HSTAS 452

Chinese History to 1276

Instructor: Patricia Ebrey

Office: 112A Smith 685-1528

Office hours: Tuesday 3:30 to 5 or by appointment

Email: ebrey@u.washington.edu

This lecture-discussion class will cover Chinese history from the beginning through the Song dynasty, with more time devoted to the later period. Intellectual, social, cultural, and political history will all be treated, though not equally for all periods. About one-third to one-half of the time will be devoted to discussion of assigned readings. Students will be divided into groups, each of which will be responsible for organizing discussion of one set of readings.

Grades will be based on two quizzes (mostly identifications and short answer questions), an in-class essay, a 4-6 page final take-home essay, and participation in discussion. The grades for essays will reflect how well they demonstrate mastery of the material presented in the course and how well they are written. The final grade will be the average of the grades for the two essays, two quizzes, and class participation (that is, each will count for 20% of the grade).

Required texts available in the bookstore:

Hansen, An Open Empire

Graf, Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300-900

There is also a packet of readings available at Rams.

Most students should also read another history of China to reinforce basic information. Those who have not taken HSTAS 211 Chinese Civilization should read one of the more elementary textbooks used at this level (most recently Schirokauer, A Brief History of Chinese Civilization, or Ebrey, Cambridge Illustrated History of China). Anyone planning to continue with China studies should read a more detailed text to supplement Hansen. Two that can be recommended are Hucker, China’s Imperial Past, and Gernet, History of Chinese Civilization. Any of these books can be quickly ordered from online sites like www.amazon.com or www.bn.com. Only those who have recently taken 211 or the equivalent and do not plan to go on in China studies can count on learning what they need to know from Hansen alone.

Week 1 9/30, 10/2 China Before Confucius

Hansen, 3-95

Keightley, “The Shang: China’s First Historical Dynasty.” Cambridge History of Ancient China, ed. Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Discussion Questions: When should we begin talking about “China” or “Chinese civilization”? Who should we call Chinese?

How do the happenstances of survival shape our understanding of the early development of Chinese civilization?

How often did China reinvent things already invented elsewhere, and how often did it acquire them by diffusion? Should we care about answers to these questions?

Heaven, Mandate of Heaven, Son of Heaven, All-Under-Heaven: What do these concepts have to do with each other? What do they have to do with Chinese political thought?

Week 2 10/7, 10/9 Philosophers, I

This week will be totally devoted to discussion

Sources, 41-63, 77-108, 116-124, 170-183, 199-206

Discussion Questions on Confucius: What are the main questions Confucius addressed? What are some examples of ones he did not address?

What made Confucius a successful teacher?

What did Confucius want his disciples to do?

What did Confucius want rulers to do?

What, if any, religious ideas do you detect in Confucius?

Discussion Questions On Mozi and Mencius: Imagine that Mozi and Mencius were contemporaries and the two leading thinkers of the age. How would you, as a young man intent on study, decide which to study with? What are the most important differences in their messages?

Would Mencius have agreed with Mozi that diversity of opinion is an evil?

How does Mozi understand Heaven?

How does Mencius understand qi?

What authority does the past have in the teachings of Mozi and Mencius?

Discussion Questions On Daoism: How valid or useful is it to talk about “Daoism”? How much do the Zhuangzi and the Laozi have in common?

Is the thought of either master best thought of as a reaction to something? To Confucianism? To social and political conditions?

How do you explain the view that the Laozi is a political tract, a guide to rulers?

Discussion Questions on Xunzi and Legalism: Xunzi comes late among the “hundred schools of thought.” What in his thinking can be considered a response to a) Daoism, b) Mohism, c) Legalism, d) Mencius? Does Xunzi take up any topics earlier thinkers had neglected? What does he contribute?

How is it that law has such a good name in Western civilization and such a bad one in Chinese? What is similar or different in the concepts of law and its functioning? On what basis was it possible to have a synthesis of Legalism and Daoism?

Week 3 10/14, 10/16 Philosophers II

Lewis, “Warring States Political History.” Cambridge History of Ancient China. Michael Loewe and Edward Shaughnessy, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Guest lecture 10/14.

In-class open book essay on early philosophers, 10/16

Week 4 10/21, 10/23 Qin and Han

Hansen, 97-149

Barfield, Perilous Empire, 1-84.

Discussion questions on Qin and Han : Was the radical standardization and rationalization imposed by Qin in the long term best interests of China as a polity or civilization? How much of what occurred during the Qin should be attributed to the megalomania of the First Emperor? What are the most important differences between Han institutions and Qin ones?

What made it possible for the Han to hold together such a huge empire?

Do the developments in Chinese religion in Han times have much connection to the developments in philosophy? To the creation of the bureaucratic state?

Week 5 10/28, 10,30 Six Dynasties

Hansen, 151-89

Graf, 1-159

Discussion Questions on Buddhism: Which features of Buddhism were most foreign to prior Chinese experience?

Given that Confucianism was such a useful ideology for rulers, why did Chinese rulers become major patrons of Buddhism? Why were they not only willing to see their tax base shrink, but also spend money on construction projects?

Discussion Questions on Six Dynasties: The Roman Empire was never put together again after its dissolution. How would you go about trying to explain the eventual reunification of China? What sorts of factors do you think would be relevant?

Imagine you are a Confucian-educated Chinese advisor to one of the early Northern Wei rulers. How would you try to convince him to adopt various Chinese bureaucratic practices? What advantages would you highlight? How would you frame them to appeal to a tribal chieftain? Would there be advantages to the Chinese that you would not want to mention to him?

Week 6 11/4, 11/6 Tang

First quiz 11/6

Hansen, 191-258

Graf, 160-257

Discussion Questions: How is our understanding of Chinese history affected by knowing that the Sui and Tang ruling houses were from families that intermarried extensively with non-Chinese, especially Xianbei?

What are the major differences between the Han and the Tang periods?

Does the story of Empress Wu tell us anything about women in China? How does it contribute to Chinese women’s history? What does the story of Empress Wu reveal about the Tang government and power structure?

Week 7 11/13 Tang

No class on 11/11, holiday

Arthur F. Wright, “Symbolism and Function: Reflections on Changan and Other Great Cities.” Journal of Asian Studies 24.4 (1965):667-79.

Denis Twitchett, “Merchants, Trade and Government in Late T’ang.” Asia Major N. S. 14.1 (1968.): 63-95.

Discussion Questions: How do you account for the diversity of Tang Buddhism? What is particularly Chinese about Chan Buddhism?

Which of the changes in the late Tang seem to be the crucial ones, the ones that fostered the others? Is it possible that dividing China into military provinces was a more effective or efficient form of government, but Chinese observers were too committed to unified imperial rule to see its advantages?

What favored a revival of Confucianism in late Tang?

Week 8 11/18, 11/20 Song

Hansen, 259-333

Hartwell, “Markets, Technology, and the Structure of Enterprise in the Development of the Eleventh-Century Chinese Iron and Steel Industry.” Journal of Economic History 26.1 (1966):29-58.

Paul Forage, “The Sino-Tangut War of 1081-1085,” Journal of Asian History 25 (1991):1-28.

Discussion Questions: Compare how Chinese history looks in this period when one views it from a perspective focused on China Proper (or the Han Chinese) and when one views it from the perspective of greater China (China proper and outer China together; Liao and Jin as well as Song). What would be the key differences?

What are the most important ways in which the Liao and Jin states differed from tribal confederacies like the Xiongnu?

What are the key ways the multi-state system of the Song period differed from the multi-state system of the Warring States period?

Why do historians pay so much attention to increases in the size of the population? Would the economic changes of the Song period have necessarily have improved the lives of ordinary people? How does the growth of cities relate to other elements in this sea-change: changes in agriculture, transport, manufacturing, commerce, technology, etc.

Week 9 11/25 The Song Literati and Political Culture

Sources, pp. 590-626

James T. C. Liu, “An Early Sung Reformer: Fan Chung-yen,” Chinese Thought and Institutions, ed. John K. Fairbank. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957.

Peter Bol, This Culture of Ours Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. Chapter 7: “Wang Anshi and Sima Guang”

Discussion Questions: What explanation can you offer for the intensity of factional strife in the Northern Song? Did the examination system pit the literati against the court, or against each other? How valid is the charge that Wang Anshi was a Legalist? What relationships were there between the cultural activities of the elite and their class standing? Which activities required significant wealth and which did not? In which realms of culture could the literati most successfully challenge the dominance of the court? In which did the court have the natural dominance?

Week 10 12/2, 12/4 Song Intellectual History

Second quiz 12/2 Final take-home essay given out

Sources, pp. 689-714

Reading: Conrad M. Schirokauer, “Chu Hsi's Political Career: A Study in Ambivalence,” in Confucian Personalities, Stanford University Press, 1962.

Wing-tsit Chan, Chu Hist: Life and Thought Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1987. Chapter: “Chu Hsi’s Completion of Neo-Confucianism”

Discussion Questions: Is Neo-Confucianism a good term for this intellectual movement? Intellectually, who is the more important figure, Cheng Yi or Zhu Xi? What made Neo-Confucianism a political issue?

Week 11 12/9 Summing up

ESSAY DUE Discussion of essay

Study Guide HSTAS 452

Terms/names to know for the first quiz

Analects Ancestor worship Book of Documents Book of Songs Changan Chu Confucius Daoism Dong Zhongshu Duke of Zhou Eastern Zhou Emperor Wu Eunuchs Filial piety First Emperor of Qin Five Agents Five Relationships

Former Han Great Wall Han Feizi Lao Zi Later Han Legalism Li Si Liu Bang Luoyang Mandate of Heaven Mencius Mo Zi Oracle bones/divination texts qi Qin ren

Shang bronzes Shang dynasty shi Sima Qian Son of Heaven Songs of Chu Spring and Autumn Period Wang Mang Warring States Period the Way (Dao) Western Zhou Xiongnu Yellow Turbans Zhang Qian Zhou dynasty Zhuang Zi

Terms/names to know for second quiz

An Lushan Bodhidharma bodhisattva Champa rice Chan Cheng brothers Cheng Yi Dunhuang Emperor Xuanzong Empress Wu Equal field system Examination system Fan Zhongyan Five Dynasties Four Noble Truths Han Yu Hangzhou

Huineng Huizong Kaifeng Jin dynasty Jinshi Jurchen karma Khitan li and qi Liao dynasty Mahayana Neo-Confucianism New Policies Nine Rank System Northern Dynasties Northern Song Northern Wei

Pure Land Salt monopoly Sima Guang Southern Dynasties Southern Song Su Shi Sui dynasty Tang Tangut Three Kingdoms Turks Uighurs Wang Anshi Xia dynasty Xianbei Yang Guifei Zhu Xi