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"Eastern Zhou Wars and the Birth of the Confucian-Legalist State" Author: [US] Zhao Dingxin Publisher: Beijing United Publishing Company
"Eastern Zhou Wars and the Birth of the Confucian-Legalist State" Author: [US] Zhao Dingxin Publisher: Beijing United Publishing Company
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Introduction · · · · · ·
What is the uniqueness of Chinese history? When was it established?
Zhao Dingxin, a tenured professor at the University of Chicago, approaches the study of Chinese history with a sociological approach. From the turbulent 500-year history of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, he extracts the basic pattern of Chinese politics for the following 2,000 years, attempting to answer the question: Why did China become China?
This book is a rare work with a broad historical perspective in contemporary historical research. Although it selects the history of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, it focuses on the historical character and social structure of ancient China as a whole, and from this it infers the origin and nature of the Confucian-Legalist state and its influence on later societies.
The author takes the key period in shaping the Chinese historical model - the Eastern Zhou Dynasty to the early Western Han Dynasty - as the research object, analyzing how the frequent wars between the vassal states during this period drove the process of national centralization. The characteristics of the county system, bureaucracy, strong state, etc. that have profoundly influenced Chinese history since then all originated in this key period.
At the end of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, a Confucian-Legalist empire arose, which still looms over our understanding of history today.
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1. The return of the grand historical perspective
Why is China a so-called Confucian-Legalist country rather than a simple Confucianist country?
Why has the basic historical pattern remained stable and unchanged throughout the two thousand years of Chinese imperial history?
This book is a rare work with a broad historical perspective in contemporary historical research.
From the turbulent five hundred years of history of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, we extracted the basic pattern of Chinese politics for the following two thousand years, and analyzed the political genes of the Chinese imperial system from its origins.
2. Developing the dynamic mechanism of China’s historical transformation
Why did China gradually transform into a bureaucratic empire dominated by Confucian scholars?
How did the pattern of a strong state and a weak society come about?
Approaching history from the perspective of a sociologist, he regards war as the fundamental driving force behind China's historical transformation.
3. Establish a new framework for viewing Eastern Zhou history
Breaking the traditional dichotomy between the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, it was proposed for the first time that the political process of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty be divided into three stages: the hegemonic period, the transition period, and the period of national war.
Hegemony period (770-546 BC)
Transition period (546-419 BC)
The Civil War Period (419-211 BC)
About the Author · · · · · ·
Born in 1953
From 1996 to 2011, he taught at the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, and was awarded tenured professorship at the University of Chicago. He is currently the Dean of the Institute for Advanced Humanities Studies and the Director of the Department of Sociology at Zhejiang University. He has long been committed to the research of political sociology and social movements.
His domestically published works include "Lectures on Social and Political Movements", "The Limits of Democracy", "Eastern Zhou Wars and the Birth of the Confucian-Legalist State", etc.
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