|
Product Description
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.
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
- Early China: A Social And Cultural History (New Approaches to Asian History)
- Imperialism, Power, and Identity: Experiencing the Roman Empire (Miriam S. Balmuth Lectures in Ancient History and Archaeology)
- The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties (History of Imperial China)
- China's Last Empire: The Great Qing (History of Imperial China)
- China: A History
- China: A History (Volume 1): From Neolithic Cultures through the Great Qing Empire, (10,000 BCE - 1799 CE)
- The Cambridge Illustrated History of China
- China between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties (History of Imperial China)
- China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty (History of Imperial China)
- The Age of Confucian Rule: The Song Transformation of China (History of Imperial China)
*If this is not the "The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (History of Imperial China)" product you were looking for, you can check the other results by clicking this link. Details were last updated on Nov 23, 2024 15:44 +08.