The Early Chinese Empires

Qin and Han

Mark Edward Lewis, Mark Edward LEWIS, Timothy Brook

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780674057340
  9780674024779
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674040144
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

In 221 BC, the First Emperor of Qin unified the lands that would become the heart of a Chinese empire. Though forged by conquest, this vast domain depended for its political survival on a fundamental reshaping of Chinese culture. With this informative book, we are present at the creation of an ancient imperial order whose major features would endure for two millennia.

The Qin and Han constitute the "classical period" of Chinese history—a role played by the Greeks and Romans in the West. Mark Edward Lewis highlights the key challenges faced by the court officials and scholars who set about governing an empire of such scale and diversity of peoples. He traces the drastic measures taken to transcend, without eliminating, these regional differences: the invention of the emperor as the divine embodiment of the state; the establishment of a common script for communication and a state-sponsored canon for the propagation of Confucian ideals; the flourishing of the great families, whose domination of local society rested on wealth, landholding, and elaborate kinship structures; the demilitarization of the interior; and the impact of non-Chinese warrior-nomads in setting the boundaries of an emerging Chinese identity.

The first of a six-volume series on the history of imperial China, The Early Chinese Empires illuminates many formative events in China's long history of imperialism—events whose residual influence can still be discerned today.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 The Geography of Empire
• 2 A State Organized for War
• 3 The Paradoxes of Empire
• 4 Imperial Cities
• 5 Rural Society
• 6 The Outer World
• 7 Kinship
• 8 Religion
• 9 Literature
• 10 Law
• Conclusion
• Dates and Usage
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index