Ancient China Buy This Poster At AllPosters.com |
China is the oldest continuous major world civilization, with records dating back about 3,500 years. Successive dynasties developed a system of bureaucratic control, which gave the agrarian-based Chinese an advantage over neighboring nomadic and hill cultures. Chinese civilization was further strengthened by the development of a state ideology based on Confucianism and a common written Chinese language that bridged the gaps among the country's many local languages and dialects. Whenever China was conquered by nomadic tribes, as it was by the Mongols in the 13th century, the conquerors sooner or later adopted the ways of the "higher" Chinese civilization and staffed the bureaucracy with Chinese.
Prehistoric Time
China was inhabited more than a million years ago by Homo erectus: the excavations of Lantian and Yuanmou show early habitation. Modern humans probably reached China about 75,000 years ago, and by about 7,500 BC had developed an agricultural economy based around millet, rice, pigs, dogs, and chickens. (Some uncertainty attaches to this date: archaeological evidence for the period is scanty. Agriculture clearly began in China not long after it began in the fertile crescent, and possibly even before. With agriculture came increased population, the ability to store and redistribute crops, and to support specialist craftsmen and administrators: in short, civilization as we know it. In late neolithic times, the Huang he valley began to establish itself as a cultural center, where the first villages were founded (as the one excavated at Banpo near Xian).
Ancient Chinese History
Chinese historiographers traditionally began their accounts of Chinese history with the foundation of the Xia Dynasty in the 21st century B.C., followed by the Shang Dynasty roughly half a millennium later, but the reliability of these accounts is at issue, since writing did not appear in China until about 1300 BC and the accounts were written many centuries after the event. Archaeological findings provide evidence for the existence of at least the Shang dynasty, however. Shang China had an advanced culture somewhat different from later Chinese civilization, with writing, bronze working, and chariots, the last suggesting possible influence from western migrants akin to the contemporary Hittites and Indo-Aryans.
Furthermore Imperial Chinese historiographers were accustomed to the notion of one dynasty succeeding each other, while the actual political situation in early China is known to be much more complicated. Hence the Xia Dynasty and the Shang Dynasty can possibly refer to political entities that existed at the same time just as the Zhou Dynasty and the successor state to the Shang Dynasty existed at the same time.
In the 2nd millennium B.C. a second culture began to emerge in the Huanghe valley, overrunning the Shang, and the existence of the Zhou dynasty, instituted in the 11th century B.C., is the first for which there is a reliable historical tradition. The Zhou dynasty appeared to have begun rule under a centralized bureaucratic system. Some historians have termed this system feudal, while others have objected to the term feudal as it tends to stretch the extent of the term feudalism into meaninglessness, and it implies similarities with European feudalism that may not exist.
Power became decentralized in subsequent years of Zhou’s reign, coined as the Spring and Autumn Period from the annals that chronicled it. During the Spring and Autumn Period there was consolidation as larger states defeated and assimilated smaller states. Influential blossom of Chinese philosophy and culture including Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism and Mohism marked this era of importance. As the political consolidation continued, there remained seven prominent states, and the period in which these few states battled each other is known as the Period of the Warring States. Though there still was a Zhou emperor until 256 B.C., he held no power whatsoever.
The Chinese Empire
In the 220s B.C., the prince Zheng of Qin (Qin wang zheng) managed to conquer the other states and proclaimed himself First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty. Though his unified reign lasted only 11 years, he managed to subdue great parts of what constitutes present-day residence of Han Chinese and to unite them under a tight centralized government seated in Xianyang (near Xian). His sons, however, weren't as successful; soon the Qin dynasty ended and the Han Dynasty took over.
It was the first dynasty to embrace Confucianism, which became the ideological underpinning of all dynasties until the end of imperial China. Under the Han dynasty, historiography and arts flourished, inventions made life easier and emperors like Han Wu Di consolidated and extended the Chinese empire by pushing back the Xiongnu (sometimes identified with the Huns) and subjugating areas in the west. The Silk Road was established and for the first time there were trading connections between China and the occident.
But in the 1st century B.C., the Han rulers' power declined and in A.D. 9 the usurper Wang Mang founded the short-lived Xin Dynasty. In A.D. 25, however, the Han dynasty was restored and lasted until early 3rd century A.D.. Then, there was again a period of turmoil, in which three states tried to gain predominance in the Period of the Three Kingdoms. Though these three kingdoms were reunited temporarily in 280 A.D. by emperor Wu Di of the Jin Dynasty (265-420), the Wu Hu barbarians ravaged the country since early 4th century provoking large scale Chinese migration to the south of the Yangtze River. Along with the immigrants and residents of the south emperor Yuan Di of the Jin Dynasty set up the first of five dynasties (Southern Dynasties) that all seated at Jiangkang (near today Nanjing). The barbarian north was united once by Fu Jian of the Former Qin Empire in 376 A.D. then again by Tai Wu Di, third emperor of the Northern Wei Dynasty in 439 A.D.. The latter unification signified the start of a bunch of local dynasties (Northern Dynasties). China was ruled by two independent dynasties, one in the south and the other in the north, and hence coined the era of Southern and Northern Dynasties. The short-lived Sui Dynasty managed to reunite the country in 589 A.D. after almost 300 years of disjunction.
In 618 A.D., the Tang Dynasty was established and a new age of flourishing began. Buddhism, which had slowly seeped into China in the first centuries A.D., became the prominent religion and widely adopted by the royal family. Chang'an (modern Xi'an), the then capital, was supposedly the world's biggest city. Finally, however, the Tang dynasty declined as well and another time of political chaos followed, the Period of the Five Dynasties and the Ten Kingdoms.
In 960 A.D., the Song Dynasty (960-1279) gained power over most of China and established its capital in Kaifeng whereas the Khitan Liao Dynasty ruled over modern Manchuria and eastern Mongolia. In 1115 A.D., the Jurchen Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) emerged to prominence. Not only did it annihilate the Liao Dynasty in 10 years, the Song also lost power over Northern China to the Jin Dynasty and moved its capital to Hangzhou. The Southern Song Dynasty also suffered the humiliation of having to acknowledge the Jin Dynasty as formal overlords. In the ensuing years China was divided between the Song Dynasty, the Jin Dynasty, and the Western Xia who were ruled by Tanguts. The Southern Song was a period of great technological development which can be explained in part by the military pressure that it felt from the north.
