The Everlasting Empire

The Everlasting Empire PDF Author: Yuri Pines
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691134952
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Established in 221 BCE, the Chinese empire lasted for 2,132 years before being replaced by the Republic of China in 1912. During its two millennia, the empire endured internal wars, foreign incursions, alien occupations, and devastating rebellions--yet fundamental institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural features of the empire remained intact. The Everlasting Empire traces the roots of the Chinese empire's exceptional longevity and unparalleled political durability, and shows how lessons from the imperial past are relevant for China today. Yuri Pines demonstrates that the empire survived and adjusted to a variety of domestic and external challenges through a peculiar combination of rigid ideological premises and their flexible implementation. The empire's major political actors and neighbors shared its fundamental ideological principles, such as unity under a single monarch--hence, even the empire's strongest domestic and foreign foes adopted the system of imperial rule. Yet details of this rule were constantly negotiated and adjusted. Pines shows how deep tensions between political actors including the emperor, the literati, local elites, and rebellious commoners actually enabled the empire's basic institutional framework to remain critically vital and adaptable to ever-changing sociopolitical circumstances. As contemporary China moves toward a new period of prosperity and power in the twenty-first century, Pines argues that the legacy of the empire may become an increasingly important force in shaping the nation's future trajectory.

The Everlasting Empire

The Everlasting Empire PDF Author: Yuri Pines
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691134952
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Established in 221 BCE, the Chinese empire lasted for 2,132 years before being replaced by the Republic of China in 1912. During its two millennia, the empire endured internal wars, foreign incursions, alien occupations, and devastating rebellions--yet fundamental institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural features of the empire remained intact. The Everlasting Empire traces the roots of the Chinese empire's exceptional longevity and unparalleled political durability, and shows how lessons from the imperial past are relevant for China today. Yuri Pines demonstrates that the empire survived and adjusted to a variety of domestic and external challenges through a peculiar combination of rigid ideological premises and their flexible implementation. The empire's major political actors and neighbors shared its fundamental ideological principles, such as unity under a single monarch--hence, even the empire's strongest domestic and foreign foes adopted the system of imperial rule. Yet details of this rule were constantly negotiated and adjusted. Pines shows how deep tensions between political actors including the emperor, the literati, local elites, and rebellious commoners actually enabled the empire's basic institutional framework to remain critically vital and adaptable to ever-changing sociopolitical circumstances. As contemporary China moves toward a new period of prosperity and power in the twenty-first century, Pines argues that the legacy of the empire may become an increasingly important force in shaping the nation's future trajectory.

The Everlasting Empire

The Everlasting Empire PDF Author: Yuri Pines
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400842271
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Established in 221 BCE, the Chinese empire lasted for 2,132 years before being replaced by the Republic of China in 1912. During its two millennia, the empire endured internal wars, foreign incursions, alien occupations, and devastating rebellions--yet fundamental institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural features of the empire remained intact. The Everlasting Empire traces the roots of the Chinese empire's exceptional longevity and unparalleled political durability, and shows how lessons from the imperial past are relevant for China today. Yuri Pines demonstrates that the empire survived and adjusted to a variety of domestic and external challenges through a peculiar combination of rigid ideological premises and their flexible implementation. The empire's major political actors and neighbors shared its fundamental ideological principles, such as unity under a single monarch--hence, even the empire's strongest domestic and foreign foes adopted the system of imperial rule. Yet details of this rule were constantly negotiated and adjusted. Pines shows how deep tensions between political actors including the emperor, the literati, local elites, and rebellious commoners actually enabled the empire's basic institutional framework to remain critically vital and adaptable to ever-changing sociopolitical circumstances. As contemporary China moves toward a new period of prosperity and power in the twenty-first century, Pines argues that the legacy of the empire may become an increasingly important force in shaping the nation's future trajectory.

Envisioning Eternal Empire

Envisioning Eternal Empire PDF Author: Yuri Pines
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824832752
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
This ambitious book looks into the reasons for the exceptional durability of the Chinese empire, which lasted for more than two millennia (221 B.C.E.-1911 C.E.). Yuri Pines identifies the roots of the empire's longevity in the activities of thinkers of the Warring States period (453-221 B.C.E.), who, in their search for solutions to an ongoing political crisis, developed ideals, values, and perceptions that would become essential for the future imperial polity. In marked distinction to similar empires worldwide, the Chinese empire was envisioned and to a certain extent "preplanned" long before it came into being. As a result, it was not only a military and administrative construct, but also an intellectual one. Pines makes the argument that it was precisely its ideological appeal that allowed the survival and regeneration of the empire after repeated periods of turmoil. Envisioning Eternal Empire presents a panoptic survey of philosophical and social conflicts in Warring States political culture. By examining the extant corpus of preimperial literature, including transmitted texts and manuscripts uncovered at archaeological sites, Pines locates the common ideas of competing thinkers that underlie their ideological controversies. This bold approach allows him to transcend the once fashionable perspective of competing "schools of thought" and show that beneath the immense pluralism of Warring States thought one may identify common ideological choices that eventually shaped traditional Chinese political culture

Life Everlasting

Life Everlasting PDF Author: Robert Whitlow
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN: 1418512613
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
With her client's husband somewhere between this world and the next, attorney Alexia Lindale makes an everlasting choice. The youngest son of a family consumed by greed, Baxter Richardson lingers on this earth in a coma. His wife wants him dead to protect her secrets. His brother wants him dead to gain control of the family empire. And though Baxter's father fights to keep him alive, even he has ulterior motives. But Baster has a surprising ally. A classically trained painist, Ted Morgan believes music can be used as prayer. And Ted's divinely-inspired playing has been slowly pulling Baxter back from the brink of death. Attorney Alexia Lindale represents Baxter's wife, Rena, but has no idea that she and her client are being played in a game that has higher stakes than a single legal case. As Baxter grows stronger, the more endangered he becomes. As Alexia navigates her responsibilities to her client, her relationship with the gifted musician, and her new relationship with God, she must discern the truth as it pertains to life, death, and life everlasting.

Desire of the Everlasting Hills

Desire of the Everlasting Hills PDF Author: Thomas Cahill
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 030775510X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
From the bestselling author of How the Irish Saved Civilization and The Gifts of the Jews, his most compelling historical narrative yet. How did an obscure rabbi from a backwater of the Roman Empire come to be the central figure in Western Civilization? Did his influence in fact change the world? These are the questions Thomas Cahill addresses in his subtle and engaging investigation into the life and times of Jesus. Cahill shows us Jesus from his birth to his execution through the eyes of those who knew him and in the context of his time—a time when the Jews were struggling to maintain their beliefs under overlords who imposed their worldview on their subjects. Here is Jesus the loving friend, itinerate preacher, and quiet revolutionary, whose words and actions inspired his followers to journey throughout the Roman world and speak the truth he instilled—in the face of the greatest defeat: Jesus' crucifixion as a common criminal. Daring, provocative, and stunningly original, Cahill's interpretation will both delight and surprise. BONUS MATERIAL: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Thomas Cahill's Heretics and Heroes.

The King of Content

The King of Content PDF Author: Keach Hagey
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 006265411X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
The remarkable story of Sumner Redstone, his family legacy, and the battles for all he controlled. Sumner Murray Redstone (1923–2020), who lived by the credo "content is king," leveraged his father’s chain of drive-in movie theaters into one of the world’s greatest media empires through a series of audacious takeovers designed to ensure his permanent control. Over the course of this meteoric rise, he made his share of enemies and feuded with nearly every member of his family. In The King of Content, Keach Hagey deconstructs Redstone’s rise from Boston’s West End through Harvard Law School to the highest echelons of American business. The ninety-seven-year-old mogul’s life became a tabloid soap opera, the center of acrimonious legal battles throughout his vast holdings, which included Paramount Pictures and two of the largest public media companies, Viacom and CBS. At the heart of these lawsuits was Redstone’s tumultuous love life and complicated relationship with his children. Redstone’s daughter, Shari, has emerged as his de facto successor, but only after she ousted his closest confidant in a fierce power struggle. Yet Redstone’s assets face an existential threat that goes beyond his family, disgruntled ex-girlfriends, or even the management of his companies: the changing nature of media consumption. As more and more people cut their cable cords, CBS, with its focus on sports and broadcast TV, has held steady, while Viacom, with its once-great cable channels like MTV and Nickelodeon, has suffered a precipitous fall. As their rivals merge, the question is whether Shari’s push to undo her father’s last big strategic maneuver and recombine CBS and Viacom will be enough to shore up their future. A biography and corporate whodunit filled with surprising details, The King of Content investigates Redstone’s impact on business and popular culture, as well as the family feuds, corporate battles, and questionable alliances that go back decades—all laid bare in this authoritative book.

The Black Hole of Empire

The Black Hole of Empire PDF Author: Partha Chatterjee
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400842603
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
When Siraj, the ruler of Bengal, overran the British settlement of Calcutta in 1756, he allegedly jailed 146 European prisoners overnight in a cramped prison. Of the group, 123 died of suffocation. While this episode was never independently confirmed, the story of "the black hole of Calcutta" was widely circulated and seen by the British public as an atrocity committed by savage colonial subjects. The Black Hole of Empire follows the ever-changing representations of this historical event and founding myth of the British Empire in India, from the eighteenth century to the present. Partha Chatterjee explores how a supposed tragedy paved the ideological foundations for the "civilizing" force of British imperial rule and territorial control in India. Chatterjee takes a close look at the justifications of modern empire by liberal thinkers, international lawyers, and conservative traditionalists, and examines the intellectual and political responses of the colonized, including those of Bengali nationalists. The two sides of empire's entwined history are brought together in the story of the Black Hole memorial: set up in Calcutta in 1760, demolished in 1821, restored by Lord Curzon in 1902, and removed in 1940 to a neglected churchyard. Challenging conventional truisms of imperial history, nationalist scholarship, and liberal visions of globalization, Chatterjee argues that empire is a necessary and continuing part of the history of the modern state. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

How the Irish Saved Civilization

How the Irish Saved Civilization PDF Author: Thomas Cahill
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307755134
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A book in the best tradition of popular history—the untold story of Ireland's role in maintaining Western culture while the Dark Ages settled on Europe. • The perfect St. Patrick's Day gift! Every year millions of Americans celebrate St. Patrick's Day, but they may not be aware of how great an influence St. Patrick was on the subsequent history of civilization. Not only did he bring Christianity to Ireland, he instilled a sense of literacy and learning that would create the conditions that allowed Ireland to become "the isle of saints and scholars"—and thus preserve Western culture while Europe was being overrun by barbarians. In this entertaining and compelling narrative, Thomas Cahill tells the story of how Europe evolved from the classical age of Rome to the medieval era. Without Ireland, the transition could not have taken place. Not only did Irish monks and scribes maintain the very record of Western civilization -- copying manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while libraries and learning on the continent were forever lost—they brought their uniquely Irish world-view to the task. As Cahill delightfully illustrates, so much of the liveliness we associate with medieval culture has its roots in Ireland. When the seeds of culture were replanted on the European continent, it was from Ireland that they were germinated. In the tradition of Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror, How The Irish Saved Civilization reconstructs an era that few know about but which is central to understanding our past and our cultural heritage. But it conveys its knowledge with a winking wit that aptly captures the sensibility of the unsung Irish who relaunched civilization.

Keywords in Chinese Culture

Keywords in Chinese Culture PDF Author: Li Wai-yee
Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
ISBN: 9882371191
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Like every major culture, Chinese has its set of keywords: pivotal terms of political, ethical, literary and philosophical discourse. Tracing the origins, development, polysemy, and usages of keywords is one of the best ways to chart cultural and historical changes. This volume analyzes some of these keywords from different disciplinary and temporal perspectives, offering a new integrative study of their semantic richness, development trajectory, and distinct usages in Chinese culture. The authors of the volume explore different keywords and focus on different periods and genres, ranging from philosophical and historical texts of the Warring States period (453-V221 BCE) to late imperial (ca. 6th?V18th centuries CE) literature and philosophy. They are guided by a similar set of questions: What elevates a mere word to the status of keyword? What sort of resonance and reverberations do we expect a keyword to have? How much does the semantic range of a keyword explain its significance? What kinds of arguments does it generate? What are the stories told to illustrate its meanings? What are political and intellectual implications of the keyword's reevaluation? What does it mean to translate a keyword and map its meaning against other languages? Throughout Chinese history, new ideas and new approaches often mean reinterpreting important words; rupture, continuities, and inflection points are inseparable from the linguistic history of specific terms. The premise of this book is that taking the long view and encompassing different disciplines yield new insights and unexpected connections. The authors, who come from the fields of history,

Empire and the Meaning of Religion in Northeast Asia

Empire and the Meaning of Religion in Northeast Asia PDF Author: Thomas David DuBois
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 131673885X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Manchuria entered the twentieth century as a neglected backwater of the dying Qing dynasty, and within a few short years became the focus of intense international rivalry to control its resources and shape its people. This book examines the place of religion in the development of Manchuria from the late nineteenth century to the collapse of the Japanese Empire in 1945. Religion was at the forefront in this period of intense competition, not just between armies but also among different models of legal, commercial, social and spiritual development, each of which imagining a very specific role for religion in the new society. Debates over religion in Manchuria extended far beyond the region, and shaped the personality of religion that we see today. This book is an ambitious contribution to the field of Asian history and to the understanding of the global meaning and practice of the role of religion.