Download or read book A Tale of Two Melons written by Sarah Schneewind and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2006-09-14 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A commoner's presentation to the emperor of a lucky omen from his garden, the repercussions for his family, and several retellings of the incident provide the background for an engaging introduction to Ming society, culture, and politics, including discussions of the founding of the Ming dynasty; the character of the first emperor; the role of omens in court politics; how the central and local governments were structured, including the civil service examination system; the power of local elite families; the roles of women; filial piety; and the concept of ling or efficacy in Chinese religion.
Download or read book Melon written by Sylvia Lovegren and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sweet, succulent, cooling, and often with a beguiling floral fragrance, a ripe melon can be one of the most delicious things you sink your teeth into. As Sylvia Lovegren shows in this book, the melon’s complex flavor profile is matched by an equally complex history. Cutting into the melon’s past, she takes us on a whirlwind trip around the world, from the sandy stretches of the Kalahari desert to the ancient kingdom of Ur in Mesopotamia, from the exotic oases of the Silk Road to Jesuit outposts in northern Canada, from slave plantations in Brazil to Japanese farms—where perfect melons are grown in glass boxes and sold at exorbitant prices. Along the way, Lovegren details the impact the melon has had on humankind. Moving from ancient and medieval medical recipes to folk tales, stories, growing contests, and genetics, she explores the diverse ways we have cultivated, enjoyed, and sometimes even feared this fruit. She explores how we have improved modern melons over centuries of breeding, and how some growers and scientists today are trying to preserve and even revive ancient melon strains. Richly illustrated and with a host of ancient, medieval, and modern recipes, Melon is a delightful look at the surprising history of one of the world’s most sumptuous fruits.
Download or read book The Magic Melon written by Rosie Dickens and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dynasties written by Jeroen Duindam and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vibrant and broad-ranging study of dynastic power in the late medieval and early modern world.
Download or read book Ming China 1368 1644 written by John W. Dardess and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2012 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This engaging, deeply informed book provides the first concise history of one of China's most important eras. Leading scholar John W. Dardess offers a thematically organized political, social, and economic exploration of China from 1368 to 1644. He examines how the Ming dynasty was able to endure for 276 years, illuminating Ming foreign relations and border control, the lives and careers of its sixteen emperors, its system of governance and the kinds of people who served it, its great class of literati, and finally the mass outlawry that, in unhappy conjunction with the Manchu invasions from outside, ended the once-mighty dynasty in the mid-seventeenth century. The Ming witnessed the beginning of China's contact with the West, and its story will fascinate all readers interested in global as well as Asian history.
Download or read book A Tale of Two Oceans written by Ezekiel I. Barra and published by . This book was released on 1893 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Oxford World History of Empire written by Peter Fibiger Bang and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-02 with total page 1449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first world history of empire, reaching from the third millennium BCE to the present. By combining synthetic surveys, thematic comparative essays, and numerous chapters on specific empires, its two volumes provide unparalleled coverage of imperialism throughout history and across continents, from Asia to Europe and from Africa to the Americas. Only a few decades ago empire was believed to be a thing of the past; now it is clear that it has been and remains one of the most enduring forms of political organization and power. We cannot understand the dynamics and resilience of empire without moving decisively beyond the study of individual cases or particular periods, such as the relatively short age of European colonialism. The history of empire, as these volumes amply demonstrate, needs to be drawn on the much broader canvas of global history. Volume Two: The History of Empires tracks the protean history of political domination from the very beginnings of state formation in the Bronze Age up to the present. Case studies deal with the full range of the historical experience of empire, from the realms of the Achaemenids and Asoka to the empires of Mali and Songhay, and from ancient Rome and China to the Mughals, American settler colonialism, and the Soviet Union. Forty-five chapters detailing the history of individual empires are tied together by a set of global synthesizing surveys that structure the world history of empire into eight chronological phases.
Download or read book Pepper Mountain written by Kenneth J. Hammond and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 2007. The political history of late imperial/early modern China and the relationship between China's traditional political culture and the rapidly changing political environment of China today, are examined through this study of the iconic figure of Yang Jisheng. Born in 1516, Yang had a brief and traumatic career as a junior official in the middle Ming dynasty, before being executed in 1555 for criticising the politics of the imperial state. After his death, Yang was held up as a martyr to Confucian political morality. Over the ensuing 450 years, a variety of constituencies within China have appropriated and deployed Yang's memory in different ways to promote their own political agendas. In recent years, as China has sought to come to grips with the ideological decline of socialism and the need for a new foundation for public morality, there has been a revival of interest in figures like Yang Jisheng. A series of events including the rebuilding of his ancestral shrine, the rededication of a school he founded, and the republication of his writings, show how his legacy is once again being taken up by actors on the contemporary political scene. This is an important study of the power of political myth in China, past and present.
Download or read book Martial Spectacles of the Ming Court written by David M. Robinson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like most empires, the Ming court sponsored grand displays of dynastic strength and military prowess. Covering the first two centuries of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Martial Spectacles of the Ming Court explores how the royal hunt, polo matches, archery contests, equestrian demonstrations, and the imperial menagerie were represented in poetry, prose, and portraiture. This study reveals that martial spectacles were highly charged sites of contestation, where Ming emperors and senior court ministers staked claims about rulership, ruler-minister relations, and the role of the military in the polity. Simultaneously colorful entertainment, prestigious social events, and statements of power, martial spectacles were intended to make manifest the ruler’s personal generosity, keen discernment, and respect for family tradition. They were, however, subject to competing interpretations that were often beyond the emperor’s control or even knowledge. By situating Ming martial spectacles in the wider context of Eurasia, David Robinson brings to light the commensurability of the Ming court with both the Mongols and Manchus but more broadly with other early modern courts such as the Timurids, the Mughals, and the Ottomans.
Download or read book The Rise of the Mongols written by and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-06 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rise of the Mongols offers readers a selection of five important works that detail the rise of the Mongol Empire through Chinese eyes. Three of these works were written by officials of South China's Southern Song dynasty and two are from officials from North China writing in the service of the Mongol rulers. Together, these accounts offer a view of the early Mongol Empire very different not just from those of Muslim and Christian travelers and chroniclers, but also from the Mongol tradition embodied in The Secret History of Mongols. The five Chinese source texts (in English translation, each with their own preface): Selections from Random Notes from Court and Country since the Jianyan Years, vol.2, by Li Xinchuan"A Memorandum on the Mong-Tatars," by Zhao Gong"A Sketch of the Black Tatars," by Peng Daya and Xu Ting"Spirit-Path Stele for His Honor Yelü, Director of the Secretariat," by Song Zizhen"Notes on a Journey," by Zhang Dehui Also included are an introduction, index, bibliography, and appendices covering notes on the texts, tables and charts, and a glossary of Chinese and transcribed terms.
Download or read book How Mongolia Matters War Law and Society written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers pioneering studies of the Mongolians and other Inner Asian peoples. Their roles in history, as well as in modern times, are evaluated. These interpretations reveal their importance in military, legal, and political changes in traditional and modern times.
Download or read book Death Rituals and Politics in Northern Song China written by Mihwa Choi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In traditional China, a funeral and the accompanying death rituals represented a critical moment for the immediate family of the deceased to show their filial piety, a core value of the society. At the same time, death rituals were social occasions, and channels for the outward demonstration of belief in a religiously pluralistic society. During the Northern Song period, however, death rituals increasingly became an arena for political contention as attempts were made to transform these practices from a private matter into one subject to state control. Death Rituals and Politics in Northern Song China examines how political confrontations over the proper conduct of death rituals during Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) inaugurated a period of Confucian revivalism. Mihwa Choi interprets Northern Song court politics, family ritual practices, burial practices, and the popular imagination of the afterlife as sites of contest between groups of varying social status, political vision, and religious belief. She demonstrates that the oversight of ritual affairs by scholar-officials helped them gain the political upper hand they sought, and, more broadly, fostered a revival of Confucianism as the dominant value system of Chinese society in the period that followed.
Download or read book Technology Gender and History in Imperial China written by Francesca Bray and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-19 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can the history of technology contribute to our understanding of late imperial China? Most stories about technology in pre-modern China follow a well-worn plot: in about 1400 after an early ferment of creativity that made it the most technologically sophisticated civilisation in the world, China entered an era of technical lethargy and decline. But how are we to reconcile this tale, which portrays China in the Ming and Qing dynasties as a dying giant that had outgrown its own strength, with the wealth of counterevidence affirming that the country remained rich, vigorous and powerful at least until the end of the eighteenth century? Does this seeming contradiction mean that the stagnation story is simply wrong, or perhaps that technology was irrelevant to how imperial society worked? Or does it imply that historians of technology should ask better questions about what technology was, what it did and what it meant in pre-modern societies like late imperial China? In this book, Francesca Bray explores subjects such as technology and ethics, technology and gendered subjectivities (both female and male), and technology and statecraft to illuminate how material settings and practices shaped topographies of everyday experience and ideologies of government, techniques of the self and technologies of the subject. Examining technologies ranging from ploughing and weaving to drawing pictures, building a house, prescribing medicine or composing a text, this book offers a rich insight into the interplay between the micro- and macro-politics of everyday life and the workings of governmentality in late imperial China, showing that gender principles were woven into the very fabric of empire, from cosmology and ideologies of rule to the material foundations of the state and the everyday practices of the domestic sphere. This authoritative text will be welcomed by students and scholars of Chinese history, as well as those working on global history and the histories of gender, technology and agriculture. Furthermore, it will be of great use to those interested in social and cultural anthropology and material culture.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Confucianism written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-03 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A vast and complex tradition foundational to East Asian civilizations, Confucianism continues to be a cultural force of global significance. The Oxford Handbook of Confucianism is a collection of 38 essays that explore the variety, complexity, and richness of Confucianism over time and across regions. These essays are written to be of value to the educated public while presenting new scholarship and fresh perspectives from leading scholars in Confucian studies. Using a range of critical approaches, the volume is divided into four parts. Confucianism presents unique problems to study and interpretation, and the introductory section offers three essays exploring the history and criticism of East Asian and Western constructions of the tradition. The bulk of the volume's essays are divided into three parts. The first part considers Confucianism's development within the Chinese context, centering on historical moments, key figures, and formative texts. The second part analyzes the development, impact, and reach of Confucianism in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, and "Boston" Confucianism. The final part offers topical studies of the impact of Confucianism in culture, politics and government, social structures, and ideology, exploring topics as wide-ranging as family, social structure, gender, visual and literary arts, government, ethics, religion, and ritual. Expansive in scope and sophisticated in approach, the Oxford Handbook of Confucianism presents a superb resource for study of this ancient, and still vibrant tradition"--
Download or read book Laws of the Land written by Tristan G. Brown and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-12-05 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking history of fengshui’s roles in public life and law during China’s last imperial dynasty Today the term fengshui, which literally means “wind and water,” is recognized around the world. Yet few know exactly what it means, let alone its fascinating history. In Laws of the Land, Tristan Brown tells the story of the important roles—especially legal ones—played by fengshui in Chinese society during China’s last imperial dynasty, the Manchu Qing (1644–1912). Employing archives from Mainland China and Taiwan that have only recently become available, this is the first book to document fengshui’s invocations in Chinese law during the Qing dynasty. Facing a growing population, dwindling natural resources, and an overburdened rural government, judicial administrators across China grappled with disputes and petitions about fengshui in their efforts to sustain forestry, farming, mining, and city planning. Laws of the Land offers a radically new interpretation of these legal arrangements: they worked. An intelligent, considered, and sustained engagement with fengshui on the ground helped the imperial state keep the peace and maintain its legitimacy, especially during the increasingly turbulent decades of the nineteenth century. As the century came to an end, contentious debates over industrialization swept across the bureaucracy, with fengshui invoked by officials and scholars opposed to the establishment of railways, telegraphs, and foreign-owned mines. Demonstrating that the only way to understand those debates and their profound stakes is to grasp fengshui’s longstanding roles in Chinese public life, Laws of the Land rethinks key issues in the history of Chinese law, politics, science, religion, and economics.
Download or read book Shrines to Living Men in the Ming Political Cosmos written by Sarah Schneewind and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: """Shrines to Living Men in the Ming Political Cosmos"", the first book focusing on premortem shrines in any era of Chinese history, places the institution at the intersection of politics and religion. When a local official left his post, grateful subjects housed an image of him in a temple, requiting his grace: that was the ideal model. By Ming times, the “living shrine” was legal, old, and justified by readings of the classics.Sarah Schneewind argues that the institution could invite and pressure officials to serve local interests; the policies that had earned a man commemoration were carved into stone beside the shrine. Since everyone recognized that elite men might honor living officials just to further their own careers, premortem shrine rhetoric stressed the role of commoners, who embraced the opportunity by initiating many living shrines. This legitimate, institutionalized political voice for commoners expands a scholarly understanding of “public opinion” in late imperial China, aligning it with the efficacy of deities to create a nascent political conception Schneewind calls the “minor Mandate of Heaven.” Her exploration of premortem shrine theory and practice illuminates Ming thought and politics, including the Donglin Party’s battle with eunuch dictator Wei Zhongxian and Gu Yanwu’s theories."
Download or read book Prince Pen and Sword Eurasian Perspectives written by Maaike van Berkel and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-01-22 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prince, Pen, and Sword offers a synoptic interpretation of rulers and elites in Eurasia from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century. Four core chapters zoom in on the tensions and connections at court, on the nexus between rulers and religious authority, on the status, function, and self-perceptions of military and administrative elites respectively. Two additional concise chapters provide a focused analysis of the construction of specific dynasties (the Golden Horde and the Habsburgs) and narratives of kingship found in fiction throughout Eurasia. The contributors and editors, authorities in their fields, systematically bring together specialised literature on numerous Eurasian kingdoms and empires. This book is a careful and thought-provoking experiment in the global, comparative and connected history of rulers and elites.
