Tato rozsáhlá série vás provede fascinující historií císařské Číny, od jejího sjednocení až po konec poslední dynastie. Každý svazek se ponoří do klíčových období, událostí a kulturních posunů, které formovaly jednu z nejvlivnějších civilizací světa. Díla jsou přístupně napsána a opírají se o nejnovější poznatky, což z nich činí ideálního průvodce pro každého, kdo se zajímá o bohaté dědictví Číny. Mapy a ilustrace pak dotvářejí ucelený obraz této pozoruhodné éry.
In 221 bc the First Emperor of Qin unified the lands that would become the heart of a Chinese empire. This book highlights the key challenges faced by the court officials and scholars who set about governing an empire of such scale and diversity of people. It illuminates many formative events in China's long history of imperialism.
After the collapse of the Han dynasty, China divided along a north-south line. Lewis traces the changes that underlay and resulted from this split in a period that saw China's geographic redefinition, more engagement with the outside world, significant changes to family life, literary and social developments, and the introduction of new religions.
The Tang dynasty is often called China's golden age, a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity. This title captures a dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Chinese rule.
Just over a thousand years ago, the Song dynasty emerged as the most advanced civilization on earth. Within two centuries, China was home to nearly half of all humankind. This book is an essential introduction to this transformative era.
The Mongol takeover in the 1270s changed the course of Chinese history. The Confucian empire - a millennium and a half in the making - was suddenly thrust under foreign occupation. This title explores what happened to China between these two dramatic invasions.
In a brisk revisionist history, William Rowe challenges the standard narrative of Qing China as a decadent, inward-looking state that failed to keep pace with the modern West. The Great Qing was the second major Chinese empire ruled by foreigners, with three strong Manchu emperors striving to secure an alliance with the conquered Ming gentry. However, many social edicts, particularly the requirement for ethnic Han men to wear queues, faced fierce resistance. Advocating for a “universal” empire, Qing rulers expanded the Chinese realm significantly over three centuries, incorporating Turkic and Tibetan peoples in the west, migrating into the southwest, and colonizing Taiwan. Despite this geographic and social complexity, the Qing ideal of “small government” functioned well during periods of minimal external threats. However, the nineteenth-century Opium Wars compelled China to engage in a predatory international contest with Western powers, while the Taiping and Boxer rebellions highlighted the urgent need for internal reform. Although comprehensive state-mandated changes in the early twentieth century could not prevent the nationalist tide of 1911, they laid a new foundation for the subsequent Republican and Communist states. This original, thought-provoking history of China’s last empire is essential for understanding the challenges facing China today.