Understanding Imperial China: Dynasties, Life, and Culture

284 Pages·2017·14.248 MB·English

by  Andrew R. Wilson

Topic Subtopic
History Civilization & Culture
Understanding
Imperial China
Dynasties, Life, and Culture
Course Guidebook
Professor Andrew R. Wilson
U.S. Naval War College
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Andrew R. Wilson, Ph.D.
Professor of Strategy and Policy
U.S. Naval War College
Andrew R. Wilson is a Professor of Strategy and Policy at the U.S.
Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He received a B.A. in
East Asian Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara,
and earned a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard
University with a specialization in the history of premodern and modern
China. His dissertation dealt with the Chinese merchant community in the
colonial Philippines.
Professor Biography i
Before joining the Naval War College faculty in 1998, Professor Wilson taught
introductory and advanced courses in Chinese history and the history of the
Chinese diaspora at Harvard University and Wellesley College. He has also
taught at Salve Regina University and the University of Rhode Island’s Osher
Lifelong Learning Institute.
Professor Wilson has spoken at numerous military colleges and civilian
universities across the United States and around the world. He has appeared
on HISTORY and National Public Radio and has been a guest lecturer for
One Day University and The New York Times Journeys. Professor Wilson has
lived in China, Taiwan, and the Philippines. He makes annual trips to China,
frequently accompanied by students and faculty from the Naval War College.
Professor Wilson has published numerous articles and books on Chinese
maritime history, the Chinese diaspora, Chinese military history, and the
history of maritime East Asia. He has also written about Chinese strategic
culture, contemporary Asian security, Chinese politics, and Chinese military
modernization. Professor Wilson’s books include Ambition and Identity:
Chinese Merchant-Elites in Colonial Manila, 1880–1916; The Chinese in the
Caribbean; and China’s Future Nuclear Submarine Force.
Professor Wilson’s other Great Courses are The Art of War and Masters of War:
History’s Greatest Strategic Thinkers. ■
Disclaimer
The views expressed in this course are those of the professor
and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the
U.S. Navy, the U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S.
government. The content of these lectures reflects the
professor’s efforts in his private capacity.
ii Understanding Imperial China: Dynasties, Life, and Culture
Table of Contents
Introduction
Professor Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .i
Course Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Lecture Guides
1• Opium, Trade, and War in Imperial China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2• The First Emperor’s Terracotta Warriors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3• China’s Early Golden Age: The Han Dynasty . . . . . . . . . . . .26
4• Amazing Ban Clan: Historian, Soldier, Woman . . . . . . . . . .37
5• China’s Buddhist Monks and Daoist Recluses . . . . . . . . . . .46
6• Cosmopolitan Chang’an: Tang Dynasty Capital . . . . . . . . .56
7• China’s Grand Canal: Lifeline of an Empire . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66
8• Triumph and Tragedy in Tang Poetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76
9• Life and Times of Song Dynasty Literati . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85
10• A Day’s Journey along the Qingming Scroll . . . . . . . . . . .95
11• Peasant Life on the Yellow River . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108
12• Rice, Silk, and Tea: South China’s Peasants . . . . . . . . . . . .119
Table of Contents iii
Table of Contents
13• Genghis Khan and the Rise of the Mongols . . . . . . . . . . . 130
14• The Mongols and Marco Polo in Xanadu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
15• Admiral Zheng He’s Treasure Fleet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
16• China’s Bound Feet, Brides, and Widows . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161
17• Ming Dynasty Trade and Spanish Silver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171
18• The Great Wall and Military Life in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
19• Qing Dynasty: Soul Stealers and Sedition . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
20• Emperor Qianlong Hosts a British Ambassador . . . . . .202
21• The Taiping Rebellion and Its Cult Leader . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
22• China’s Treaty Ports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .224
23• Experiencing China’s Civil Service Exams . . . . . . . . . . . .236
24• China’s Last Dynasty: Fall of the Manchus . . . . . . . . . . . .246
Supplementary Material
Annotated Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .256
Image Credits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .275
iv Understanding Imperial China: Dynasties, Life, and Culture
Understanding Imperial China:
Dynasties, Life, and Culture
This course’s lectures cover a span of history from 221 BCE to 1912 CE. That
starts with the moment Ying Zheng proclaimed himself the first emperor
of the Qin dynasty and ends with the abdication of Henry Pu Yi, the last
emperor of the Qing dynasty. The fact that we can speak of an imperial China
stretching from the time of the Roman Republic to the eve of World War I would
seem to indicate that this was an era marked more by continuity than change.
However, the economies, climates, societies, and cultures over which China’s
emperors ruled were incredibly complex, varied, and fluid. And the individuals
who populated the empire defy simplistic tropes of what it meant to be Chinese.
Rather than focusing exclusively on emperors and high officials, this course
explores a broader sweep of history by including the perspectives of imperial
subjects and of foreign visitors to the Chinese empire. The daily lives of courtesans,
convicts, wives, widows, monks, merchants, and military men reveal the diversity
and dynamism of imperial China.
This course takes both a chronological and thematic approach. It charts the
progression of dynasties to understand the evolutionary and revolutionary changes
that took place over two millennia. But the course also contains lectures dedicated
to topics that defy easy periodization. These include lectures on the lives of
Chinese peasants: One looks at rural life amid the wheat and sorghum fields of
North China, and another examines life in the lush rice paddies of the south.
Other lectures address crucial institutions and the people who operated them.
These are the secrets to imperial success that allowed a progression of dynasties,
some Chinese and some foreign ruled, to maintain the empire’s remarkable unity.
These institutions included a vast canal network that knit this huge domain
together and the civil service examinations that staffed the bureaucracy and
coopted the local elite into the imperial enterprise.
When the canals and the exams were fully functional, the health of the imperial
body politic was generally good; when they started to fail, however, dynastic
survival was in jeopardy. This course covers both extremes of imperial health and
many degrees in between. ■
Course Scope 1

Lecture 1
OPIUM, TRADE, AND
WAR IN IMPERIAL CHINA
By the turn of the 20th century, when China was ruled by the Qing
Dynasty, as much as 15 percent of China’s population used opium.
Consequently, among China’s 60 million users, there must have
been hundreds of thousands of addicts at any one time. Opium abuse wasn’t
a uniquely Chinese activity—in the 19th century, it was just as much a problem
in the United States and Britain. However, in one version of China’s national
narrative, the sale and use of opium—and especially its forced importation
into China—are inseparable from foreign invasion and national humiliation.
OPIUM IN CHINA
— The original source for most of China’s opium was India. Once 18th-
century British colonial authorities discovered that high-quality Patna
and cheap Malwa opium were popular in China, they promoted poppy
cultivation and opium production. Meanwhile, social and economic
trends within China created a large—and growing—market for the drug,
long before the Indian opium juggernaut came online.
— For all of opium’s allure—and medical benefits—it can be highly addictive.
And as with all addictions, personal tragedy and social disruption come
in addiction’s wake.
— The prevailing view was well summarized by H. H. Kane, the American
doctor and author of the book Opium-Smoking in America and China.
He wrote that “[opium] is bound to sink morality ... a fertile cause of
crime, lying, insanity, debt, and suicide; a poison to hope and ambition;
a slanderer of family ties; a breeder of sensuality and, finally, impotence.”
Opium War naval combat