chapter 8


  • The collapse of the Han Dynasty around 200 CE ushered in more than three centuries of political fragmentation in China and signaled the rise of powerful and locally entrenched aristocratic families. 
  • China gained its city under the Sui dynasty unlike the Roman Empire
  • The dynastic collapse, however, witnessed no prolonged disintegration of the Chinese state. 
  • The Tang and the Song dynasty built on the Sui foundations.
  • Politically, the Tang and Song dynasties built a state structure that endured for a thousand years.
  • Six major ministries. Personnel, finance, rites, army, justice, and public works. 
  • Selecting officials on the basis of merit represent a challenge to established aristocratic families' hold on public office.
  • Underlying these cultural and political achievement was an "economic revolution" that made Song dynasty China "by far the richest, most skilled, and most populous country on earth." 
  • Many people found their way to the cities, making china the most urbanized country in the world. 
  • Supplying these cities with food was made possible by an immense network of internal waterways-- canals, rivers and lakes-- stretching perhaps 30,000 miles. 
  • Industrial production likewise soared. 
  • Most remarkably, perhaps, all of this occurred within the world's most highly commercialized society, in which producing for the market, rather than for local consumption, because a very widespread phenomenon. 
  • The golden age of Song dynasty China was perhaps less than "golden" for many of its women, for that era marked yet another turning point in the history of Chinese patriarchy.
  • Once again, Confucian writers highlighted the subordination of women to men and the need to keep males and females separate in every domain of life. 
  • The most compelling expression of a tightening patriarchy lay in foot binding.
  • Tenth or eleventh century C.E
  • A rapidly commercializing economy undermined the position of women in the textile industry. 
  • In other ways, the Song dynasty witnessed more positive trends in the lives of women. 
  • Their property rights expanded, allowing women to control their own dowries and to inherit property from their families. 
  • From early times to the nineteenth century, China's many interaction with a larger Eurasian world shaped both China's own development and that of world history more generally.
  • From the nomads' point of view, the threat often came from the Chinese, who periodically directed their own military forces deep into the steppes, built the Great wall to see the nomads out, and often proved unwilling to allow pastoral people easy access to trading opportunities within China. 
  • An enduring outcome of this cross cultural encounter was a particular view the Chinese held of themselves and of their neighbors, fully articulated by the time of the Han Dynasty and lasting for more than two millennia. 
  • Such was the general understanding of literate Chinese about their own civilization in relation to northern nomads and the anon-Chnese peoples. 
  • Often this system seemed to work. 
  • But the tribute system also disguised some realities that contradicted its assumptions.
  • Something similar occurred during the Tang dynasty as as series of Turkic empire arose in Mongolia.
  • Steppe nomads were generally not much interested in actually conquering and ruling China. 
  • When nomadic peoples actually ruled parts of China, some of them adopted Chinese ways, implying Chinese advisers, governing according to Chinese practice, and, at least for the elite, immersing themselves in Chinese culture and learning.
  • On the Chinese side, elements of steppe culture had some influence int shoe parts of northern China that were periodically conquered and ruled by nomadic peoples. 
  • Also involved in tributary relationships with China were the newly emerging states and civilizations of Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.
  • Immediately adjacent to northeastern China, the Korean peninsula and its people have long lived in the shadow of their imposing neighbor.
  • Under a succession of dynasties- the Silla, Karyo and Joseon Korea generally maintained its political independence while participating in China's tribute system. 
  • Still, Korea remained Korean.
  • Unlike Korea and Vietnam, the Japanese islands were physically separated form China, by 100 miles or more of ocean and were never successfully invaded or conquered by their giant mainland neighbor. The initial leader of the ephor was Shook Taishi, a prominent aristocrat from one of the major clans. 
  • The absence of any compelling threat form China made it possible for the Japanese to be selective int heir borrowing. Japanese literary and artistic culture likewise evolved in distinctive ways, despite much borrowing from China. 
  • Beyond China;s central role in East Asia was its economic interaction with the wider world of Eurasia generally.
  • One of the outcomes of China;s economic revolution lay in the diffusion of its many technological innovations to peoples and places far from East Asia as the movements of traders, soldiers, slaves, and pilgrims conveyed Chinese achievements abroad. 
  • Chinese technologies were seldom simply transferred from one place to another. 
  • Chinese Technologies were seldom simply transferred from one lace to another more often a particular Chinese technique or product stimulated innovations in more distant lads in accordance with local needs. 
  • Technologically as well, China's extraordinary burst of creativity owed something to the stimulus of cross cultural contact.

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