Cities Of Aristocrats And Bureaucrats

Author : Chye Kiang Heng
Publisher : NUS Press
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9971692236

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Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats by Chye Kiang Heng Pdf

The emergence of the open city during the 11th century is one of the most dramatic and important changes in Chinese urban history. While the Sui and the early Tang city was controlled and highly disciplined with restricted commercial activity, the late Northern Song city filled with pluralistic streets active round the clock became a new urban paradigm. These cities reflect the respective societies that gave rise to them - one rooted in a strong aristocratic power with a highly hierarchical social structure, and the other shaped by a pluralistic, mercantile society managed by pragmatic professional bureaucrats. This book provides an in-depth account of the process of transformation from the curfewed city of the Tang period to the open city of the Song. It analyses the multidimensional factors that gradually led to the development of an urban culture which in turn helped cement the trend towards the open city with its irregular layout and distinct urban tissue and silhouette.

Author : Chye Kiang Heng
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:935154732

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Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats by Chye Kiang Heng Pdf

Author : Mark Edward Lewis
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2009-10-30
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674265417

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China’s Cosmopolitan Empire by Mark Edward Lewis Pdf

The Tang dynasty is often called China’s “golden age,” a period of commercial, religious, and cultural connections from Korea and Japan to the Persian Gulf, and a time of unsurpassed literary creativity. Mark Lewis captures a dynamic era in which the empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Chinese rule, painting and ceramic arts flourished, women played a major role both as rulers and in the economy, and China produced its finest lyric poets in Wang Wei, Li Bo, and Du Fu. The Chinese engaged in extensive trade on sea and land. Merchants from Inner Asia settled in the capital, while Chinese entrepreneurs set off for the wider world, the beginning of a global diaspora. The emergence of an economically and culturally dominant south that was controlled from a northern capital set a pattern for the rest of Chinese imperial history. Poems celebrated the glories of the capital, meditated on individual loneliness in its midst, and described heroic young men and beautiful women who filled city streets and bars. Despite the romantic aura attached to the Tang, it was not a time of unending peace. In 756, General An Lushan led a revolt that shook the country to its core, weakening the government to such a degree that by the early tenth century, regional warlordism gripped many areas, heralding the decline of the Great Tang.

Author : Peter Clark
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 913 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2013-02-14
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780199589531

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The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History by Peter Clark Pdf

In 2008 for the first time the majority of the planet's inhabitants lived in cities and towns. Becoming globally urban has been one of mankind's greatest collective achievements over time. Written by leading scholar, this is the first detailed survey of the world's cities and towns from ancient times to the present day.

Author : Frank van der Hoeven
Publisher : IOS Press
Page : 144 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781607500773

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Urbanism by Frank van der Hoeven Pdf

This book is a collection of recent PhD papers from the Department of Urbanism, TU Delft. Urbanism is the academic discipline concerned with understanding the spatial organisation and dynamics of urban areas. The quality of the urban environment is a determining factor in the social, economic and environmental performance of societies and the life of citizens. The TU Delft Department of Urbanism seeks to influence the processes of urban change and transformation through explicit design and planning interventions, underpinning practical action to shape the urban environment in a sustainable way. The strong tradition of urbanism in the delta of the Netherlands is a strong factor influencing this major contribution to knowledge and education in the field. Further developments which build on this experience are necessary to address the great challenges of sustainable development, not least with regard to the problems of climate change in delta areas, transformation of brownfield sites and the making of high-quality public space. Of interest to all those committed to building a better urban environment, some of the topics covered in this book include: adaptive environments for human habitats, searching for good urban form, mixed use index (MXI) as a tool for urban planning and analysis and pattern formation in planned urban peripheries. IOS Press is an international science, technical and medical publisher of high-quality books for academics, scientists, and professionals in all fields. Some of the areas we publish in: -Biomedicine -Oncology -Artificial intelligence -Databases and information systems -Maritime engineering -Nanotechnology -Geoengineering -All aspects of physics -E-governance -E-commerce -The knowledge economy -Urban studies -Arms control -Understanding and responding to terrorism -Medical informatics -Computer Sciences

Author : Dieter Kuhn
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2011-10-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674062023

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The Age of Confucian Rule by Dieter Kuhn Pdf

Just over a thousand years ago, the Song dynasty emerged as the most advanced civilization on earth. Within two centuries, China was home to nearly half of all humankind. In this concise history, we learn why the inventiveness of this era has been favorably compared with the European Renaissance, which in many ways the Song transformation surpassed. With the chaotic dissolution of the Tang dynasty, the old aristocratic families vanished. A new class of scholar-officials—products of a meritocratic examination system—took up the task of reshaping Chinese tradition by adapting the precepts of Confucianism to a rapidly changing world. Through fiscal reforms, these elites liberalized the economy, eased the tax burden, and put paper money into circulation. Their redesigned capitals buzzed with traders, while the education system offered advancement to talented men of modest means. Their rationalist approach led to inventions in printing, shipbuilding, weaving, ceramics manufacture, mining, and agriculture. With a realist’s eye, they studied the natural world and applied their observations in art and science. And with the souls of diplomats, they chose peace over war with the aggressors on their borders. Yet persistent military threats from these nomadic tribes—which the Chinese scorned as their cultural inferiors—redefined China’s understanding of its place in the world and solidified a sense of what it meant to be Chinese. The Age of Confucian Rule is an essential introduction to this transformative era. “A scholar should congratulate himself that he has been born in such a time” (Zhao Ruyu, 1194).

Author : Ya Zuo
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2020-10-20
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781684170975

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Shen Gua's Empiricism by Ya Zuo Pdf

"Shen Gua (1031–1095) is a household name in China, known as a distinguished renaissance man and the author of Brush Talks from Dream Brook, an old text whose remarkable “scientific” discoveries make it appear curiously ahead of its time. In this first book-length study of Shen in English, Ya Zuo reveals the connection between Shen’s life as an active statesman and his ideas, specifically the empirical stance manifested through his wide-ranging inquiries. She places Shen on the broad horizon of premodern Chinese thought, and presents his empiricism within an extensive narrative of Chinese epistemology.Relying on Shen as a searchlight, Zuo focuses in on how an individual thinker summoned conditions and concepts from the vast Chinese intellectual tradition to build a singular way of knowing. Moreover, her study of Shen provides insights into the complex dynamics in play at the dawn of the age of Neo-Confucianism and compels readers to achieve a deeper appreciation of the diversity in Chinese thinking."

Author : Andrew Chittick
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2020-02-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9780190937553

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The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History by Andrew Chittick Pdf

This work offers a sweeping re-assessment of the Jiankang Empire (3rd-6th centuries CE), known as the Chinese "Southern Dynasties." It shows how, although one of the medieval world's largest empires, Jiankang has been rendered politically invisible by the standard narrative of Chinese nationalist history, and proposes a new framework and terminology for writing about medieval East Asia. The book pays particular attention to the problem of ethnic identification, rejecting the idea of "ethnic Chinese," and delineating several other, more useful ethnographic categories, using case studies in agriculture/foodways and vernacular languages. The most important, the Wuren of the lower Yangzi region, were believed to be inherently different from the peoples of the Central Plains, and the rest of the book addresses the extent of their ethnogenesis in the medieval era. It assesses the political culture of the Jiankang Empire, emphasizing military strategy, institutional cultures, and political economy, showing how it differed from Central Plains-based empires, while having significant similarities to Southeast Asian regimes. It then explores how the Jiankang monarchs deployed three distinct repertoires of political legitimation (vernacular, Sinitic universalist, and Buddhist), arguing that the Sinitic repertoire was largely eclipsed in the sixth century, rendering the regime yet more similar to neighboring South Seas states. The conclusion points out how the research re-orients our understanding of acculturation and ethnic identification in medieval East Asia, generates new insights into the Tang-Song transition period, and offers new avenues of comparison with Southeast Asian and medieval European history.

Author : Jing Xie
Publisher : World Scientific
Page : 296 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2020-02-25
Category : History
ISBN : 9789811204838

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Chinese Urbanism: Urban Form And Life In The Tang-song Dynasties by Jing Xie Pdf

Since the 1990s, the urban landscape of China has witnessed revolutionary changes that are unrivalled in any country of the world throughout history. Rapid urbanization, facilitated by the modern planning mechanism for growth, provides a feast for property developers. Yet, associated urban problems such as housing affordability, traffic congestion, energy consumption, and environmental deterioration are aggravated. This book takes a historic approach to investigate the planning philosophy, urban form and life of the past. Through a detailed study of urban development from early times through the imperial period with a focus on the Tang-Song dynasties, this book attempts to articulate the good qualities of urban landscapes from the past that still have instructive value for modern practices. The focus on the Tang-Song period is not only because China was the most advanced civilization of its time, but also because it underwent a similar process of 'urbanization', evident by tremendous economic growth, a dramatic rise of urban population, and an extended building boom. Through evaluating the streets, city layout, public places, urban communities, houses and gardens, and using interdisciplinary research in urban planning, urban design, architecture, history, and cultural studies, this book asserts that the past is quintessentially important. The past not only truthfully records the course of social and cultural formation of urban community and its associated physical fabric, but also regulates the directions we may take in the future.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2024-06-06
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9781134151875

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Globalization, the City and Civil Society in Pacific Asia by Anonim Pdf

Author : Toby Lincoln
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 2021-05-20
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781107196421

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An Urban History of China by Toby Lincoln Pdf

The first history of Chinese cities from their early origins to becoming the largest urban society in the world.

Author : Debin Ma,Richard von Glahn
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 749 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2022-02-24
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781108425575

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The Cambridge Economic History of China: Volume 1, To 1800 by Debin Ma,Richard von Glahn Pdf

A comprehensive survey of Chinese economic history from the pre-imperial era to 1800 from an international team of leading experts.

Author : Valerie Hansen
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 337 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2012-07-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199939213

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The Silk Road by Valerie Hansen Pdf

The Silk Road is as iconic in world history as the Colossus of Rhodes or the Suez Canal. But what was it, exactly? It conjures up a hazy image of a caravan of camels laden with silk on a dusty desert track, reaching from China to Rome. The reality was different--and far more interesting--as revealed in this new history. In The Silk Road, Valerie Hansen describes the remarkable archeological finds that revolutionize our understanding of these trade routes. For centuries, key records remained hidden--sometimes deliberately buried by bureaucrats for safe keeping. But the sands of the Taklamakan Desert have revealed fascinating material, sometimes preserved by illiterate locals who recycled official documents to make insoles for shoes or garments for the dead. Hansen explores seven oases along the road, from Xi'an to Samarkand, where merchants, envoys, pilgrims, and travelers mixed in cosmopolitan communities, tolerant of religions from Buddhism to Zoroastrianism. There was no single, continuous road, but a chain of markets that traded between east and west. China and the Roman Empire had very little direct trade. China's main partners were the peoples of modern-day Iran, whose tombs in China reveal much about their Zoroastrian beliefs. Silk was not the most important good on the road; paper, invented in China before Julius Caesar was born, had a bigger impact in Europe, while metals, spices, and glass were just as important as silk. Perhaps most significant of all was the road's transmission of ideas, technologies, and artistic motifs. The Silk Road is a fascinating story of archeological discovery, cultural transmission, and the intricate chains across Central Asia and China.

Author : Hiroshi Takayama
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 425 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2019-03-22
Category : History
ISBN : 9781351022286

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Sicily and the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages by Hiroshi Takayama Pdf

This book is a collection of milestone articles of a leading scholar in the study of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, a crossroads of Latin-Christian, Greek-Byzantine, and Arab-Islamic cultures and one of the most fascinating but also one of the most neglected kingdoms in the medieval world. Some of his articles were published in influential journals such as English Historical Review, Viator, Mediterranean Historical Review, and Papers of the British School at Rome, while others appeared in hard-to-obtain festschrifts, proceedings of international conferences, and so on. The articles included here, based on analysis of Latin, Greek, and Arabic documents as well as multi-lingual parchments, explore subjects of interest in medieval Mediterranean world such as Norman administrations, multi-cultural courts, Christian-Muslim diplomacy, conquests and migrations, religious tolerance and conflicts, cross-cultural contacts, and so forth. Some of them dig deep into curious specific topics, while others settle disputes among scholars and correct our antiquated interpretations. His attention to the administrative structure of the kingdom of Sicily, whose bureaucracy was staffed by Greeks, Muslims and Latins, has been a particularly important part of his work, where he has engaged in major debates with other scholars in the field.

Author : Helen Hills
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2004-02-12
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780195117745

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Invisible City by Helen Hills Pdf

Invisible City analyzes conventual architecture in terms of the politics of sight, "the optics of power", the relationship between flesh and stone. It uncovers the connections between the bodies of the nuns and the walls that housed them, presenting the architecture of female convents as a metaphor for the body of the aristocratic female virgin nun.