Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Chun-shu Chang. The Rise of the Chinese Empire: Nation, State, and Imperialism in Early China, ca. 1600 B.C.–A.D.; The Rise of the Chinese Empire: Frontier, Immigration, and Empire in Han China, 130 B.C.–A.D. 157 .:The Rise of the Chinese Empire: Nation, State, and Imperialism in Early China, ca. 1600 B.C.–A.D. 8;The Rise of the Chinese Empire: Frontier, Immigration, and Empire in Han China, 130 B.C.–A.D. 157

2008; Oxford University Press; Volume: 113; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1086/ahr.113.3.803

1937-5239

Stephen Durrant,

Chinese history and philosophy

The complex interplay between center and periphery has shaped much of Chinese history. The first historical conquest, that of the Zhou (ca. 1045 B.C.), came from the western periphery. These conquerors of the north China plain eventually weakened and were in turn supplanted by an intruder from the west, the Qin (221 B.C.). Later incursions, such as those of the Toba Wei (386 A.D.), the Jurchen (1126), the Mongols (1279), and the Manchus (1644), also pushed in from frontier regions. One reason for this dynamic, as Owen Lattimore explained long ago in his Inner Asian Frontiers of China (1940), was the tendency for Chinese civilization to project outward and put pressure on those living on the periphery. During the long duration of Chinese history, no period of outward expansion was more dramatic than that of the Western Han (206 B.C.–8 A.D.). We must therefore celebrate the publication of the first detailed English-language study of this critical period of Chinese imperialism.