HIST 11B Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Taoism
Document Summary
Chiense was intentionally hard to learn so that it would be a language for elite men thus we know very little about people who weren t rich educated men. Covering 1000 years in 10 weeks zhou ma kan hua. During shang and zhou, written language, confucianism, daoism, and other strains of political and philosophical thought developed. Qin and han created unified empire for first time, collapsed, reunified. 3 kingdoms and jin: dark ages, political disunity, intellectual and artistic ferment. Collapse of tang was a watershed in chinese history. 5 dynasties and song (following fall of tang) constituted early modern period: emergrence of civil service exam, more pop culture, urban culture, commercialization, new elite, late imperial era, secularization. Ming was ethnically han, nativist, internal rebellion led to the manshu invasion leading to qing dynasty. Qing were a foreign power, very different, multiethnic, conquest based, created current map of. Imperial system ended with western imperialism and japanese aggression.
