Imperial China, 900-1800

Imperial China, 900-1800 PDF Author: Frederick W. Mote
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674012127
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 1132

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Book Description
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.

Imperial China, 900-1800

Imperial China, 900-1800 PDF Author: Frederick W. Mote
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674012127
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 1132

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Imperial China, 900-1800

Imperial China, 900-1800 PDF Author: Frederick W. Mote
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780674256514
Category : HISTORY
Languages : en
Pages : 1106

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Book Description
This is a history of China for the 900-year time span of the late imperial period. F.W. Mote highlights the personal characteristics of the rulers and dynasties and probes the cultural theme of Chinese adaptations to recurrent alien rule.

Imperial China, 900–1800

Imperial China, 900–1800 PDF Author: Frederick W. Mote
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1144

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Book Description
This is a history of China for the 900-year time span of the late imperial period. A senior scholar of this epoch, F. W. Mote highlights the personal characteristics of the rulers and dynasties and probes the cultural theme of Chinese adaptations to recurrent alien rule. No other work provides a similar synthesis: generational events, personalities, and the spirit of the age combine to yield a comprehensive history of the civilization, not isolated but shaped by its relation to outsiders. This vast panorama of the civilization of the largest society in human history reveals much about Chinese high and low culture, and the influential role of Confucian philosophical and social ideals. Throughout the Liao Empire, the world of the Song, the Mongol rule, and the early Qing through the Kangxi and Qianlong reigns, culture, ideas, and personalities are richly woven into the fabric of the political order and institutions. This is a monumental work that will stand among the classic accounts of the nature and vibrancy of Chinese civilization before the modern period.

China’s Cosmopolitan Empire

China’s Cosmopolitan Empire PDF Author: Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067403306X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
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.

China Between Empires

China Between Empires PDF Author: Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674060350
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
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.

The Scholar's Mind

The Scholar's Mind PDF Author: Perry Link
Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
ISBN: 9629968797
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Professor Frederick W. Mote (1922–2006) has been widely recognized as a key figure in the field of Sinology. He taught at Princeton University for thirty-one years and was a founder of both Princeton's Department of East Asian Studies and its re-markable Gest (East Asian) Library. His distinguished record of scholarly publication includes the co-editing, with Professor Denis C. Twitchett, of volumes seven and eight of the Cambridge History of China. Although he is perhaps best known for his studies of the Ming dynasty, his special erudition, as demonstrated in his final book, Imperial China, 900-1800, spans the Song through Qing periods. Generations of his students and colleagues have admired him not only for his learning but for his generosity in sharing his broad understanding of China. This wide-ranging collection includes papers by David A. Sensabaugh, Geoff Wade, Hok-lam Chan, Tai-loi Ma, Martin Hei-jdra, Chen-main Wang, Thomas Bartlett, Paul R. Katz, Alfreda Murck and Perry Link. Its publication stands not only as a tribute to Professor Mote but as a major contribution to the field of Sinology.

A Social History of the Chinese Book

A Social History of the Chinese Book PDF Author: Joseph P. McDermott
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9622097812
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
In this learned, yet readable, book, Joseph McDermott introduces the history of the book in China in the late imperial period from 1000 to 1800. He assumes little knowledge of Chinese history or culture and compares the Chinese experience with books with that of other civilizations, particularly the European. Yet he deals with a wide range of issues in the history of the book in China and presents novel analyses of the changes in Chinese woodblock bookmaking over these centuries. He presents a new view of when the printed book replaced the manuscript and what drove that substitution. He explores the distribution and marketing structure of books, and writes fascinatingly on the history of book collecting and about access to private and government book collections. In drawing on a great deal of Chinese, Japanese, and Western research this book provides a broad account of the way Chinese books were printed, distributed, and consumed by literati and scholars, mainly in the lower Yangzi delta, the cultural center of China during these centuries. It introduces interesting personalities, ranging from wily book collectors to an indigent shoe-repairman collector. And, it discusses the obstacles to the formation of a truly national printed culture for both the well-educated and the struggling reader in recent times. This broad and comprehensive account of the development of printed Chinese culture from 1000 to 1800 is written for anyone interested in the history of the book. It also offers important new insights into book culture and its place in society for the student of Chinese history and culture. 'A brilliant piece of synthetic research as well as a delightful read, it offers a history of the Chinese book to the eighteenth century that is without equal.' - Timothy Brook, University of British Columbia 'Writers, scribes, engravers, printers, binders, publishers, distributors, dealers, literati, scholars, librarians, collectors, voracious readers — the full gamut of a vibrant book culture in China over one thousand years — are examined with eloquence and perception by Joseph McDermott in The Social History of the Book. His lively exploration will be of consuming interest to bibliophiles of every persuasion.' - Nicholas A. Basbanes, author of A Gentle Madness, Patience and Fortitude, A Splendor of Letters, and Every Book Its Reader Joseph McDermott is presently Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, and University Lecturer in Chinese at Cambridge University. He has published widely on Chinese social and economic history, most recently on the economy of the Song (or, Sung) dynasty for the Cambridge History of China. He has edited State and Court Ritual in China and Art and Power in East Asia.

The Pattern of the Chinese Past

The Pattern of the Chinese Past PDF Author: Mark Elvin
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804708760
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
A satisfactory comprehensive history of the social and economic development of pre-modern China, the largest country in the world in terms of population, and with a documentary record covering three millennia, is still far from possible. The present work is only an attempt to disengage the major themes that seem to be of relevance to our understanding of China today. In particular, this volume studies three questions. Why did the Chinese Empire stay together when the Roman Empire, and every other empire of antiquity of the middle ages, ultimately collapsed? What were the causes of the medieval revolution which made the Chinese economy after about 1100 the most advanced in the world? And why did China after about 1350 fail to maintain her earlier pace of technological advance while still, in many respects, advancing economically? The three sections of the book deal with these problems in turn but the division of a subject matter is to some extent only one of convenience. These topics are so interrelated that, in the last analysis, none of them can be considered in isolation from the others.

The Open Empire

The Open Empire PDF Author: Valerie Hansen
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393938777
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
An innovative approach to early Chinese history, now updated and expanded up to 1800.

China and the Vocation of History in the Twentieth Century

China and the Vocation of History in the Twentieth Century PDF Author: Frederick W. Mote
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 9780691144634
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Frederick Mote, one of the twentieth century's most prominent Sinologists, has written a historian's memoir that uses observation and personal experiences to understand the intellectual and social transformation of China. Mote's thought-provoking narrative distills his reflections on modern China and details change in Chinese historical studies in the twentieth century. Mote assesses the work of historians prior to 1950 and the domination of China by the Communist Chinese, hints at the direction of Chinese historical studies in the post-1950s era, and explores the continuous change in the ways Chinese history has been understood among the Chinese themselves and within the field. Language training in the Army Specialized Training Program and subsequent wartime service with the Office of Strategic Services serendipitously drew Mote into the study of China, the immense discipline to which he devoted his life. Previously unpublished material in the text, appendices, and addenda document such diverse encounters as the destruction of a Catholic mission by the Communists, Sino-Japanese relations in China in the aftermath of World War II, the growth of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, and a 1974 delegation visit to China. Evaluating Chinese ideas and attitudes toward revolution, modernization, and war, Mote measures the weight and meaning of Chinese historical study.