Early China

Early China — begins with prehistory and the early historical period ( Shang and Zhou Periods ) followed by the Warring States Period ( time where philosophical and intellectual ferment), and finishes with the imperial unification under the Qin Dynasty and its successor, the Han Dynasty and their Bureaucratic Empires.

1.1 Early Chinese Civilization: The Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties

Yellow River Civilization

• China is one of the earliest civilizations.

  • stated that human beings may have arrived in China 65,000 years ago and human ancestors such as Homo erectus migrated to the region or evolved independently as early as one million years ago.

• believed to begun around 5000 BCE near the Yellow River in Northern China

  • Banpo is the earliest known human settlement in the area

  • located near modern-day Xian and has yielded many artifacts like pottery shards, tools for agriculture and animal domestication, and metalwork

• Chinese civilization further developed with the Longshan culture ( based on Longshan in Shandong Province ) before entering the period of imperial dynasties

• the Xia (c. 2070 - 1600 BCE ) was considered mythical but finding predating existing and verifiable records indicate that the Xia civilization was real

  • china had already entered the Bronze Age — important milestone in the technological development of a civilization

    • represented abilities to smelt metals and create alloys

• the Shang ( 1600 - 1046 BCE ) and Zhou ( 1044 - 771 BCE ) dynasties left the world many wonderful artificats, pottery, bronze work and early versions of Chinese characters carved into oracle bones

  • readings of the oracle bones was a type of shamanism that remains in Chinese culture

China: The Early Dynasties

• the political history of the Shang and the Shang-Zhou transition recieved most the attention as it set and important precedent.

  • Zhou’s defeat of the Shang dynasty at the battle of Muye justified their victory by pointing out the failures of the last Shang king and attested that they had received heaven’s blessing for their victory and their right to rule.

  • Idea became the pinnacle in Chinese tradition as the Mandate of Heaven

• Mandate of Heaven — a traditional Chinese concept that has its origins in the earliest dynasties.

  • idea is that rulers can only remain in power as long as heaven allows it.

  • Heaven — not specifically equivalent to a God or gods but a broader notion that ecompasses deities as well as the supernatural.

  • Heaven’s displeasure with a ruling family can materialize in variety of ways like natural disasters, social unrest, and political intrigue

  • madate appears to be a spiritual concept and is closely tied with political legitimacy and fundamental right to revolt

    • allows the Chinese to employ a semiformal process through which dynasties could be supplanted and replaced

    • much of this process occured after a new power was in place, then they would go back to describe how they had the Mandate all along

  • process that admittedly cynical but ultimately necessary to assure smooth transitions within the Chinese imperial system.

Zhou Dynasty

• the Zhou Dynasty is the first historical dynasty and the longest in Chinese history.

• kept written records of their expansion — records that have survived and that can be studied, unlike the Xia and Shang dynasties

• China managed to maintain certain commonalities in its culture for over 4000 years

  • oldest continuous civilization in existence today

• Chinese had to contend with ‘barbarian’ threats as well as internal strife

• the reason the Zhou dynasty had eastern and western periods is because the western Zhou captial was sacked and destroyed by invading tribes such as the Xiongnu — populated what is now Mongolia and parts of Central Asia and were considered uncivilized by the Chinese

  • set a longer pattern of conflict between the Agrarian people of North China plain and the Nomadic herders of the Central Asian Steppes.

  • cultural patterns, economic needs, and population density created tension that extended beyond the simple desire for power or wealth

  • the pattern of one civilization growing weak and the other growing stronger repeated until the modern era when the nomadic steppe warrior ceased to be a viable military or political force

  • Zhou also set another important precedent in that they were also from the western end of Chinese civilization ( modern-day Shaanxi ) which bordered on the steppe

  • exposure to the superior military technology and tactics of the steppe nomad tended to grant these western kingdoms a marked advantage over those further east or south

  • the Eastern Zhou dynasty lasted for another 500 years

    • this period was a time of disunity and disintegration in which the emperor was more of a figurehead rather than a sovereign ruler

  • first half of the Eastern Zhou dynasty is known as the Spring and Autumn period named after the Spring and Autumn Annals

  • up to 150 small kingdoms existed alongside remnants of the Zhou dynasty during this period

• another result of the breakdown of central authority was the emergence of new philosophies and ideas about governance, warfare, and society

• during this time the great philosophies of the Chinese tradition, Confucianism and Daoism began to emerge as well as the famous treatise on warfare, Sunzi’s the Art of War

Timeline of Ancient China

• power slowly consolidated into the hands of seven powerful kings over a period of 3 centuries

• wars did not stop, instead transitioned into the Warring States period ( 475 - 221 BCE )

  • scale of warfare increased along with the level of destruction and the number of casualites

• while medieval Europe had an air of romanticism, the Warring States period was more of a hard-edged pragmatism.

• Legalism — a harsh form of government that revolved around punishments and rewards to keep people in line

  • stood in high contrast to the more humanistic philosophies of Confucius and Laozi

• the Warring States period ended when one state, Qin, defeated and conquered all the rest through guile and military might

  • led to the founding of the Qin dynasty and the beginning of Imperial China

1.2 Warring States Period: Philosophy and Intellectual Development

Philosophy and Intellectual Development

• amid the civil strife and political upheaval of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, a “golden age” emerged in Chinese philosophy and intellectual development

  • as states struggled through political chaos, great thinkers rose in ranks of bureaucrats, academics, and peasants

    • tried new ways, old ways, and different ways to bring about peace, prosperity, and stability

  • idea of personal worth rather than family connections serving as the currency of promotion in government emerged in China long before it did in the West

• Eastern Zhou dynasty had more than 100 schools of philosophy and ideology competing for influence among the states

  • some became the cornerstones of Chinese thought

Confucianism

• founded by sage Kongzi ( written as Kong Fuzi or Confucius )

  • looked to the past and saw unity and glory in organization of the Zhou dynasty

  • disciples such as Mengzi ( aka Mencius ) developed an ideology suffused with ancestor worship and underscored the belief that rulers enjoyed legitiamacy through the Mandate from Heaven

• mortality and the legitimacy of the state went hand-in-hand in Confucian ideology

  • both concepts remain integral to Chinese society also in Korea and Japan

• Confucianism — less of an regilion than a philosophy focused on how social relationships should be organized

• Confucius taught his disciples about “right” relationships, morality, and good government

  • also built his philosophy on a few key concepts

    • Li — self-interest for the betterment of the community

    • Yi — righteousness

    • Ren — the kindness and empathy found in all humanity

• works, The Analects of Confucius have been published and translated for thousands of years

  • includes famous Golden Rule — gist of which is “Do not do unto others anything you would not want done unto you.”

  • ideas spread quickly after his death in the sixth century BCE, influencing parts of China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and every place settled by Chinese immigrants

Sacred Texts: Confucian Teachings

• the words of Kongzi have less to do with spiritual matters than with the practical elements of everyday life.

• The Analects of Confucius discusses the superior man, various rites, and the search for knowledge

• Famous quotes include:

  • “When a man’s knowledge is sufficient to attain, and his virtue is not sufficient to enable him to hold, whatever he may have gained, he will lose again.”

  • “Hold faithfulness and sincerity as first principles.”

  • “There are three things which the superior man guards against. In youth … lust. When he is strong … quarrelsomeness. When he is old … covetousness.”

Daoism

• Dao ( Tao ), “the Way,” — a system of philosophy and religion with its origins in ancient China.

  • focuses on reaching a state of balance or harmony with nature and all human affairs

  • state of balance mirrors that of the yin and yang, the positive and negative energies that bind all things together.

• a true Daoist go through life undisturbed by chaos or change, content to let things flow where they will

• proves useless in the political arena but is popular in the hearts and minds of the people

  • believed to have emerged earlier on but only came into the writings of Laozi ( 369 - 286 BCE )

    • teachings were the polar opposite of the rigid systems found in Confucianism and Legalism

    • popularity stemmed from Zhuangzi ( 369 - 286 BCE ), who taught the Dao through the use of parables and the simple language of a storyteller

    • helped develop ideas in politics as well as medicine, martial arts, and religion

    • became one of the richest and most varied belief systems in chinese culture

• two main texts of Daoism are:

  • Daodejing

    • was written in the fourth century BCE by Laozi

    • considered the preeminent text of the Daoist world — lays out the core of Daoist philosophy

    • esoteric and difficult to understand and best read alongside the Book of Zhuangzi

  • Book of Zhuangzi

    • written in the fourth century BCE

    • the second greatest Daoist teacher after Laozi

    • teaches Daoism through stories and parables

Sacred Texts: Daoist Teachings

• one of the most famous stories is Zhuangzi’s “Butterfly Story”, which deals with the nature of knowledge and the ability to discern our own existence

• the passage, in typical Daoist fashion, allows the reader’s mind to wander on its own, leading the reader to come to his or her own conclusions about the answer

• Excerpt from the Book of Zhuangzi:

  Once Master Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, flitting and fluttering happily about, doing butterfly things. He knew of nothing else. Suddenly, he awoke and there he was, unmistakenly a man once again. But was he? For now he did not know if he was Master Zhuang, a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming he is a man.

  Book of Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi

• passage about understanding the cycle of life and death:

  I recieved life because the time had come. I will lose it because all things must pass. Be content with the time you have and live in peace with the world around you, then you will know neither extreme sorrow nor the perils of extreme joy, which can poison the human mind. There are those who cannot free themselves, because they are bound to things and by things. But nothing can stand against Heaven. Nothing can stand against God. That is the way it has always been. What would I have to be angry about or sad about, if I accept this as true?

  Book of Zhuangzi, Zhuangzi

Legalism

• proponents of this philosophy believed that human nature was inherently corrupt and that a strong leader required tough laws.

  • this ideology arose the idea that no one, not even a king, was above law and that the population of a country needed to make great sacrifices in order to enjoy public works, national defense, and a solid economy

  • was formulated and made famous by Han Feizi nad Li Si during the late Warring States era.

1.3 Bureaucratic Empire: The Qin-Han Dynasties

The Qin Dynasty

• during the Warring States period, each state vied for supremacy over all the others, desiring to consolidate them into a single political entity.

• in 221 BCE, China ( much as we recognize today ) was unified by Ying Zheng, king of Qin

  • better fighter, politician, and strategist

  • enjoyed the strategic advantage of not being surrounded by enemy states as well as being able to employ military techniques and technology learned from the steppes

  • employed effective divide and conquer techniques to defeat his adversaries

    • techniques like “a silkworm eating a mulberry leaf bite-by-bite”

  • after conquering the Warring States he declared himself the First Emperor of All Under Heaven or “Qin Shihuangdi”

  • organized his new empire along Legalist lines, not Confucianism, which was native to regions farther east, and began a series of reforms that solidified much of what we now know as Chinese culture.

• China emerged during the Qin dynasty as Latin for the “land of the Qin”

• reunification of China restored trade over the Silk Road

  • contact reached as far west as the Roman Empire which gave China the name that is still used today across the globe

• Chinese name “Zhongguo” has been commonly translated as the “Middle Kingdom”

  • many linguists have suggested that the traditional meaning of the word was “the states in center”

• Middle Kingdom — idea of Chinese civilization being the center of the universe

• The States in Center — refers to the geographic location of multiple states that make up Chinese civilization in relation to the steppes, ocean, the mountains, and non-Chinese groups that surrounded them

• Qin reformed China in many ways such as

  • codified laws

  • standardized weights and measures

  • simplified Chinese characters in a single writing system

  • gave his empire a common currency

  • sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers and peasants to work on great public works projects

• among these reforms included

  • the city walls surrounding the capital in Chang’an

  • imperial highway system

  • series of defense walls on the northern frontier which have been commonly associated with the Great Wall of China

• Qin’s most famous projects involved his preperation for the afterlife like the Terracotta Army in Xian, China

  • thousands were involved in the construction of his tomb, which was possibly the largest in the ancient world

  • the terracotta soldiers is only a larger part of the necropolis, which legend claims has a scale model of the known world

• Qin’s rule was harsh and demanding

  • ordered any form of dissent suppressed

  • intellectuals who refused to embrace Legalism and his rule were rounded up and killed, often buried alive and their books were burned

  • after centuries, Qin sought to suppress and curtail any divergence in thought in the name of unity and progress

    • attack on the intellectual elit and his demands on the populace for labor and confomity placed a strain on Chinese society and made his rule unpopular.

  • would not last long after Qin Shihuangdi

    • after death in 210 BCE the chief eunuch engineered a plot for Qin’s eldest son and leading general Meng Tian to commit suicide and for the execution of the senior official Li Si

      • civil war breaks out, China doesn’t fragment instead its unites under a new dynasty called Han ( 206 - 220 BCE )

Early Dynasties

The Han Dynasty

• one of the leaders of the rebellion against the Qin was Liu Bang ( 247 - 195 BCE ) who was from a peasant class

  • another was Xiang Yu, an aristocrat from the state of Chu before its defeat at the hands of Qin

  • intially worked together to defeat the Qin but their alliance broke down after the fall of the Qin capital at Chang’an.

    • Liu defeats Xiang and went on to establish the Han dynasty

• under the Liu leadership, the Han dynasty retain much of the Qin administrative structure and favored Confucian ideas over Legalism

  • important precedent that established the philosophic underpinning of the Chinese imperial system until the modern era

  • process was gradual as it would not be until the fifth emperor of the Han dynasty, Emperor Wudi — ruler to openly endorse Confucianism

• a mastery of the Confucian classics was essential to become inducted into the ranks of the scholar-officials, the professional governing class of China

• Han inaugurated the Imperial Civil Service Exam system and carefully restored intellectual and literary masterpieces

• Imperial Exam System — enabled the government to choose the best and brightest to fill civil service posts.

  • allowed for upward mobility among high achievers

  • showed the value the forward-thinking Chinese saw in a meritocracy

• Chinese history receives its first serious academic treatment by the famous write Sima Qian ( 145 - 87 BCE )

  • Records of the Grand Historian — represents the view of a private scholar, not a state pronouncement seeking to prove that a given dynasty had earned or lost the Mandate of Heaven

    • caused Sima to fall victim to the court politics and eventually chose castration over execution to finish his work

  • work was influential that his organization and writing style influenced a majority of the histories that followed

• Han dynasty expanded Chinese territory far to the West, securing modern day Xinjiang and helping traders safely conduct business between China and Rome

  • this was known as the Silk Road

    • led to ideas from abroad entering and becoming absorbed into Chinese culture like

      • Buddhism from India — reached China through the circuitous route rather than the direct maritime route

      • inventions that included paper and porcelain that were invented during the Han dynasty.

        • flowed into the west and sparked interest in Chinese goods that continues today

Han Dynasty Politics

• during its 400 years of ruling, it was comtemporary to the Roman Empire and dealt with political turmoil.

• after the death of Liu Bang, Empress Lu ( Liu’s wife ) and empress dowager assumed de facto power in the realm

  • her nepotism and unpopularity led to the virtual extinction of her clan after her death

• the Han can be divided into two eras — Western and Eastern Han

  • Western — the period where they were stronger

• between the two dynasties was the 15-year Xin dynasty, which senior Han official Wang Mang ( aka. Usurper ) took control

  • was a true Confucian who attemepted to apply solutions to governance that were radical at the time but forward thinking which included the likes of:

    • currency

    • outlawing of slavery

    • public granaries

    • nationalization of territory and property

• Xiongnu — nomadic tribe that have been linked in some sources to the Huns that ravaged Europe at the end of the Roman Empire

  • after being surrounded and threaten with defeat, Liu Bang formed a marriage alliance with one of the leading Xiongnu chieftains to keep the peace during the rest of his reign

• Han Wudi ( Liu’s successor ), employed a more aggressive strategy, seeking to conquer the steppes

• the downfall of the Han would not come via the steppe, the northern frontier remained a constant issue and would come back to haunt China in the centuries to follow