China: A History

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Darren Byler is an anthropologist who has significant on the ground experience and has been doing ethnographic work. He also just published a more scholarly book with Duke University Press, Terror Capitalism, which is very good on related fieldwork but written for other specialists. Liu, Wu; Martinón-Torres, María; Cai, Yan-jun; Xing, Song; Tong, Hao-wen; Pei, Shu-wen; Sier, Mark Jan; Wu, Xiao-Hong; Edwards, R. Lawrence; Cheng, Hai; Li, Yi-Yuan; Yang, Xiong-xin; De Castro, José María Bermúdez; Wu, Xiu-jie (2015). "The earliest unequivocally modern humans in southern China" (PDF). Nature. 526 (7575): 696–699. Bibcode: 2015Natur.526..696L. doi: 10.1038/nature15696. PMID 26466566. S2CID 205246146. You follo

Jessica Rawson. "New discoveries from the early dynasties". Times Higher Education . Retrieved 3 October 2013. The state of Qin became dominant in the waning decades of the Warring States period, conquering the Shu capital of Jinsha on the Chengdu Plain; and then eventually driving Chu from its place in the Han River valley. Qin imitated the administrative reforms of the other states, thereby becoming a powerhouse. [9] Its final expansion began during the reign of Ying Zheng, ultimately unifying the other six regional powers, and enabling him to proclaim himself as China's first emperor—known to history as Qin Shi Huang. Internally the Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864), a Christian religious movement led by the "Heavenly King" Hong Xiuquan swept from the south to establish the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and controlled roughly a third of China proper for over a decade. The court in desperation empowered Han Chinese officials such as Zeng Guofan to raise local armies. After initial defeats, Zeng crushed the rebels in the Third Battle of Nanking in 1864. [76] This was one of the largest wars in the 19th century in troop involvement; there was massive loss of life, with a death toll of about 20 million. [77] A string of civil disturbances followed, including the Punti–Hakka Clan Wars, Nian Rebellion, Dungan Revolt, and Panthay Rebellion. [78] All rebellions were ultimately put down, but at enormous cost and with millions dead, seriously weakening the central imperial authority. China never rebuilt a strong central army, and many local officials used their military power to effectively rule independently in their provinces. [76] A scene of the Taiping Rebellion Ch’iu, Chung-lin. "The Epidemics in Ming Beijing and the Responses from the Empire's Public Health System". 中央研究院歷史語言研究所集刊: 331–388. Stanford, Edward. Atlas of the Chinese Empire, containing separate maps of the eighteen provinces of China (2nd ed., 1917). Legible color maps.Foot, Rosemary (2019). "Remembering the past to secure the present: Versailles legacies in a resurgent China". International Affairs. 95 (1): 143–160. doi: 10.1093/ia/iiy211. The dynasty had a strong and complex central government that unified and controlled the empire. The emperor's role became more autocratic, although Hongwu Emperor necessarily continued to use what he called the " Grand Secretariat" to assist with the immense paperwork of the bureaucracy, including memorials (petitions and recommendations to the throne), imperial edicts in reply, reports of various kinds, and tax records. It was this same bureaucracy that later prevented the Ming government from being able to adapt to changes in society, and eventually led to its decline. Some political leaders get chapters: Jiang Zemin, for example, is the representative of the years around 2000. Xu, Pingfang (2005). The Formation of Chinese Civilization: An Archaeological Perspective. Yale University Press. p.281. ISBN 978-0-300-09382-7.

Byler also takes pains to show that what is happening in China has parallels in other places and global relevance. The technologies that are being developed to control are ones that are, in some cases, being developed in part by international companies and being used in other locales. A learned, wise, wonderfully written single volume history of a civilisation that I knew I should know more about' Tom Holland In the north the last of the Sixteen Kingdoms was extinguished in 439 by the Northern Wei, a kingdom founded by the Xianbei, a nomadic people who unified northern China. The Northern Wei eventually split into the Eastern and Western Wei, which then became the Northern Qi and Northern Zhou. These regimes were dominated by Xianbei or Han Chinese who had married into Xianbei families. During this period most Xianbei people adopted Han surnames, eventually leading to complete assimilation into the Han. After Emperor Wu the empire slipped into gradual stagnation and decline. Economically, the state treasury was strained by excessive campaigns and projects, while land acquisitions by elite families gradually drained the tax base. Various consort clans exerted increasing control over strings of incompetent emperors and eventually the dynasty was briefly interrupted by the usurpation of Wang Mang.Hart-Landsberg, Martin; Burkett, Paul (2010). China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle. Monthly Review Press. ISBN 978-1-58367-123-8 . Retrieved 30 October 2008. RELATED CONTENT: 6 local and immersive food experiences you can do with Trafalgar in China 5. The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao by Ian Johnson Image credit: Penguin Random House The Editorial Committee of Chinese Civilization: A Source Book, City University of Hong Kong (2007). China: Five Thousand Years of History and Civilization. City University of HK Press. p.25. ISBN 978-9629371401. Boltz, William G. (February 1986). "Early Chinese Writing, World Archaeology". Early Writing Systems. 17 (3): 420–436. Yuan's death in 1916 left a power vacuum; the republican government was all but shattered. This opened the way for the Warlord Era, during which much of China was ruled by shifting coalitions of competing provincial military leaders and the Beiyang government. Intellectuals, disappointed in the failure of the Republic, launched the New Culture Movement.

Neolithic Period in China". Timeline of Art History. Metropolitan Museum of Art. October 2004 . Retrieved 10 February 2008. In 960, the Song dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu, with its capital established in Kaifeng (then known as Bianjing). In 979, the Song dynasty reunified most of China proper, while large swaths of the outer territories were occupied by sinicized nomadic empires. The Khitan Liao dynasty, which lasted from 907 to 1125, ruled over Manchuria, Mongolia, and parts of Northern China. Meanwhile, in what are now the north-western Chinese provinces of Gansu, Shaanxi, and Ningxia, the Tangut tribes founded the Western Xia dynasty from 1032 to 1227. Qiu Xigui (2000). Chinese Writing. English translation of 文字學概論 by Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman. Early China Special Monograph Series No. 4. Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. ISBN 978-1-55729-071-7The Tang dynasty was a golden age of Chinese civilization, a prosperous, stable, and creative period with significant developments in culture, art, literature, particularly poetry, and technology. Buddhism became the predominant religion for the common people. Chang'an (modern Xi'an), the national capital, was the largest city in the world during its time. [64] a b c Lander, Brian (2021). The King's Harvest: A Political Ecology of China from the First Farmers to the First Empire. Yale University Press.

The Hongwu Emperor, being the only founder of a Chinese dynasty who was also of peasant origin, had laid the foundation of a state that relied fundamentally in agriculture. Commerce and trade, which flourished in the previous Song and Yuan dynasties, were less emphasized. Neo-feudal landholdings of the Song and Mongol periods were expropriated by the Ming rulers. Land estates were confiscated by the government, fragmented, and rented out. Private slavery was forbidden. Consequently, after the death of the Yongle Emperor, independent peasant landholders predominated in Chinese agriculture. These laws might have paved the way to removing the worst of the poverty during the previous regimes. Towards later era of the Ming dynasty, with declining government control, commerce, trade and private industries revived. a b Kuhn, Phillip (1970). Rebellion and its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796–1864. Harvard East Asian series. Vol.49. Harvard University Press. Chapter 6. ISBN 9780674749511. Urbanization increased as the population grew and as the division of labor grew more complex. Large urban centers, such as Nanjing and Beijing, also contributed to the growth of private industry. In particular, small-scale industries grew up, often specializing in paper, silk, cotton, and porcelain goods. For the most part, however, relatively small urban centers with markets proliferated around the country. Town markets mainly traded food, with some necessary manufactures such as pins or oil.

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Wu, Rukang; Lin, Shenglong (June 1983). "Peking Man". Scientific American. 248 (6): 92–93. Bibcode: 1983SciAm.248f..86R. doi: 10.1038/scientificamerican0683-86. JSTOR 24968922.