Bureaucracy and the State in Early China
Title | Bureaucracy and the State in Early China PDF eBook |
Author | Feng Li |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 385 |
Release | 2008-12-11 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0521884470 |
This ook redefines the bureaucracy of Ancient Chinese society during the Western Zhou period. The analysis is based on inscriptions of royal edicts from the period carved into bronze vessels. The inscriptions clarify the political and social construction of the Western Zhou and the ways in which it exercised its authority.
Early China
Title | Early China PDF eBook |
Author | Li Feng |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 369 |
Release | 2013-12-30 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0521895529 |
A critical new interpretation of the early history of Chinese civilization based on the most recent scholarship and archaeological discoveries.
Communication and Cooperation in Early Imperial China
Title | Communication and Cooperation in Early Imperial China PDF eBook |
Author | Charles Sanft |
Publisher | SUNY Press |
Pages | 264 |
Release | 2014-02-01 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 1438450370 |
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, Chinas first imperial dynasty (221206 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 mediafrom 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.
State Formation in China and Taiwan
Title | State Formation in China and Taiwan PDF eBook |
Author | Julia C. Strauss |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 295 |
Release | 2019-11-07 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1108476864 |
An ambitious comparative study of regime consolidation in the 'revolutionary' People's Republic of China and 'conservative' Taiwan in the early 1950s.
Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy
Title | Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy PDF eBook |
Author | Etienne Balazs |
Publisher | Yale University Press |
Pages | 340 |
Release | 1967-03-11 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 9780300094565 |
Born in Hungary, trained in Chinese studies in Germany, Etienne Balazs was, until his sudden and premature death in 1963, a professor at the Sorbonne and an intellectual leader among European specialists on China. In this book, a selection of Dr. Balazs’ essays are presented for the first time in English. Arthur F. Wright, professor of history at Yale, and John K. Fairbank, professor of history at Harvard, have written a joint Preface and Mr. Wright has written an Introduction. Scholars and interested laymen will find a rich feast here in essays ranging over two thousand years of China’s social, economic, political, and intellectual history. A wealth of data supports the various theories Dr. Balazs develops, in a graceful translation by Hope N. Wright. Because Etienne Balazs regarded the Chinese past not as a curiosity but as a repository of relevant human experience, his essays are significant for anyone interested in the past and future of civilization. "If a reader should disagree with some of the brilliant points, he would still find them challenging and refreshing."—Journal of Asian Studies.
State Power in Ancient China and Rome
Title | State Power in Ancient China and Rome PDF eBook |
Author | Walter Scheidel |
Publisher | |
Pages | 322 |
Release | 2015 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0190202246 |
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.
Landscape and Power in Early China
Title | Landscape and Power in Early China PDF eBook |
Author | Li Feng |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 56 |
Release | 2006-08-17 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1139456881 |
The ascendancy of the Western Zhou in Bronze Age China, 1045–771 BC, was a critical period in the development of Chinese civilisation and culture. This book addresses the complex relationship between geography and political power in the context of the crisis and fall of the Western Zhou state. Drawing on the latest archaeological discoveries, the book shows how inscribed bronze vessels can be used to reveal changes in the political space of the period and explores literary and geographical evidence to produce a coherent understanding of the Bronze Age past. By taking an interdisciplinary approach which embraces archaeology, history and geography, the book thoroughly reinterprets late Western Zhou history and probes the causes of its gradual decline and eventual fall. Supported throughout by maps created from the GIS datasets and by numerous on-site photographs, Landscape and Power in Early China gives significant insights into this important Bronze Age society.