Xia Dynasty ·
Shang Dynasty ·
Western Zhou ·
Eastern Zhou ·
Spring & Autumn Period ·
Warring States Period ·
Qin Dynasty ·
Earlier Han Dynasty ·
Wang Mang Interregnum ·
Later Han Dynasty ·
Three Kingdoms ·
Sui Dynasty ·
Tang Dynasty ·
Song Dynasty ·
Yuan Dynasty ·
Ming Dynasty ·
Qing Dynasty ·
Republic of China ·
People's Republic of China
The History of China (condensed version)
Very little is known about this first dynasty of China. Scientists have long considered this dynasty a myth. Just recently though, evidence of the existence of the Xia dynasty has been found. The Xia dynasty probably came from the Longshan culture, a Neolithic Yellow River culture. Scientists believe that they had a writing system, although no proof of this exists.
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The Shang dynasty was probably the most advanced civilation in the world, and knew how to make bronze very efficiently. Also, this dynasty provides us with the most thorough and earliest example of Chinese writing. The Shang people liked the idea of human sacrifice. Often, if a king died, hundreds of peasants and slaves would join him in the tomb. Many were decaptitated, and some were even buried alive! In the Shang dynasty, instead of passing the kingship down from father to son, they would pass it down from elder brother to younger brother, a rather odd way of succession.
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The Zhou people were quite different from their precursor, the Shang. For one thing, they used the traditional father-son succession system. They also did not value human sacrifice as much as the Shang and rarely practiced it. However, they weren't as good as making bronze, but it would take the Western civilization many centuries before it could match the Zhou's skill. After several centuries of peace, the Zhou's capital was attacked by a group of barbarians from the west.
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After the attack on their main capital, the Zhou people moved to the East. The power of the Zhou greatly fell.
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The Spring & Autumn Period was a period of new ideas and concepts. Fresh philosophies soon sprang up. Among the 3 most important were Daoism, Confucianism, and Legalism.
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The name of this period says it all. Many massive armies fought for control of power in China. Sieges and long battles were very common of this age.
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After the chaotic warring states period, one emperor emerged, Qin Shihuanhdi. However, this dynasty was one of the shortest in the history of China, lasting for only 15 years. Many people say that Qin Shihuandi was a very strict ruler. In fact, he burned all of the books in China to prevent people from getting "ideas". In 210 BC, Qin Shihuandi died and the Qin dynasty was in a state of decline. In 206 BC, a rebellion destroyed the withering empire.
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The Han dynasty was one of the most important of all dynasties in China's history. They perfected the concept we know as bureaucracy. With such a huge country to govern, and with over 60 million people(the most populous at that time), it would be very difficult to govern without bureaucracy. This was based on Confucious' Teaching of good behavior etc. Earlier Han ran China rather efficiently.
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During these 17 years, a man named Wang Mang ruled China. Wang Mang was part of the Han household, but he had no royal blood. He did not rule very efficiently, although he did have some good reform-related ideas.
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With Wang Mang's death, the Han took back the task of ruling China. After about 200 years, the Han dynasty became profligated, mostly due to the fact that barbarian tribes were invading the North. In AD 220, the empire simply collapsed.
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This period was chaotic and disordered. Much like the warring states period, many wars raged throughout the country, and there were 3 main kingdoms competing for total domination of China. During this period, Buddhism was introduced into China, and it became very popular, often overshadowing Confucianism as the main religion. After 350 years of fighting, the Sui emerged on top.
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This was also one of the shorter dynasties in China. However, the Sui did a good job of unifying China. The Sui were part barbarian, like the Tang, and had Northern bases.
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Many historians consider the Tang to be one of the greatest dynasties in Chinese history. Under this dynasty, China arose to be one of the world's greatest powers, much like the US is today. In 775, the famous rebellion known as An Lushan's rebellion shattered Tang's control of China. The country slowly dematerialized for the next 150 years.
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Another great dynasty, the Song was a time of scientific advances. It was a period of peace and prosperity for everyone. The most important advance was in the area of agriculture, helped by the invention of the printing press and the new fast growing strain of rice. The food-supply system was so efficient that there was no need to do anything more. There was enough food for everyone, and even surplus. This system stayed the same all the way up to the 20th century. However, the Song was a failure in the military and political developments. The invading Mongols soon destroyed the dynasty.
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After the Mongols invaded China, they set up their own dynasty, called the Yuan dynasty. Not much happened during this time period, but the Mongols did succeed in preserving China, unlike the other territories that they conquered. There was a noteworthy cultural flowering during the Yuan dynasty. For example, the Beijing Opera was invented during the Yuan. In 1368, the dynasty collapsed.
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The Ming dynasty was rather eccentric compared to the other dynasties of China. For example, when the first Ming emperor learned of a plot against him, he killed everyone that was even remotely related to it. In the end, he killed more than 40,000 people. A sailor named Zheng He with more than 300 ships, sailed as far west as Madagascar. This was more than 100 years before Columbus. However, there were no other sailing expeditions because scholars did not see the importance in them. The Ming, however, did build the Great Wall that we can see today, the Forbidden City, and moved the capital to Beijing.
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After the Ming came to their demise, the manchus moved in and set up the Qing Dynasty. The manchus ruled over China much better than the mongols did, and they did a much better job of emulating the Chinese culture. Under Qing rule, the arts flourished and culture bloomed. Many great novels were written at this time. However, the Qing were very conservative and inflexible. They refused to acknowledge the Western World, as the US was trying to contact them, but failed. During their later years, frequent rebellions erupted, and some were nearly successful, such as the Taiping Rebellion. Eventually, in 1911, no longer to sustain itself, the Qing dynasty collapsed, and the whole dynasty system collapsed along with it.
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The new Chinese government was ran by a group of people called the Nationalists. They sided with the Allies in World War I. Up to the 1920s, the Nationalist Party was unsuccessful. Their leader, Dr. Sun Yatsen, accepted Soviet aid, and with their help, established an alliance with the other main party in China, The Chinese Communist Party. Sadly, this man died in 1925. The task was left behind to Chiang Kaishek. Chiang did not like the CCP and launched a massacre against them. Few were able to escape. The remaining 100,000 fled to the countryside, where Nationalists tried to hunt them down. They were able to survive for a year, but had lost most of their men. At this time, the Japanese had invaded China, and the Nationalists had to turn their attention away from the CCP to fight the Japanese. World War II started, but the Japanese were not initially in the war. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, they had to turn their attention away from China in order to attack the Americans. After World War II, the Communists and Nationalists went to war. The Communists had the upper hand because the Nationalists were in economy chaos and badly corrupted. By the end of October, the Nationalists had fled to Taiwan, and Mao Zedong officially claimed the birth of the People's Republic of China.
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Although Mao Zedong was able to unify China, he did some pretty eccentric things. In 1958, Mao launched the "Great Leap Forward", designed to increase crop production and the making of steel. However, "The Great Leap Backward" would be a better name for this mistake. What soon resulted was the biggest man-made famine of all-time, causing 30 million deaths. While China was still recovering from "The Great Leap Forward", Mao launched yet another unorthodox campaign, called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Mao encouraged students to rebel agains authority, and they often did. China collapsed into a period of chaos, disorder, and anarchy. Most schools, offices, and even transportation were shut down. Students even picked fights with government officials. Huge riots occured in 1967 in both Hong Kong and Macau. In 1976, Mao Zedong died, and Deng Xiaoping came to order in 1978. He then launched his reform program, which proved to be much more effective than Mao's whimsical ideas. In fact, Deng's actions were in exact contrast to Mao's. Little by little, China's economy improved and healed from the Mao years. In 1990, Deng retired and handed his position to Jiang Zemin. Recently, in 1997, Deng Xiaoping died. Since then, there have been no major changes in China, though it is expected to be a major industrial power sometime in the next century. This year though, Jiang Zemin retired and appointed Hu Jintao as the next leader of China.
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