Download or read book Legal Practice in the Formative Stages of the Chinese Empire written by Ulrich Lau and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-05-09 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Legal Practice in the Formative Stages of the Chinese Empire, Ulrich Lau and Thies Staack offer a richly annotated English translation of the Wei yu deng zhuang si zhong 爲獄等狀四種, a collection of criminal case records from the pre-imperial state of Qin (dating from 246 BC–222 BC) that is part of the manuscripts in the possession of Yuelu Academy. Through an analysis of the collection and a comparison with similar manuscript finds from the Qin and Han periods, the authors shed new light on many aspects of the Qin administration of justice, e.g. criminal investigation, stages of criminal procedure, principles for determining punishment, and interaction of judicial officials on different administrative levels.
Download or read book Handbook of Ancient Afro Eurasian Economies written by Sitta von Reden and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-12-20 with total page 1131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume of the Handbook describes different extractive economies in the world regions that have been outlined in the first volume. A wide range of economic actors – from kings and armies to cities and producers – are discussed within different imperial settings as well as the tools, which enabled and constrained economic outcomes. A central focus are nodes of consumption that are visible in the archaeological and textual records of royal capitals, cities, religious centers, and armies that were stationed, in some cases permanently, in imperial frontier zones. Complementary to the multipolar concentrations of consumption are the fiscal-tributary structures of the empires vis-à-vis other institutions that had the capacity to extract, mobilize, and concentrate resources and wealth. Larger volumes of state-issued coinage in various metals show the new role of coinage in taxation, local economic activities, and social practices, even where textual evidence is absent. Given the overwhelming importance of agriculture, the volume also analyses forms of agrarian development, especially around cities and in imperial frontier zones. Special consideration is given to road- and water-management systems for which there is now sufficient archaeological and documentary evidence to enable cross-disciplinary comparative research.
Download or read book State Power and Governance in Early Imperial China written by Chun Fung Tong and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2024-09-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: State Power and Governance in Early Imperial China delves into the governance and capacity of the state by providing an empirical historical study of the collapse of China's Qin Empire. In contrast to the popular view that the Qin fell suddenly and dramatically, this book argues that the collapse was rooted in persistent structural problems of the empire, including the serious resource shortages experienced by local governments, inefficient communication between administrative units, and social tensions in the new territories. Rather than reducing Qin rulers to heartless villains who refused to adjust their policies and statecraft, this book focuses on the changes that the regime did make to meet these challenges. It reveals the various measures that Qin rulers devised to solve these problems, even if they were ultimately to no avail. The paradox of the Qin Empire seemed to be that, although the regime's policies and reforms could theoretically have strengthened the state's power and improved the governance of the empire, their ramifications simultaneously exacerbated the misfunction of local governments and triggered the military failures that eventually destroyed the empire.
Download or read book The Imperial Network in Ancient China written by Maxim Korolkov and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the emergence of imperial state in East Asia during the period ca. 400 BCE–200 CE as a network-based process, showing how the geography of early interregional contacts south of the Yangzi River informed the directions of Sinitic state expansion. Drawing from an extensive collection of sources including transmitted textual records, archaeological evidence, excavated legal manuscripts, and archival documents from Liye, this book demonstrates the breadth of human and material resources available to the empire builders of an early imperial network throughout southern East Asia – from institutions and infrastructures, to the relationships that facilitated circulation. This network is shown to have been essential to the consolidation of Sinitic imperial rule in the sub-tropical zone south of the Yangzi against formidable environmental, epidemiological, and logistical odds. This is also the first study to explore how the interplay between an imperial network and alternative frameworks of long-distance interaction in ancient East Asia shaped the political-economic trajectory of the Sinitic world and its involvement in Eurasian globalization. Contributing to debates around imperial state formation, the applicability of world-system models and the comparative study of empires, The Imperial Network in Ancient China will be of significant interest to students and scholars of East Asian studies, archaeology and history.
Download or read book The King s Harvest written by Brian Lander and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A multidisciplinary environmental history of early China’s political systems, featuring newly available Chinese archaeological data This book is a multidisciplinary study of the ecology of China’s early political systems up to the fall of the first empire in 207 BCE. Brian Lander traces the formation of lowland North China’s agricultural systems and the transformation of its plains from diverse forestland and steppes to farmland. He argues that the growth of states in ancient China, and elsewhere, was based on their ability to exploit the labor and resources of those who harnessed photosynthetic energy from domesticated plants and animals. Focusing on the state of Qin, Lander amalgamates abundant new scientific, archaeological, and excavated documentary sources to argue that the human domination of the central Yellow River region, and the rest of the planet, was made possible by the development of complex political structures that managed and expanded agroecosystems.
Download or read book Writing Chinese Laws written by Ernest Caldwell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-23 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legal institutions of the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 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. First, 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. Writing Chinese Laws will be useful to students and scholars of Chinese Studies, as well as Asian law and history more generally.
Download or read book Violence and the Rise of Centralized States in East Asia written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-31 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Violence, both physical and nonphysical, is central to any society, but it is a version of the problem that it claims to solve. This Element examines how states in ancient East Asia, from the late Shang through the end of the Han dynasty, wielded violence to create and display authority, and also how their licit violence was entangled in the 'savage' or 'criminal' violence whose suppression justified their power. The East Asian cases are supplemented through citing comparable Western ones. The themes examined include the emergence of the warrior as a human type, the overlap of hunts and combat (and the overlap between treatments of alien species and alien peoples), sacrifice of both alien captives and 'death attendants' from one's own groups, the impact of military specialization and the increased scale of armies, the emergent ideal of self-sacrifice, and the diverse aspects of violence in the regime of law.
Download or read book The Construction of Guilt in China written by Yu Mou and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on insights from the author's own empirical data obtained from systematic observation of the daily routines within Chinese criminal justice institutions, this ground-breaking book examines the functional deficiency of the criminal justice system in preventing innocent individuals from being wrongly accused and convicted. Set within a broad socio-legal context, it outlines the strategic interrelationships between key legal actors, the deep-seated legal culture embedded in practice, the deficiency of integrity of the system and the structural injustices that follow. The author traces criminal case files in the criminal process – how they are constructed, scrutinised and used to dispose of cases and convict defendants in lieu of witnesses' oral testimony. This book illustrates that the Chinese criminal justice system as a state apparatus of social control has been framed through performance indicators, bureaucratic management and the central value of collectivism in such a way as to maintain the stability of the authoritarian power. The Construction of Guilt in China will appeal to academics, researchers, policy advisers and practitioners working in the areas of criminal law, comparative criminal justice, criminology and Chinese studies. Winner of the 2020 SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship.
Download or read book Handbook of Ancient Afro Eurasian Economies written by Sitta Reden and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 954 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of the “Silk Road” that the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen invented in the 19th century has lost attraction to scholars in light of large amounts of new evidence and new approaches. The handbook suggests new conceptual and methodological tools for researching ancient economic exchange in a global perspective with a strong focus on recent debates on the nature of pre-modern empires. The interdisciplinary team of Chinese, Indian and Graeco-Roman historians, archaeologists and anthropologists that has written this handbook compares different forms of economic development in agrarian and steppe regions in a period of accelerated empire formation during 300 BCE and 300 CE. It investigates inter-imperial zones and networks of exchange which were crucial for ancient Eurasian connections. Volume I provides a comparative history of the most important empires forming in Northern Africa, Europe and Asia between 300 BCE and 300 CE. It surveys a wide range of evidence that can be brought to bear on economic development in the these empires, and takes stock of the ways academic traditions have shaped different understandings of economic and imperial development as well as Silk-Road exchange in Russia, China, India and Western Graeco-Roman history.
Download or read book Honor and Shame in Early China written by Mark Edward Lewis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lewis sheds new light on the early Chinese empires through an ambitious examination of evolving ideas about honor and shame.
Download or read book The Story of China written by Michael Wood and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A single volume history of China, offering a look into the past of the global superpower and its significance today. Michael Wood has travelled the length and breadth of China, the world’s oldest civilization and longest lasting state, to tell a thrilling story of intense drama, fabulous creativity, and deep humanity that stretches back thousands of years. After a century and a half of foreign invasion, civil war, and revolution, China has once again returned to center stage as a global superpower and the world’s second largest economy. But how did it become so dominant? Wood argues that in order to comprehend the great significance of China today, we must begin with its history. The Story of China takes a fresh look at the Middle Kingdom in the light of the recent massive changes inside the country. Taking into account exciting new archeological discoveries, the book begins with China’s prehistory—the early dynasties, the origins of the Chinese state, and the roots of Chinese culture in the age of Confucius. Wood looks at particular periods and themes that are now being reevaluated by historians, such as the renaissance of the Song with its brilliant scientific discoveries. He paints a vibrant picture of the Qing Empire in the 18th century, just before the European impact, a time when China’s rich and diverse culture was at its height. Then, Wood explores the encounter with the West, the Opium Wars, the clashes with the British, and the extraordinarily rich debates in the late 19th century that pushed China along the path to modernity. Finally, he provides a clear up-to-date account of post-1949 China, including revelations about the 1989 crisis based on newly leaked inside documents, and fresh insights into the new order of President Xi Jinping. All woven together with landscape history and the author’s own travel journals, The Story of China is the indispensable book about the most intriguing and powerful country on the world stage today.
Download or read book Rulers and Ruled in Ancient Greece Rome and China written by Hans Beck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Situated on opposite flanks of Eurasia, ancient Mediterranean and Han-Chinese societies had a hazy understanding of each other's existence. But they had no grounded knowledge about one another, nor was there any form of direct interaction. In other words, their historical trajectories were independent. In recent years, however, many similarities between both cultures have been detected, which has energized the field of comparative history. The present volume adds to the debate a creative method of juxtaposing historical societies. Each contribution covers both ancient China and the Mediterranean in an accessible manner. Embarking from the observation that Greek, Roman, and Han-Chinese societies were governed by comparable features, the contributors to this volume explain the dynamic interplay between political rulers and the ruled masses in their culture specific manifestation as demos (Greece), populus (Rome) and min (China).
Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Early Chinese History written by Paul R. Goldin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 726 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of early China has been radically transformed over the past fifty years by archaeological discoveries, including both textual and non-textual artefacts. Excavations of settlements and tombs have demonstrated that most people did not lead their lives in accordance with ritual canons, while previously unknown documents have shown that most received histories were written retrospectively by victors and present a correspondingly anachronistic perspective. This handbook provides an authoritative survey of the major periods of Chinese history from the Neolithic era to the fall of the Latter Han Empire and the end of antiquity (AD 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 periods, such as: Warfare and political thought Cities and agriculture Language and art Medicine and mathematics Providing a detailed analysis of the most up-to-date research by leading scholars in the field of early Chinese history, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Chinese history, Asian archaeology, and Chinese studies in general.
Download or read book Fakes and Forgeries of Written Artefacts from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern China written by Cécile Michel and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-11-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fakes and forgeries are objects of fascination. This volume contains a series of thirteen articles devoted to fakes and forgeries of written artefacts from the beginnings of writing in Mesopotamia to modern China. The studies emphasise the subtle distinctions conveyed by an established vocabulary relating to the reproduction of ancient artefacts and production of artefacts claiming to be ancient: from copies, replicas and imitations to fakes and forgeries. Fakes are often a response to a demand from the public or scholarly milieu, or even both. The motives behind their production may be economic, political, religious or personal – aspiring to fame or simply playing a joke. Fakes may be revealed by combining the study of their contents, codicological, epigraphic and palaeographic analyses, and scientific investigations. However, certain famous unsolved cases still continue to defy technology today, no matter how advanced it is. Nowadays, one can find fakes in museums and private collections alike; they abound on the antique market, mixed with real artefacts that have often been looted. The scientific community’s attitude to such objects calls for ethical reflection.
Download or read book Between Command and Market written by Elisa Levi Sabattini and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-12-20 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deeply researched and thought-provoking set of essays on a sorely-neglected topic in Chinese economic, intellectual, and political history.
Download or read book Manuscripts and Archives written by Alessandro Bausi and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archives are considered to be collections of administrative, legal, commercial and other records or the actual place where they are located. They have become ubiquitous in the modern world, but emerged not much later than the invention of writing. Following Foucault, who first used the word archive in a metaphorical sense as "the general system of the formation and transformation of statements" in his "Archaeology of Knowledge" (1969), postmodern theorists have tried to exploit the potential of this concept and initiated the "archival turn". In recent years, however, archives have attracted the attention of anthropologists and historians of different denominations regarding them as historical objects and "grounding" them again in real institutions. The papers in this volume explore the complex topic of the archive in a historical, systematic and comparative context and view it in the broader context of manuscript cultures by addressing questions like how, by whom and for which purpose were archival records produced, and if they differ from literary manuscripts regarding materials, formats, and producers (scribes).
Download or read book Dao Companion to China s fa Tradition written by Yuri Pines and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 686 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
