{"title":"Series: History of Imperial China","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the rich tapestry of China’s imperial past with the \u003cem\u003eHistory of Imperial China\u003c\/em\u003e series, where tradition and transformation unfold. Readers will explore the cultural, political, and social currents that shaped one of the world’s oldest continuous civilisations, from magnificent palaces and poetry to the intricate rituals of governance and power.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis collection offers a thoughtful journey through the dynasties that ruled vast lands, revealing insights into art, philosophy, and daily life amid the splendour of imperial courts. Perfect for those fascinated by \u003cstrong\u003eArts \u0026amp; Culture\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003cstrong\u003ePolitics \u0026amp; Current Affairs\u003c\/strong\u003e, these books illuminate the enduring legacy of Imperial China’s history and influence.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"china-between-empires-by-mark-edward-lewis-9780674060357","title":"China between Empires","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter the collapse of the Han dynasty in the third century CE, China divided along a north-south line. Mark Lewis traces the changes that both underlay and resulted from this split in a period that saw the geographic redefinition of China, more engagement with the outside world, significant changes to family life, developments in the literary and social arenas, and the introduction of new religions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Yangzi River valley arose as the rice-producing centre of the country. Literature moved beyond the court and capital to depict local culture, and newly emerging social spaces included the garden, temple, salon, and country villa. The growth of self-defined genteel families expanded the notion of the elite, moving it away from the traditional great Han families identified mostly by material wealth. Trailing the rebel movements that toppled the Han, the new faiths of Daoism and Buddhism altered every aspect of life, including the state, kinship structures, and the economy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBy the time China was reunited by the Sui dynasty in 589 CE, the elite had been drawn into the state order, and imperial power had assumed a more transcendent nature. The Chinese were incorporated into a new world system in which they exchanged goods and ideas with states that shared a common Buddhist religion. The centuries between the Han and the Tang thus had a profound and permanent impact on the Chinese world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47485993943276,"sku":"9780674060357","price":65.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9fbf1d3dfa8a14495d39aa4cb1b1bdbb.jpg?v=1775784706"},{"product_id":"chinas-last-empire-by-william-t-rowe-9780674066243","title":"China's Last Empire","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Great Qing was the second major Chinese empire ruled by foreigners. Three strong Manchu emperors worked diligently to secure an alliance with the conquered Ming gentry, though many of their social edicts—especially the requirement that ethnic Han men wear queues—were fiercely resisted. As advocates of a \u003cem\u003euniversal\u003c\/em\u003e empire, Qing rulers also achieved an enormous expansion of the Chinese realm over the course of three centuries, including the conquest and incorporation of Turkic and Tibetan peoples in the west, vast migration into the southwest, and the colonisation of Taiwan.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDespite this geographic range and the accompanying social and economic complexity, the Qing ideal of \"small government\" worked well when outside threats were minimal. However, the nineteenth-century Opium Wars forced China to become a player in a predatory international contest involving Western powers, while the devastating uprisings of the Taiping and Boxer rebellions signalled an urgent need for internal reform. Comprehensive state-mandated changes during the early twentieth century were not enough to hold back the nationalist tide of 1911, but they provided a new foundation for the Republican and Communist states that would follow.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis original, thought-provoking history of \u003cem\u003eChina's Last Empire\u003c\/em\u003e is a must-read for understanding the challenges facing China today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47485994074348,"sku":"9780674066243","price":64.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/ded969db808444c74a19887700cbc507.jpg?v=1775784700"},{"product_id":"the-age-of-confucian-rule-by-dieter-kuhn-9780674062023","title":"The Age of Confucian Rule","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust 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. In this concise history, we learn why the inventiveness of this era has been favourably compared with the European Renaissance, which in many ways the Song transformation surpassed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWith the chaotic dissolution of the Tang dynasty, the old aristocratic families vanished. A new class of scholar-officials—products of a meritocratic examination system—took up the task of reshaping Chinese tradition by adapting the precepts of Confucianism to a rapidly changing world. Through fiscal reforms, these elites liberalised the economy, eased the tax burden, and put paper money into circulation. Their redesigned capitals buzzed with traders, while the education system offered advancement to talented men of modest means.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTheir rationalist approach led to inventions in printing, shipbuilding, weaving, ceramics manufacture, mining, and agriculture. With a realist's eye, they studied the natural world and applied their observations in art and science. And with the souls of diplomats, they chose peace over war with the aggressors on their borders. Yet persistent military threats from these nomadic tribes—which the Chinese scorned as their cultural inferiors—redefined China's understanding of its place in the world and solidified a sense of what it meant to be Chinese.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Age of Confucian Rule\u003c\/i\u003e is an essential introduction to this transformative era. \"A scholar should congratulate himself that he has been born in such a time\" (Zhao Ruyu, 1194).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47487564742892,"sku":"9780674062023","price":69.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/cba56423d7ac80438753ff2d88d136a5.jpg?v=1775773964"},{"product_id":"the-early-chinese-empires-by-mark-edward-lewis-9780674057340","title":"The Early Chinese Empires","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe 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 demilitarisation of the interior; and the impact of non-Chinese warrior-nomads in setting the boundaries of an emerging Chinese identity.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe first of a six-volume series on the history of imperial China, \u003cem\u003eThe Early Chinese Empires\u003c\/em\u003e illuminates many formative events in China's long history of imperialism—events whose residual influence can still be discerned today.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47487589187820,"sku":"9780674057340","price":69.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/ca3919f138d79a315f2938bceefd43ae.jpg?v=1775773178"},{"product_id":"the-troubled-empire-by-timothy-brook-9780674072534","title":"The Troubled Empire","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 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. What China had been before its reunification as the Yuan dynasty in 1279 was no longer what it would be in the future. Four centuries later, another wave of steppe invaders would replace the Ming dynasty with yet another foreign occupation.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Troubled Empire\u003c\/i\u003e explores what happened to China between these two dramatic invasions. If anything defined the complex dynamics of this period, it was changes in the weather. Asia, like Europe, experienced a Little Ice Age, and as temperatures fell in the thirteenth century, Kublai Khan moved south into China. His Yuan dynasty collapsed in less than a century, but Mongol values lived on in Ming institutions. A second blast of cold in the 1630s, combined with drought, was more than the dynasty could stand, and the Ming fell to Manchu invaders.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAgainst this background—the first coherent ecological history of China in this period—\u003cb\u003eTimothy Brook\u003c\/b\u003e explores the growth of autocracy, social complexity, and commercialization, paying special attention to China's incorporation into the larger South China Sea economy. These changes not only shaped what China would become but contributed to the formation of the early modern world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47487670681836,"sku":"9780674072534","price":64.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/21a4553373564fc773066547ea3e2094.jpg?v=1775770895"},{"product_id":"chinas-cosmopolitan-empire-by-mark-edward-lewis-9780674064010","title":"China’s Cosmopolitan Empire","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Tang dynasty is often called China's \"golden age,\" a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections spanning from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity. \u003cem\u003eChina’s Cosmopolitan Empire\u003c\/em\u003e by Mark Edward Lewis captures this dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Chinese rule. During this period, painting and ceramic arts flourished, women played major roles both as rulers and in the economy, and China produced its finest lyric poets: Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Chinese engaged in extensive trade across both sea and land. Merchants from Inner Asia settled in the capital, while Chinese entrepreneurs ventured out to the wider world, marking the beginning of a global diaspora. The emergence of an economically and culturally dominant south, controlled from a northern capital, set a pattern for the rest of Chinese imperial history. Poems of the time celebrated the glories of the capital, meditated on individual loneliness in its midst, and described the heroic young men and beautiful women who filled city streets and bars.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDespite the romantic aura attached to the Tang, it was not a time of unending peace. In 756, General An Lushan led a revolt that shook the country to its core, weakening the government so profoundly that by the early tenth century, regional warlordism gripped many areas, heralding the decline of the Great Tang.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48126546739436,"sku":"9780674064010","price":67.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780674064010-china-s-cosmopolitan-empire.jpg?v=1785969069"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.live\/collections\/series-history-of-imperial-china.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}