Hot answers tagged china
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China (or at least its core) had a central, unifying culture built around philosophers such as Confucius and Lao-tse that was attractive to people over a wide land area. Also, the Chinese written language was developed from pictograms that represented "words," which although pronounced differently in different locations, could have the same meaning over wide ...
19
The nature of the silk road meant that it had to pass through commercial centres.
"The Silk Road was largely fragmented and very few merchants travelled the whole route. Goods were passed from one merchant to another until it reached the final buyers" source
So deviation over the steppes wasn't really possible as it was not the intermediaries goal to ...
11
I take it you mean why was there no "Scramble for China" in the 19th century. Excluding Hong Kong, ceded to Britain after the First Opium War.
The Second Sino-Japanese War makes an excellent case study of the problems of invading China. In 1937 China had a completely out of date military and an ineffective industrial base, and was fighting a civil war. ...
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Hong Kong became British colony as a result of First Opium War, which was lost by Qing Dynasty of China to United Kingdom. It was part of agreements of Treaty of Nanking that was signed in 1842, as well as huge war reparations.
What's important, original agreement established that Hong Kong becomes British for eternity, not for the exact amount of years. ...
9
It was illegal to set up business by person or group during that time. The first license to individual business after cultural revolution was issued in 1980. Even in late 70s and early 80s (after the cultural revolution), trading goods by individual was still a crime called 投机倒把罪，meaning "crime of Speculation and profiteering". People relied on a nation-wide ...
9
It is a wrong assumption that Europe was never unified politically.
First, in the ancient times the cultural development of different European peoples was very diverse. The most advanced peoples of Europe adopted the Greek culture, alphabet and gods. You can see this on the example of Etruscans who used the Greek alphabet and worshiped the Greek gods. The ...
9
In Europe, armies were often of generally the same size and makeup (at least in the instances you mention) and tactics codified, so in open engagements equipment and (that being equal) minor differences in proficiency could well mean the difference between winning and losing a battle.
In the Chinese example you mention, sheer force of numbers caused Qin to ...
8
Just take a look at any political map, let it be Classical period, or early Medieval times. When travelling to China you need water, supplies of food, fodder, etc. Also it's safer to spend a night in a city or some kind of inn instead of open steppe spaces. Then what Joe mentioned, between the cities you've got roads, which again - are safer.
South of Black ...
8
After Mongols lost control of China (end of Yuan dynasty), there were many struggles between Mongols and Chinese as well as different Mongol tribes. These struggles weakened the integration among Mongols. After a successful but short-lived unification attempt by Dayan Khan, a more organized disintegration took place giving birth to Khalkha Mongols (formerly ...
8
Expanding on @MonsterTruck's comment above, China (especially the east part) is really good for food production. According to Wikipedia's list of countries by agricultural output China has 17 per cent of global agricultural production today, compared to around 7 for the European Union, 7 for India and 4 for the United States. I would expect the construction ...
7
All the sources I've perused can, just as Wikipedia does, only surmise on the how and why gunpowder made its way to Europe.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology offers a nutshell overview of the possible routes that might have been taken:
Just how the secret of gunpowder traveled west-ward to Europe will probably never be ...
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There is an overview in an article on China Whisper.com: China`s historical GDP share in the world
Han dynasty (206 BC–220 AD)
GDP per capita: $450, 26%
Tang Dynasty 618 – 907 AD
GDP per capita:$480, 58% of world GDP
Song Dynasty 960-1279 AD
GDP per capita:US$2,280, 80% of the world’s GDP
Yuan Dynasty 1271-1368 A
estimated to account for about 30% ...
7
If by "colonize", you mean ethnicly and culturally take over the territory, like was done in North America and Austrialia:
This is one of the questions touched on by Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. The basic thesis is that Eurasians had an advantage due to their large shared pool of (termperate-climate) domesticated crops/animal technology, and ...
6
Yip man was real (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). He was a famous student of Wing Chun. My guess is that you're referring to the 2008 movie, Ip Man. However, it was not historically accurate. Quoting its Wikipedia page:
Film4's review detailed the departures from history: "The real Ip Man was never, despite the film's assertions to the contrary, forced from ...
6
In Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires, the first chapter by Walter Scheidel, From the "Great Convergence" to the "First Great Divergence", makes the case that the Chinese style of government focussed on centralising power while the Roman style allowed for a great deal of autonomy for appointed officials.
The Warring States era ...
6
Well, at least the drop during the "Cultural Revolution" is easily explained. Setting hordes of young, largely semi-literate, thugs to torture and maim the productive and educated members of society will do wonders for the economy. Here is a long quote from wikipedia:
The ten years of the Cultural Revolution brought China's education
system to a ...
6
To begin with, the Empire was rocked with two major peasant rebellions at the same time as the Qing invasion - when the palace appeared as if they were going to be overrun by the newly declared Shun Emperor, the last emperor of the Ming dynasty, Chongzhen, went nuts and killed his entire family before hanging himself, leaving a succession crisis on top of ...
5
Most likely the indemnity was meant to compensate the various nations for the loss of lives of their citizens and property, pro-rated roughly to the amount of each country lost.
I can't find exact records of deaths, but there were Norwegian citizens in China during the rebellion. The China Inland Mission was proselytizing in rural China at the time, and ...
5
It tended to be more than just that, opium dens were prevalent there but so was gambling and the Self-Strengthening movement and the Kuomintang repression of the Communists. Shanghai was also considered the "Pearl of the Orient" as well as the "Paris of the East" because of its artistic and intellectual community. The names were used depending on whether ...
5
China is the world's third largest country in size, after Russia and Canada. The latter two are further north, much colder, and less hospitable to population growth.
China is one of the world's oldest civilizations. Others, such as Egypt, Babylon, and even India are much smaller in size.
The combination of large land area (in a mostly temperate climate) ...
5
The wikipedia article you cite has a Chinese equivalent which explains the origin of the surname.
平原河昔日的英文名稱（River Ganges）與印度的恆河相同，這是英國在租借新界後派遣印度籍的測量師所命名的。
Which translates roughly as
The former English name of the Ping Yuen River (River Ganges) came from the river Ganges in India, because Indian surveyors were sent there after the British lease of ...
5
The Silk Way was not a single road, but rather a net of roads. And the ways Amudarja/Uzboj (Amudarja went to Caspian Sea till 16 Century, for example) - Caspian Sea - Volga - Don - Azov sea - Black sea - Konstantinople (variant: Aral-Caspian Sea by foot) was in use -especially for long periods when Amudarja was switched to the Caspian Sea and some stable ...
5
In China, there were warriors similar to ronin - the xia. As a link, I found only those regarding their philosophy or literature about them. GURPS Martial Arts (it's no solid historical work and I didn't manage to find any better source) states they were more like Robin Hood than Lancelot - they were not upper class like samurai.
Korean Hwarang are ...
5
By the time that Qin had totally collapsed, Xiang Yu was China's hegemon. He allotted governance of different parts of the country to various men. Some, like Tian An of Qi and Wei Bao of Wei, were descendents of the prior kings of those areas, while people like Wu Rui of Hengshan were given their posts based upon distinction. All of them had full control of ...
5
At best, positive answers to the question you posed can only establish a correlation, not a causation. After all, a less developed country can't really properly utilize a lot of engines.
Say as a thought experiment you gave an illiterate 15th century European farmer a diesel engine, but no infrastructure to support it. He wouldn't even know how to use it. ...
5
This is also the subject of the Needham question.
My own sense is that China's best and brightest were long motivated to target administrative careers as their first choice. The famous imperial civil service examinations required candidates to compete in the interpreting the classics, not preparing for new innovations (or "engines", for that matter). ...
4
Perhaps part of your confusion stems from a misunderstanding of the Manchu. They were not, as you say hunter-gatherers. Rather, they were pastoralists. Hunter-gatherers, as you rightly point out, tend to have very low populations. They have to rely for sustinance only upon what nature has available where they happen to be living.
Pastoralists raise their ...
4
With a little research: 1 Tael is equivalent with 37.5 or 33.9 or 37.8 g of silver, depends on region where it was issued.
The local tael also took precedence over any central measure, so the
Canton tael weighed 37.5 grams, the Convention or Shanghai tael was
33.9 g (1.09 oz troy), and the Customs or Hǎiguān (海關) tael 37.8 g (defined as 11⁄3 oz ...
3
The Han Dynasty came after the Qin Dyansty, after the government under Shi Huang Di collapsed. Liu Bang is noted as coming from a peasant family and becoming the Han Emperor, about this time there are many books and lots of material to look at. Still during this time China established the Confucian System, which began the Imperial Academies to train those ...
3
I think that stems from both geographic and cultural factors. At first it is almost like Jim Thio said. Only that it may not exactly be mountains.
If you look at the early agricultural societies in the West, those would be 1) along the Nile river (Egypt) 2) Tigris and Euphrates rivers (Mesopotamia). Those are two places divided not only by mountains, but by ...
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