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Han China’s pressure on the Xiongnu/Huns is described as creating a westward cascade that pushes steppe groups into conflict and migration toward the Roman world.
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Han China’s pressure on the Xiongnu/Huns is described as creating a westward cascade that pushes steppe groups into conflict and migration toward the Roman world.
The Han disparaged Qin as barbaric and censorious while preserving the basic Qin system of empire.
Han conflict with northern steppe peoples gradually becomes cooperation and dependency through trade, intermarriage, and mercenary use.
Jiang calls the Han the last ethnically Chinese dynasty committed to protecting and propagating Chinese culture, and presents the Tang as a Xianbei-founded universal multicultural empire.
"Why? Because they are ethically Chinese, and they're proud of who they are. So what they're going to do is they're going to try..."
"...maintain the status quo. And the other states like Wei, Zhao, Han, and Chu, especially Chu, they were trying to maintain the status quo...."
"so our very conception of the Qing comes from Han historians who tell us that the Qing buried scholars and they burned books and..."
"...I'm gonna get some treatments ah in Rome itself, until the Han, the Han people are descendants of the Xiongnu, okay? But over time,..."
"...conflicts within China, okay? So open cooperation now switches from the Han, which has become a centralized power, to the steppe people. So within..."
"...Chinese dynasty? You guys should know this. What comes after the Han? The Tang Dynasty, okay? So this is one thing that is misunderstood...."
"...thus plugged into c through thecuperα hasaining because in China the Han Dynasty is waging a war against the steppe nomadic people okay the..."
"...grassland. Now China emerges as an empire, and this is the Han Empire, and this is really the last Chinese dynasty."
"...eastern steppes, okay? The steppe people come into conflict with the Han Dynasty. And the Han Dynasty, as we know from last class, is..."
"...other states within China proper, okay? So you look at the Han Dynasty. Well, the Han Dynasty would give way to dozens of other..."
"...this system is, of course, national unity. So again, during the Han, you have all these different provinces that form their own dynasties and..."
"...throughout Chinese history. Okay? As you can see, during the Western Han, during the Han Dynasty, most of these cities are centered around the..."
A source-grounded reading of Jiang’s lecture on why the so-called barbarians repeatedly defeat civilization: empires turn innovation into bureaucracy, while the steppe turns geography, animals, inheritance, oath, myth, and violence into mobile social power.
China had the technologies that made modernity possible, then built a political culture that made those technologies inert.
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