The Cambridge Illustrated History of China by Patricia Buckley Ebrey

Thurs 1st March 2007. I had to interrupt the reading of this book to do a quick gallop through The Archaeology of Warfare and both are now back at the library, but I'll complete this one first. I could not really do my Update on Civilisation without some understanding of China's history, beyond its art history I mean. The intertwined themes concerning me are human aggression and conflict, the situation of women and especially of the Dyad, and of the collapse order.

China notes.

Chapter 1. The origins of Chinese civilisation: Neolithic period to the Western Zhou dynasty (to 771 BC)

Page25 As in many other societies both animals and human beings were sacrificed to royal ancestors and to various nature gods. The principles underlying sacrifice, in China and elsewhere, are reciprocity and feeding: one a makes offerings to those from whom one wants help, and one feeds rich foods to the god or ancestor to keep him strong. Shang kings frequently offered sacrifices of human beings sometimes dozens at a time. Subordinates would also voluntarily "accompany" a superior in death, showing that they felt obligations to servitude to those above them.

(My comment: see discussion of religious practice in chapter 10, God as mother to be fed and supported.)

Chapter 2. Philosophical Foundations: the Eastern Zhou period 770 -- 256 BC.

(Page 39). Alliances formed through marriages led to succession disputes in various States due to the practice of concubinage. In theory, succession went to the sons of the wife by age, and only in their absence to the sons of concubines. However a ruler or head of a powerful ministerial family could select the son of a concubine to be his heir, leading to much scheming for favour among the various sons and their mothers. (See Chapters 9 and 10, the reliance of a mother on an adult son for survival etc.)

Chapter 3. The Creation of the Bureaucratic Empire: the Qin and Han Dynasties 256 BC -- AD 220.

(Page 71). The soul was conceived to have two aspects: while the lighter and more heavenly part could ascend to the clouds, the more earthly part stayed in or near the grave and benefited from the food and other goods placed in it. Constructing and furnishing the grave was a way for the living to protect themselves from the anger of dissatisfied ghosts. In Han times, soon after the establishment of the centralised bureaucratic empire, the other world became bureaucraticised as well. During the Han period, the hope for immortality found expression in the cult of a goddess called the Queen Mother of the West. (This is projecting the human importance of that survival relationship into the heavens, but it would work to provide support for the Dyad.)

(Page 81). Filial sons and devoted women.

Men could succeed by having a good reputation for being loving, respectful, and dutiful to the needs and wishes of the family elders, especially parents and grandparents. Women could also be celebrated for the appropriate virtues such as humility, subservience, obedience, cleanliness, and industry. There were accounts of the gallant deeds and unselfish behaviour of women published, they were notable for their loyalty to the ruler or wise counsel to their husband or father or preservation of chastity.

"Industriousness means going to bed late, getting up early, and never shirking work morning or night, never refusing to take on domestic work, and completing everything that needs to be done neatly and carefully. Continuity in the sacrifices means serving one's husband/master with appropriate demeanour, keeping oneself clean and pure,?. and preparing pure wine and food to offer to the ancestors."

(My comment: the Chinese concern with ancestors, which necessarily includes women, has done a lot down the ages to maintain the situation of women in society and therefore promote the well-being of the mother/infant dyad. The hard-working good wife and mother could achieve a high status within her own sphere, and much that I read this book reminded me of the situation of Jewish women as described for example in Proverbs and other Wisdom literature in the Bible.)

Chapter 7 Alien Rule: the Liao, Jin, and Yuan Dynasties 907 -- 1368

(page 169). Chinese rulers never fully controlled the Mongolian steppe, though they sometimes got some of the clans and tribes of the area to recognise their overlordship. In the late 12th century this region was facing a subsistence crisis because a drop in the mean annual temperature had reduced the supply of grass for grazing animals. The man who saved the situation by gaining access to the bounty of the agricultural world for them was Ghengis Khan (c.1162 --1227). He was a brilliant and utterly ruthless military genius, who started his military career when he avenged the death of his father, a tribal chieftain who had been murdered when he was still a boy. He asserted that there was no greater joy than massacring one's enemies, seizing their horses and cattle, and ravishing their women.

(My comment: here is another one I can compare with Shaka, the Zulu king, some schizoid pathology fuelling military genius, see Chapter 10.)

(Page 183). During the Mongol occupation? cross-cultural contacts whetted the appetite of Europeans for increased contact with distant lands but had the opposite effect on the Chinese. Chinese inventions such as printing and gunpowder spread westward and there was a great demand for Asian goods but by comparison, in China protecting what was distinctly Chinese became a higher priority than drawing from the outside to enrich or in- large Chinese civilisation. There was much more integration of foreign music and foreign styles in clothing, art and furnishings into Chinese culture in Tang times than in Song or Yuan times. In this regard  BOOKMARK  lang="EN-GB">China was more like the Islamic world, where the Mongol conquests and military threats provoked conservative reactions, not enhanced interest in distant regions.

(My comment: the above can be compared to what Ian Hodder describes in tribal cultures under pressure in books I have commented on.)

Chapter 8. The Limits of Autocracy: the Ming dynasty. 1368 -- 1644

(page 212). Even relatively open minded Chinese found some ideas hard to swallow, such as the dogma that the universe came into being through the actions of a creator. Christian social teachings also aroused resistance; many scholars could not accept the requirement that they get rid of their concubines in order to convert to Christianity, viewing such an action as callous to both the woman and their children by her. (Note how much more sympathetic to mother/child the Chinese are than the Christian Church!)

Chapter 9 Manchus and Imperialism: the Qing dynasty 1644 -- 1900.

(Page 224). The three principal Manchu rulers presented themselves as both protectors of China's cultural heritage and at the same time Manchu military leaders. Kangxi admitted the Jesuits. But eventually a Papal Legate sided with other Catholic orders against the Jesuits, ruling that ancestral rites (which Matteo Ricci had ruled were commemoration not worship) were not permitted and insisting on papal authority over missionaries and converts. So Kangxi expelled missionaries.

(Page 228). Chinese culture took a conservative turn during the Qing period. This complex phenomenon had philosophical, political, social, and probably even economic roots. The collapse of social order in the late Ming and the Manchu conquests seemed to many irrefutable evidence that the more open and fluid society emerging in late Ming was profoundly dangerous. As population increase outpaced growth of resources (not only at the level of the farmer but also at the level of the educated elite, since in the number of examination degrees was fixed) and society became more competitive, those who felt their position jeopardised favoured the imposition of rules and norms supportive of traditional social hierarchy. The impulse for this conservative turn came from within Chinese society. (The more stressed, the more schizoid, the more rule bound)

This conservative reaction was manifested in many ways. Laws against behaviour deemed deviant, such as homosexuality, became much harsher. Concern for the purity of women reached an all-time high. There was a staggering increase in the number of recorded cases of faithful windows who refused to remarry, and engaged teenagers who spent their lives as celibate "widows" of men who died before they had even met. Later the authorities allowed only widows who had gone to the extreme of committing suicide to be honoured by memorial arches.

(My comment: all of this has a familiar ring to similar trends in stressed cultures described by Ian Hodder like the Mesakin)

(page 242) the charismatic religious leader who mobilised the discontented of South China was a Hakka who had failed the civil service examinations. His career as a religious leader began with visions in which a golden-bearded old man and a middle-aged man who addressed him as younger brother told him to annihilate daemons. After reading a Christian tract, Hong Xiuquan interpreted his visions to mean that he was Jesus' younger brother. He turned to a Christian missionary to learn how to baptise, pray, and sing hymns. Attracted especially to the monotheism of the old Testament, and austerely puritanical, he instructed his followers to destroy idols and ancestral temples, give up opium and alcohol, and end foot binding and prostitution. There was a virulent anti-Manchu strain in his teachings as well: these wicked oppressors were the devil incarnate whom God had commanded him to destroy. His followers increased in number and the rebellion was successful for quite some time, succeeding in defeating Manchu armies and slaughtering their women and children until in their turn in the 1860s they were defeated and slaughtered.

(My comment: another example of a recognisably schizoid leader of conflict)

Footbinding: I realise just as I thought I'd finished my notes that I've left this subject out. This practice became prevalent in the Song dynasty (907 -- 1276). At that time social and economic changes improved women's lives in some ways, more for example were taught to read and write, but other changes were detrimental. More rigid notions of ethically acceptable female demeanour became prevalent, notions of female modesty became more rigid, women veiled their faces more often, and rode in curtained sedan chairs when travelling, doctors visiting women in elite households could neither view the woman nor question her.

There was a chaotic century from eight to 62 960 following the disintegration of the Tang dynasty. The State was embattled. The Song dynasty could not recover all that the Tang dynasty had controlled and was threatened along its borders.