Author: Ernest Caldwell Publication Date: May 2018 Publisher: Routledge
Abstract: The legal institutions of the short-lived Qin dynasty (221 BCE-207 BCE) have been vilified by history as harsh and draconian. Yet ironically, many Qin institutional features, such as written statutory law, were readily adopted by subsequent dynasties as the primary means for maintaining administrative and social control. This book utilizes both traditional texts and archeologically excavated materials to explore how these influential Qin legal institutions developed. Firstly, it investigates the socio-political conditions which led to the production of law in written form. It then goes on to consider how the intended function of written law influenced the linguistic composition of legal statutes, as well as their physical construction. Using a function and form approach, it specifically analyses the Shuihudi legal corpus. However, unlike many previous studies of Chinese legal manuscripts, which have focused on codicological issues of transcription and translation, this book considers the linguistic aspects of these manuscripts and thus their importance for understanding the development of early Chinese legal thought. Table of Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Social Change and Written Law in Pre-Imperial China 3. Inscribing Control in Qin 4. The Anatomy of a Qin Legal Statute I 5. The Anatomy of a Qin Legal Statute II 6. Conclusion
Editor: Paul R. Goldin Publisher: Routledge Publication Date: May 2018
Abstract: The study of early China has been radically transformed over the past fifty years by archaeological discoveries, including both textual and non-textual artifacts. Thanks to the huge fund of new data provided by archaeology, historians are now keenly aware that traditional accounts of the period are inadequte because they are partisan, prescriptive, and incomplete. Excavations of settlements and tombs have demonstrated that most people did not lead their lives in accordance with the rituals canons, while previously unknown documents have shown that most received histories were written retrospectively by victors, and present a correspondingly skewed and anachronistic perspective. This handbook provides an authoritive survey of Chinese history from the Stone Age to A.D. 220. It is the first volume to include not only a comprehensive review of political history, but also detailed treatments of topics that transcend particular historical moments, such as warfare, cities, literature, and science. The contributions from doyens in the field and up and coming scholars reflect the cutting edge research that is redefining the study of Early Chinese history. Table of Contents: Introduction: What Is Early Chinese History?, Paul R. Goldin Part I: Chronology 1. Main Issues in the Study of the Chinese Neolithic, Gideon Shelach-Lavi 2. Of Millets and Wheat: Diet and Health on the Central Plain of China during the Neolithic and Bronze Age, Kate Pechenkina 3. The Bronze Age before the Zhou Dynasty, Robert Bagley 4. The Western Zhou State, Li Feng 5. The Age of Territorial Lords, Chen Shen 6. The Qin Dynasty, Charles Sanft 7. The Former Han Empire, Vincent S. Leung 8. The Latter Han Empire and the End of Antiquity, Wicky W.K. Tse Part II: Topical Studies 9. The Old Chinese Language, Axel Schuessler 10. Writing, Luo Xinhui; tr. Zachary Hershey and Paul R. Goldin 11. The Spirit World, Jue Guo 12. Religious Thought, Ori Tavor 13. Political Thought, Yuri Pines 14. Food and Agriculture, Roel Sterckx 15. Warfare, Wicky W.K. Tse 16. Currency, François Thierry 17. Women in Early China: Views from the Archaeological Record, Anne Behnke Kinney 18. An Overview of the Qin-Han Legal System from the Perspective of Recently Unearthed Documents, Kyung-ho Kim and Ming-chiu Lai 19. Literature, Stephen Durrant 20. Art, Wang Haicheng 21. "Medicine" in Early China, Miranda Brown 22. Mathematics, Karine Chemla
Editors: Mu-chou Poo, H. A. Drake, and Lisa Raphals Publisher: Oxford University Press Publication Date: June 2017
Abstract: In the first century of the Common Era, two new belief systems entered long-established cultures with radically different outlooks and values: missionaries started to spread the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth in Rome and the Buddha in China. Rome and China were not only ancient cultures, but also cultures whose elites felt no need to receive the new beliefs. Yet a few centuries later the two new faiths had become so well-established that their names were virtually synonymous with the polities they had entered as strangers. Although there have been numerous studies addressing this phenomenon in each field, the difficulty of mastering the languages and literature of these two great cultures has prevented any sustained effort to compare the two influential religious traditions at their initial period of development. This book brings together specialists in the history and religion of Rome and China with a twofold aim. First, it aims to show in some detail the similarities and differences each religion encountered in the process of merging into a new cultural environment. Second, by juxtaposing the familiar with the foreign, it also aims to capture aspects of this process that could otherwise be overlooked. This approach is based on the general proposition that, when a new religious belief begins to make contact with a society that has already had long honored beliefs, certain areas of contention will inevitably ensue and changes on both sides have to take place. There will be a dynamic interchange between the old and the new, not only on the narrowly defined level of "belief," but also on the entire cultural body that nurtures these beliefs. Thus, this book aims to reassess the nature of each of these religions, not as unique cultural phenomena but as part of the whole cultural dynamics of human societies.
Editors: Martin Kern, and Dirk Meyer Publisher: Brill Publication Date: May 2017
Abstract: Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy is the first book in any Western language to explore the composition, language, thought, and early history of the Shangshu (Classic of Documents), one of the pillars of the Chinese textual, intellectual, and political tradition. In examining the text from multiple disciplinary and intellectual perspectives, Origins of Chinese Political Philosophy challenges the traditional accounts of the nature and formation of the Shangshu and its individual chapters. As it analyzes in detail the central ideas and precepts given voice in the text, it further recasts the Shangshu as a collection of dynamic cultural products that expressed and shaped the political and intellectual discourses of different times and communities.
Table of Contents: Introduction 1 Martin Kern and Dirk Meyer 1 Language and the Ideology of Kingship in the “Canon of Yao 堯典” 23 Martin Kern 2 Competing Voices in the Shangshu 62 Kai Vogelsang 3 Recontextualization and Memory Production: Debates on Rulership as Reconstructed from “Gu ming” 顧命 106 Dirk Meyer
Editor: Michael Szonyi Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publication Date: January 2017
Abstract: A Companion to Chinese History presents a collection of essays offering a comprehensive overview of the latest intellectual developments in the study of China’s history from the ancient past up until the present day.
Table of Contents: Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements 1. Introduction Michael Szonyi Section I: States of the Field 2. How Do We Know What We Know About Chinese History? Endymion Wilkinson 3. Chinese History in China: The State of the Field (1980s-2010s) May-bo Ching 4. Chinese History in Japan: The State of the Field Shiba Yoshinobu 5. Chinese History in Europe: The State of the Field Harriet Zurndorfer 6. Chinese History in the Era of the China Dream Geremie R Barmé and Michael Szonyi 7. Chinese History in World History Gregory Blue Section II Chronology 8. Early China in Eurasian History Michael Puett 9. Was Medieval China Medieval? (Post-Han to Mid-Tang) Charles Holcombe 10. A Tang-Song Turning Point Nicolas Tacket 11. Periods of Non-Chinese (or Non-Han) Rule Michal Biran 12. Song to Qing: Late Imperial or Early Modern? R. Kent Guy 13. Nineteenth-Century China: The Evolution of American Historical Approaches Paul A. Cohen 14. Republican History Janet Y. Chen 15. Rethinking the History of Maoist China S.A. Smith 16. The Reform Era as History Timothy Cheek Section III Themes and Approaches 17. Women, Gender, the Family and Sexuality Weijing Lu 18. History of Premodern Chinese Literature Graham Sanders 19. Modern Chinese Literature David Der-wei Wang 20. The Environmental History of China: Past, Present, and Future Peter C. Perdue 21. Science, Technology, and Medicine Carla Nappi 22. Legal History William P. Alford and Eric T. Schluessel 23. Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity in the Study of Modern China Thomas S. Mullaney 24. The Religious Core of Local Social Organization Barend ter Haar 25. Beyond the Great Divergence: Current Scholarship on the Economic History of Premodern China Richard von Glahn 26. Taiwan: Margin, Center, Node Shelley Rigger 27. Chinese Migrations Henry S.N. Yu 28. China in the World: Beyond the Tribute System John E. Wills, Jr. Glossary Index