other and will be used in both macro and micro contexts. Several expressions of identity are examined including local intellectual agency, ritual practice, and the compilation of local history. " --
A major historical study of the formation, spread and impact of rumor in the early Chinese empires.
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.
A critical new interpretation of the early history of Chinese civilization based on the most recent scholarship and archaeological discoveries.
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.
In this history of China for the 900-year span of the late imperial period, Mote highlights the personal characteristics of the rulers and dynasties and probes the cultural theme of Chinese adaptations to recurrent alien rule. Generational events, personalities, and the spirit of the age combine to yield a comprehensive history of the civilization.
When published in 1982, this translation of Professor Jacques Gernet's masterly survey of the history and culture of China was immediately welcomed by critics and readers. This revised and updated edition makes it more useful for students and for the general reader concerned with the broad sweep of China's past.
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.
A Companion to Chinese History presents a collection of essays offering a comprehensive overview of the latest intellectual developments in the study of China’s history from the ancient past up until the present day. Covers the major trends in the study of Chinese history from antiquity to the present day Considers the latest scholarship of historians working in China and around the world Explores a variety of long-range questions and themes which serves to bridge the conventional divide between China’s traditional and modern eras Addresses China’s connections with other nations and regions and enables non-specialists to make comparisons with their own fields Features discussion of traditional topics and chronological approaches as well as newer themes such as Chinese history in relation to sexuality, national identity, and the environment