HIST 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Dynastic Cycle, Analects, Feudalism
Document Summary
First exam is on friday, september 11, 2015! Historians of china tend to organize china"s history in terms of dynasties. The concept behind this classi cation is the dynastic cycle. A new dynasty comes to power in the midst of crisis (civil war, invaders, peasant rebellion, etc. ) and establish themselves on the throne as the emperor of. The new family will do very well at rst, but down the line when we are far away from the original reason why the gained power, they lose it. Early in it"s history, china was one of those river civilizations (the yellow river). The rst dynasty that we know about is the shang dynasty. The shang emperors had so much authority placed on them because people believed that the emperor was hugely important as a middle man between them and the heavens. The emperors depended on feudalism to govern their people.
