A variety of internal and external factors contribute to state formation, expansion, and decline. Governments maintain order through a variety of administrative institutions, policies, and procedures, and governments obtain, retain, and exercise power in different ways and for different purposes.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain the systems of government employed by Chinese dynasties and how they developed over time.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

K.C.-3.2.I.A.--Empires and states in Afro-Eurasia and the Americas demonstrated continuity, innovation, and diversity in the 13th century. This included the Song Dynasty of China, which utilized traditional methods of Confucianism and an imperial bureaucracy to maintain and justify its rule.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

§ Champa rice

§ Transportation innovations, like the Grand Canal expansion

§ Influence of Neo-Confucianism

As societies develop, they affect and are affected by the ways that they produce, exchange, and consume goods and services.

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain the effects of innovation on the Chinese economy over time.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

K.C.-3.1.III.A.i.--The economy of Song China became increasingly commercialized while continuing to depend on free peasant and artisanal labor

K.C.3.1.I.D.--The economy of Song China flourished as a result of increased productive capacity, expanding trade networks, and innovations in agriculture and manufacturing.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

§ Steel and iron production

§ Textiles and porcelains for export

The development of ideas, beliefs, and religions illustrates how groups in society view themselves, and the interactions of societies and their beliefs often have political, social, and cultural implications

LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain the effects of Chinese cultural traditions on East Asia over time.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

K.C.3.1.III.D.i.--Chinese cultural traditions continued, and they influenced neighboring regions

K.C.3.1.III.D.ii.--Buddhism and its core beliefs continued to shape societies in Asia and included a variety of branches, schools, and practices

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES

Cultural traditions:

§ Filial piety in East Asia

§ Influence of Neo-Confucianism and Buddhism in East Asia

§ Confucian traditions of both respect for and expected deference from women

§ Chinese literary and scholarly traditions and their spread to Heian Japan and Korea

Branches of Buddhism:

§ Theravada

§ Mahayana

§ Tibetan

East Asia Governance (it’s not just Chinese dynasties!)

China

The Song Dynasty (960 CE-1279 CE)

• Rise of Neo-Confucianism and governance

  • • Six major ministries — personnel, fnance, rites, army, justice, and public works

• Importance of roles and relationships

• Civil service exam revived

  • • more elaborate

    • facilitated by the ability to print books for the first time in world history.

• Population doubles under Song, which means increased need for efficient bureaucracy

• Infrastructure Projects

  • • immense network of internal waterways — canals, rivers, and lakes — stretching perhaps 30,000 miles

    • Grand Canal was most famous.

Korea

• Korea mainly dis-unified and at times under Chinese control, but mostly independent as a Tribute State of China

  • • Tribute missions to China provided legitimacy for Korean rulers and knowledge of Chinese court life and administrative techniques, which they sought to replicate back home.

    • capital city of Kumsong was modeled directly on the Chinese capital of Chang’an

• referred to their rulers with the Chinese term wang (king)

• strenuously resisted Chinese political control, except when they found it advantageous to join with China against a local enemy

  • • the Silla (SHEE-lah) kingdom — allied with Tang dynasty China to bring some political unity to the peninsula for the frst time.

Japan

• Japan mainly feudal (daimyo and samurai)

• increasingly distancing themselves from the Chinese sphere of influence

East Asia Economics (it’s not just Chinese dynasties!)

China

• Population doubles -- Champa rice

  • • from about 50 million or 60 million during the Tang dynasty to 120 million by 1200.

    • the adoption of a fast ripening and drought-resistant strain of rice from Vietnam

• shift from Chang'an, the traditional interior Silk Road center of economic activity to the coastal city of Hangzhou.

  • • Hangzhou

      • • more than a million people

        • Specialized markets abounded for meat, herbs, vegetables, books, rice, and much more, with troupes of actors performing for the crowds.

        • Restaurants advertised their unique offerings — sweet bean soup, pickled dates, juicy lungs, meat pies, pigs’ feet

        • 
          

    • Dadu (Beijing) during Yuan dynasty

• use of paper bank notes during the Tang dynasty evolved into the first state issued paper currency in history -- the Song Jiaozi

  • • inflation would be a constant issue

• rise in merchant class would result in:

  • • merchant guilds

    • Joint Stock Companies

    • diasporic merchant communities in Southeast Asia

• Use of COAL

  • • main fuel used in kilns and furnaces led to increase in higher quality steel and iron production

    • By the eleventh century, it was providing the government with 32,000 suits of armor and 16 million iron arrowheads annually, in addition to supplying metal for coins, tools, construction, and bells in Buddhist monasteries

Women

• rapidly commercializing economy undermined the position of women in the textile industry.

• In the cities, women operated restaurants, sold fsh and vegetables, and worked as maids, cooks, and dressmakers.

East Asia Culture (it’s not just Chinese dynasties!)

China

Mahayana Buddhism becomes popular in China, spread through long-distance trade

• reaches its peak of influence during the Tang Dynasty before being persecuted like other foreign religions (Islam & Christianity)

Neo-Confucianism

• as a blend of Confucianism and concepts from Buddhism and Daoism

Chinese women of the Tang dynasty era (northern)

• participated in social life with greater freedom than in earlier times

• Paintings and statues show aristocratic women riding horses

• the Queen Mother of the West, a Daoist deity, was widely worshiped by female Daoist priests and practitioners

increased patriarchy

• • • Song dynasty led to a reviving of Confucianism and rapid economic growth seemed to tighten patriarchal restrictions on women and to restore some of the earlier Han dynasty notions of female submission and passivity

    • Confucian writers highlighted the subordination of women to men and the need to keep males and females separate in every domain of life

    • remarriage of widows, though legally permissible, was increasingly condemned

    • most compelling expression of a tightening patriarchy lay in foot binding

    • growing prosperity of elite families funneled increasing numbers of women into roles as concubines, entertainers, courtesans, and prostitutes.

• Gunpowder

  • • Gunpowder too seems to have had an Indian and Buddhist connection. An Indian Buddhist monk traveling in China in 644 c.e. identified soils that contained saltpeter and showed that they produced a purple fame when put into a fire.

    • This was the beginning of Chinese experiments, which finally led to a reliable recipe for gunpowder

Korea

• retained distinctive identities

• Chinese efforts to set up puppet regimes and to assimilate Koreans to Chinese culture provoked sharp military resistance

• Thousands of Korean students were sent to China, where they studied primarily Confucianism but also natural sciences and the arts.

• Schools for the study of Confucianism, using texts in the Chinese language, were established in Korea.

• Confucian values and Chinese culture in Korea had an “overwhelmingly negative” impact on Korean women

  • • strongly disapproved of, “free choice” marriages in Korea as well as the practice of women singing and dancing together late at night.

    • With the support of the Korean court, Chinese models of family life and female behavior, especially among the elite, gradually replaced the more flexible Korean patterns.

    • Earlier, a Korean woman had generally given birth and raised her young children in her parents’ home, where she was often joined by her husband. This was now strongly discouraged, for it was deeply offensive to Confucian orthodoxy, which held that a married woman belonged to her husband’s family.

    • Some Korean customs — funeral rites in which a husband was buried in the sacred plot of his wife’s family, the remarriage of widowed or divorced women, and female inheritance of property — eroded under the pressure of Confucian orthodoxy.

    • So too did the practice of plural marriages for men. In 1413, a legal distinction between primary and secondary wives required men to identify one of their wives as primary. Because she and her children now had special privileges and status, sharp new tensions emerged within families.

Vietnam

• Chinese-based examination system in Vietnam functioned to undermine an established aristocracy, to provide some measure of social mobility for commoners

• exams created a merit-based scholar-gentry class to staff the bureaucracy.

• Vietnamese elite class remained deeply committed to Chinese culture, viewing their own country less as a separate nation than as a southern extension of a universal civilization.

• Beyond the elite, however, there remained much that was uniquely Vietnamese, such as a distinctive language, a fondness for cockfighting, and the habit of chewing betel nuts.

• Women:

  • • Vietnam long retained a greater role for women in social and economic life, despite heavy Chinese influence.

    • Female nature deities and a “female Buddha” continued to be part of Vietnamese popular religion, even as Confucian based ideas took root among the elite

    • northern officials tried in vain to impose more orthodox Confucian gender practices in place of local customs that allowed women to choose their own husbands and married men to live in the households of their wives.

• the Vietnamese developed a variation of Chinese writing called chu nom (“southern script”)

  • • provided the basis for an independent national literature

    • provided a vehicle for the writing of most educated women

Japan

• retained distinctive identities

• The high point of that borrowing took place during the seventh to the ninth centuries c.e., as the first more or less unified Japanese state began to emerge from dozens of small clan-based aristocratic chiefdoms. That state found much that was useful in Tang dynasty China and set out, deliberately and systematically, to transform Japan into a centralized bureaucratic state on the Chinese model.

  • • Seventeen Article Constitution-- proclaiming the Japanese ruler as a Chinese-style emperor and encouraging both Buddhism and Confucianism

    • Japanese authorities adopted Chinese style court rituals

    • adopted a system of court rankings for officials

    • adoptedthe Chinese calendar.

    • established Chinese-based taxation systems, law codes, government ministries, and provincial administration, at least on paper

    • Two capital cities, frst Nara and then Heian (Kyoto), arose, both modeled on the Chinese capital of Chang’an.

    • The Chinese writing system — and with it an interest in historical writing, calligraphy, and poetry — likewise proved attractive among the Japanese elite

• By the tenth century, deliberate efforts to absorb additional elements of Chinese culture diminished, and formal tribute missions to China stopped, although private traders and Buddhist monks continued

• the Japanese combined what they had assimilated from China with elements of their own tradition into a distinctive Japanese civilization

• the Japanese never succeeded in creating an effective centralized and bureaucratic state to match that of China

• the court and the emperor retained an important ceremonial and cultural role, their real political authority over the country gradually diminished in favor of competing aristocratic families, both at court and in the provinces

• A Chinese-style university trained ofcials, but rather than serving as a mechanism for recruiting talented commoners into the political elite, it enrolled students who were largely the sons of court aristocrats

• As political power became increasingly decentralized, local authorities developed their own military forces, the famous samurai warrior class of Japanese society.

• the samurai developed a distinctive set of values featuring great skill in martial arts, bravery, loyalty, endurance, honor, and a preference for death over surrender. This was bushido (boo-shee-doh), the way of the warrior.

  • • Japan’s celebration of the samurai and of military virtues contrasted sharply with China’s emphasis on intellectual achievements and political office holding, which were accorded higher prestige than bearing arms

• Religiously as well, Japan remained distinctive. Although Buddhism in many forms took hold in the country, it never completely replaced the native beliefs and practices, which focused attention on numerous kami, sacred spirits associated with human ancestors and various natural phenomena. Much later referred to as Shinto, this tradition provided legitimacy to the imperial family, based on claims of descent from the sun goddess.

  • • Because veneration of the kami lacked an elaborate philosophy or ritual, it conflicted very little with Buddhism. In fact, numerous kami were assimilated into Japanese Buddhism as local expressions of Buddhist deities or principles.

• Japanese literary and artistic culture likewise evolved in distinctive ways, despite much borrowing from China.

  • • there emerged a unique writing system that combined Chinese characters with a series of phonetic symbols.

    • A highly stylized Japanese poetic form, known as tanka, developed early and has remained a favored means of expression ever since.

    • The Tale of Genji, a Japanese novel written by the woman author Murasaki Shikibu around 1000, provides an intimate picture of the intrigues and romances of court life.

• women:

  • • Japan’s women, unlike those in Korea, largely escaped the more oppressive features of Chinese Confucian culture, such as the prohibition of remarriage for widows, seclusion within the home, and foot binding.

    • Japanese women continued to inherit property

    • Japanese married couples often lived apart or with the wife’s family

    • marriages were made and broken easily.

    • As the personal relationships of samurai warriors to their lords replaced marriage alliances as a political strategy, the influence of women in political life was reduced, but this was an internal Japanese phenomenon, not a refection of Chinese influence.