The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han

The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 2007 Book. As New. Hardcover. English text.; Hardcover (with dust jacket).; 16 x 24.5 cm 0.62 Kg.; 321 pages.; Used with minor signs of wear. As new. The dust jacket is now protected with a clearcover.; In 221 BCE 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. 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 this 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 discern today..