Son of Heaven and Heavenly Qaghan

Son of Heaven and Heavenly Qaghan PDF Author: Yihong Pan
Publisher: Center for East Asian Studies Western Washington
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description

Son of Heaven and Heavenly Qaghan

Son of Heaven and Heavenly Qaghan PDF Author: Yihong Pan
Publisher: Center for East Asian Studies Western Washington
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description


The Eastern Frontier

The Eastern Frontier PDF Author: Robert Haug
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 178831722X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
Transoxania, Khurasan, and ?ukharistan – which comprise large parts of today's Central Asia – have long been an important frontier zone. In the late antique and early medieval periods, the region was both an eastern political boundary for Persian and Islamic empires and a cultural border separating communities of sedentary farmers from pastoral-nomads. Given its peripheral location, the history of the 'eastern frontier' in this period has often been shown through the lens of expanding empires. However, in this book, Robert Haug argues for a pre-modern Central Asia with a discrete identity, a region that is not just a transitory space or the far-flung corner of empires, but its own historical entity. From this locally specific perspective, the book takes the reader on a 900-year tour of the area, from Sasanian control, through the Umayyads and Abbasids, to the quasi-independent dynasties of the Tahirids and the Samanids. Drawing on an impressive array of literary, numismatic and archaeological sources, Haug reveals the unique and varied challenges the eastern frontier presented to imperial powers that strove to integrate the area into their greater systems. This is essential reading for all scholars working on early Islamic, Iranian and Central Asian history, as well as those with an interest in the dynamics of frontier regions.

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.

The Rebel Den of Nung Trí Cao

The Rebel Den of Nung Trí Cao PDF Author: James A. Anderson
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295800771
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
The Rebel Den of Nung Tri Cao examines the rebellion of the eleventh-century Tai chieftain Nung Tri Cao (ca. 1025-1055), whose struggle for independence along Vietnam's mountainous northern frontier was a pivotal event in Sino-Vietnamese relations. Tri Cao's revolt occurred during Vietnam's earliest years of independence from China and would prove to be a vital test of the Vietnamese court's ability to confront local political challenges and maintain harmony with its powerful northern neighbor. Tri Cao established his first kingdom in 1042, at the age of seventeen, but was captured by Vietnamese troops. After his release in 1048, he announced the founding of a second kingdom, but an attack by Vietnamese forces drove him to flee into Chinese territory. Tri Cao made his final attempt in 1052, proclaiming a new kingdom and leading thousands of his subjects in a revolt that swept across the South China coast. But within a year, Chinese imperial troops had forced him to flee to the nearest independent kingdom. Official Chinese and Vietnamese accounts of the rebel leader's end vary: according to the Chinese, the ruler of the independent kingdom had Tri Cao executed, but in popular accounts, Tri Cao was granted safe passage into northern Thailand, where his descendants are said to flourish today. Scholar James Anderson places Tri Cao in context by exploring the Sino-Vietnamese tributary relationship and the conflicts that engaged both the Song and Vietnamese courts. The Rebel Den of Nung Tri Cao reconstructs the series of negotiations that took place between border communities and representatives of the imperial courts, examining the ways in which Tai and other ethnic groups deftly navigated the unstable political situation that followed the demise of China's cosmopolitan Tang dynasty. Though his rebellion was ill-fated, Tri Cao is, almost a thousand years later, still worshipped in temples along the Sino-Vietnamese border, and his memory provides a point of unity for people who have become separated by modern political boundaries.

Day of Empire

Day of Empire PDF Author: Amy Chua
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307472450
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
In this sweeping history, bestselling author Amy Chua explains how globally dominant empires—or hyperpowers—rise and why they fall. In a series of brilliant chapter-length studies, she examines the most powerful cultures in history—from the ancient empires of Persia and China to the recent global empires of England and the United States—and reveals the reasons behind their success, as well as the roots of their ultimate demise. Chua's analysis uncovers a fascinating historical pattern: while policies of tolerance and assimilation toward conquered peoples are essential for an empire to succeed, the multicultural society that results introduces new tensions and instabilities, threatening to pull the empire apart from within. What this means for the United States' uncertain future is the subject of Chua's provocative and surprising conclusion.

Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity

Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity PDF Author: Nicola Di Cosmo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108548105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity offers an integrated picture of Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppes during a formative period of world history. In the half millennium between 250 and 750 CE, settled empires underwent deep structural changes, while various nomadic peoples of the steppes (Huns, Avars, Turks, and others) experienced significant interactions and movements that changed their societies, cultures, and economies. This was a transformational era, a time when Roman, Persian, and Chinese monarchs were mutually aware of court practices, and when Christians and Buddhists criss-crossed the Eurasian lands together with merchants and armies. It was a time of greater circulation of ideas as well as material goods. This volume provides a conceptual frame for locating these developments in the same space and time. Without arguing for uniformity, it illuminates the interconnections and networks that tied countless local cultural expressions to far-reaching inter-regional ones.

The Poetics of Sovereignty

The Poetics of Sovereignty PDF Author: Jack W. Chen
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684170559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Emperor Taizong (r. 626–49) of the Tang is remembered as an exemplary ruler. This study addresses that aura of virtuous sovereignty and Taizong’s construction of a reputation for moral rulership through his own literary writings—with particular attention to his poetry. The author highlights the relationship between historiography and the literary and rhetorical strategies of sovereignty, contending that, for Taizong, and for the concept of sovereignty in general, politics is inextricable from cultural production. The work focuses on Taizong’s literary writings that speak directly to the relationship between cultural form and sovereign power, as well as on the question of how the Tang negotiated dynastic identity through literary stylistics. The author maintains that Taizong’s writings may have been self-serving at times, representing strategic attempts to control his self-image in the eyes of his court and empire, but that they also become the ideal image to which his self was normatively bound. This is the paradox at the heart of imperial authorship: Taizong was simultaneously the author of his representation and was authored by his representation; he was both subject and object of his writings.

Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women, Volume II

Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women, Volume II PDF Author: Lily Xiao Hong Lee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317515617
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 764

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Book Description
This volume of the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women completes the four-volume project and contains more than 400 biographies of women active in the Tang through Ming dynasties (618-1644). Many of the entries are the result of original research and provide the only substantial information on women available in English. Of note is the inclusion of a large number of women who reached positions of authority during this period as well as women artists and writers, especially poets, during this period of increased female literacy and more liberal social attitudes to women's cultural roles. Wherever possible, entries incorporate translations of poems and sometimes prose works so as to let the women speak for themselves. The book also includes a multitude of entertainers and actresses. The volume includes a Guide to Chinese Words Used, a Chronology of Dynasties and Major Rulers, a Finding List by Background or Fields of Endeavor, and a Glossary of Chinese Names. It will prove to be a useful tool for research and teaching.

Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires

Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires PDF Author: Jeroen Duindam
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004206221
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
This volume presents new research on royal courts from antiquity to the modern world, from Asia to Europe. It addresses the interactions of rulers and and elites at court, as well as the multiple connections between court, capital, and realm.

Central Asia in World History

Central Asia in World History PDF Author: Peter B. Golden
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019972203X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
A vast region stretching roughly from the Volga River to Manchuria and the northern Chinese borderlands, Central Asia has been called the "pivot of history," a land where nomadic invaders and Silk Road traders changed the destinies of states that ringed its borders, including pre-modern Europe, the Middle East, and China. In Central Asia in World History, Peter B. Golden provides an engaging account of this important region, ranging from prehistory to the present, focusing largely on the unique melting pot of cultures that this region has produced over millennia. Golden describes the traders who braved the heat and cold along caravan routes to link East Asia and Europe; the Mongol Empire of Chinggis Khan and his successors, the largest contiguous land empire in history; the invention of gunpowder, which allowed the great sedentary empires to overcome the horse-based nomads; the power struggles of Russia and China, and later Russia and Britain, for control of the area. Finally, he discusses the region today, a key area that neighbors such geopolitical hot spots as Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China.