Although the Manchus were not Han Chinese and were strongly resisted, especially in the south, they had assimilated a great deal of Chinese culture before conquering China Proper. Realizing that to dominate the empire they would have to do things the Chinese way, the Manchus retained many institutions of Ming and earlier Chinese derivation. They [...]
By the mid thirteenth century, the Mongols had subjugated north China, Korea, and the Muslim kingdoms of Central Asia and had twice penetrated Europe. With the resources of his vast empire, Kublai Khan ( 1215-94), a grandson of Genghis Khan ( 1167?-1227) and the supreme leader of all Mongol tribes, began his drive against the [...]
Rivalry among the Mongol imperial heirs, natural disasters, and numerous peasant uprisings led to the collapse of the Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) was founded by a Han Chinese peasant and former Buddhist monk turned rebel army leader. Having its capital first at Nanjing which means Southern Capital and later at Beijing (Northern Capital), [...]
In 960 a new power, Song (960-1279), reunified most of China Proper. The Song period divides into two phases: Northern Song (960-1127) and Southern Song (1127-1279). The division was caused by the forced abandonment of north China in 1127 by the Song court, which could not push back the nomadic invaders.
The founders of the Song [...]
The Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-907), with its capital at Chang’an is regarded by historians as a high point in Chinese civilization equal, or even superior, to the Han period. Its territory, acquired through the military exploits of its early rulers, was greater than that of the Han. Stimulated by contact with India and the Middle [...]
China was reunified in A.D. 589 by the short-lived Sui dynasty (A.D. 581-617), which has often been compared to the earlier Qin dynasty in tenure and the ruthlessness of its accomplishments. The Sui dynasty’s early demise was attributed to the government’s tyrannical demands on the people, who bore the crushing burden of taxes and compulsory [...]
The collapse of the Han dynasty was followed by nearly four centuries of rule by warlords. The age of civil wars and disunity began with the era of the Three Kingdoms (Wei, Shu, and Wu, which had overlapping reigns during the period A.D. 220-80).
In later times, fiction and drama greatly romanticized the reputed chivalry of [...]
After a short civil war, a new dynasty, called Han (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), emerged with its capital at Chang’an ( ). The new empire retained much of the Qin administrative structure but retreated a bit from centralized rule by establishing vassal principalities in some areas for the sake of political convenience. The Han rulers modified [...]
Much of what came to constitute China Proper was unified for the first time in 221 BC. In that year the western frontier state of Qin, the most aggressive of the Warring States, subjugated the last of its rival states (Qin is pronounced Ch’in, from which the English China probably derived).
Once the king of Qin [...]
The first dynasty to unite most of China under a single government was the Zhou Dynasty. In 771 B.C. Zhou’s king was killed by invading barbarians who were allied with rebel lords. The capital was moved eastward to Luoyang in present-day Henan Province. Because of this shift, historians divide the Zhou era into Western Zhou [...]
The Shang dynasty (also called the Yin () dynasty in its later stages) is believed to have been founded by a rebel leader who overthrew the last Xia ruler. Its civilization was based on agriculture, augmented by hunting and animal husbandry. Two important events of the period were the development of a writing system, as [...]
Chinese civilization, as described in mythology, begins with Pangu (), the creator of the universe and a succession of legendary sage-emperors and culture heroes among them are Huang Di, Yao, and Shun) who taught the ancient Chinese to communicate and to find sustenance, clothing, and shelter.
The first chinese civilization was established around the fertile areas [...]
