Author: John D. Langlois Jr. Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400854091 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 516
Book Description
Encompassing history, politics, religion, and art, this collection of essays on Chinese civilization under the Mongols challenges the previously held views that Mongol rule had only negative consequences. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Elizabeth Endicott-West Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 1684170052 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 228
Book Description
The Mongolian Yuan dynasty, 1272-1368, is a short but interesting chapter in the long history of Sino-Mongolian relations. Faced with the challenge of governing a huge sedentary empire, the traditionally nomadic Mongols acceded to some Chinese institutional precedents, but, in large part, adhered to their own Inner Asian practices of staffing and administering the government apparatus.Yuan administrative documents provide information that permits a fairly accurate reconstruction of the day-to-day functioning of the local government bureaucracy. From these materials, Elizabeth Endicott-West has put together a detailed picture of the Mongols' methods of selecting local officials, the ethnic backgrounds of officials, and policy formation and implementation at the local level.
Author: Martin Bauch Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG ISBN: 3110657961 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 420
Book Description
Pre-modern critical interactions of nature and society can best be studied during the so-called "Crisis of the 14th Century". While historiography has long ignored the environmental framing of historcial processes and scientists have over-emphasized nature's impact on the course of human history, this volume tries to describe the at times complex modes of the late-medieval relationship of man and nature. The idea of 'teleconnection', borrowed from the geosciences, describes the influence of atmospheric circulation patterns often over long distances. It seems that there were 'teleconnections' in society, too. So this volumes aims to examine man-environment interactions mainly in the 14th century from all over Europe and beyond. It integrates contributions from different disciplines on impact, perception and reaction of environmental change and natural extreme events on late Medieval societies. For humanists from all historical disciplines it offers an approach how to integrate written and even scientific evidence on environmental change in established and new fields of historical research. For scientists it demonstrates the contributions scholars from the humanities can provide for discussion on past environmental changes.
Author: Morris Rossabi Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies ISBN: 9814459720 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 254
Book Description
This book documents the extraordinarily significant transfers and cultural diffusion between the Mongol Yuan Dynasty of China and Central and West Asia, which had a broad impact on Eurasian history in the 13th and 14th centuries. The Yuan era witnessed perhaps the greatest inter-civilisational contacts in world history and has thus begun to attract the attention of both scholars and the general public. This volume offers tangible evidence of the Western and Central Asian influences, via the Mongols, on Chinese, and to a certain extent Korean, medicine, astronomy, navigation, and even foreign relations. Turkic peoples and other Muslims played particularly vital roles in such transmissions. These inter-civilisational relations led to the first precise Western knowledge of East and South Asia and stimulated Europeans to discover new routes to the East. The authors of these essays, specialists in their respective fields, shine a light on these vital exchanges, which anyone interested in the origins of global history will find fascinating. “In this volume of wide-ranging essays, scholars from the United States, China and Europe present new insights into how the close relationship between Mongol China and Ilkhanid Persia, and the Mongol employment of Eurasians (many Muslims) of diverse origins, shaped Yuan politics, foreign trade, and culture (scientific knowledge, architecture, medicine), as well as the life of East Asia in the 13th to 14th centuries and beyond. Not surprisingly, in addressing the nature of cultural influence, and how it should or can be identified, measured, and assessed, these authors do not reach a consensus, but do shed light on issues of agency - Mongol, Chinese, and other - and in so doing offer up a wealth of fascinating detail about an era of broad interest to comparative historians of the premodern world as well as specialists on China.” - Ruth W. Dunnell, James P. Storer Professor of Asian History, Kenyon College “A central aim of this volume is to stimulate scholarly interest in the Yuan Dynasty, the ‘step-sister in the study of China.’ By providing a fascinating array of articles - ranging from Muslim maritime semi-colonialism to Chinese resistance of Islamic architectural and astronomical innovation, juxtaposed with medical and cartographical exchanges from West to East, as well as the political influence of Qip?aq Turks in Beijing and neo-Confucian Uyghurs in Chos?n Korea - it has thereby succeeded admirably.” - Johan Elverskog, Altshuler University Distinguished Professor, Southern Methodist University
Author: Reuven Amitai Publisher: University of Hawaii Press ISBN: 082484789X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 362
Book Description
Since the first millennium BCE, nomads of the Eurasian steppe have played a key role in world history and the development of adjacent sedentary regions, especially China, India, the Middle East, and Eastern and Central Europe. Although their more settled neighbors often saw them as an ongoing threat and imminent danger—“barbarians,” in fact—their impact on sedentary cultures was far more complex than the raiding, pillaging, and devastation with which they have long been associated in the popular imagination. The nomads were also facilitators and catalysts of social, demographic, economic, and cultural change, and nomadic culture had a significant influence on that of sedentary Eurasian civilizations, especially in cases when the nomads conquered and ruled over them. Not simply passive conveyors of ideas, beliefs, technologies, and physical artifacts, nomads were frequently active contributors to the process of cultural exchange and change. Their active choices and initiatives helped set the cultural and intellectual agenda of the lands they ruled and beyond. This volume brings together a distinguished group of scholars from different disciplines and cultural specializations to explore how nomads played the role of “agents of cultural change.” The beginning chapters examine this phenomenon in both east and west Asia in ancient and early medieval times, while the bulk of the book is devoted to the far flung Mongol empire of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This comparative approach, encompassing both a lengthy time span and a vast region, enables a clearer understanding of the key role that Eurasian pastoral nomads played in the history of the Old World. It conveys a sense of the complex and engaging cultural dynamic that existed between nomads and their agricultural and urban neighbors, and highlights the non-military impact of nomadic culture on Eurasian history. Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change illuminates and complicates nomadic roles as active promoters of cultural exchange within a vast and varied region. It makes available important original scholarship on the new turn in the study of the Mongol empire and on relations between the nomadic and sedentary worlds.
Author: Beatrice Forbes Manz Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1009213385 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 545
Book Description
A history of pastoral nomads in the Islamic Middle East from the rise of Islam, through the middle periods when Mongols and Turks ruled most of the region, to the decline of nomadism in the twentieth century. Offering a vivid insight into the impact of nomads on the politics, culture, and ideology of the region, Beatrice Forbes Manz examines and challenges existing perceptions of these nomads, including the popular cyclical model of nomad-settled interaction developed by Ibn Khaldun. Looking at both the Arab Bedouin and the nomads from the Eurasian steppe, Manz demonstrates the significance of Bedouin and Turco-Mongolian contributions to cultural production and political ideology in the Middle East, and shows the central role played by pastoral nomads in war, trade, and state-building throughout history. Nomads provided horses and soldiers for war, the livestock and guidance which made long-distance trade possible, and animal products to provision the region's growing cities.
Author: Michal Biran Publisher: University of California Press ISBN: 0520298756 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 355
Book Description
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Chinggis Khan and his heirs established the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world, extending from Korea to Hungary and from Iraq, Tibet, and Burma to Siberia. Ruling over roughly two thirds of the Old World, the Mongol Empire enabled people, ideas, and objects to traverse immense geographical and cultural boundaries. Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia reveals the individual stories of three key groups of people—military commanders, merchants, and intellectuals—from across Eurasia. These annotated biographies bring to the fore a compelling picture of the Mongol Empire from a wide range of historical sources in multiple languages, providing important insights into a period unique for its rapid and far-reaching transformations. Read together or separately, they offer the perfect starting point for any discussion of the Mongol Empire’s impact on China, the Muslim world, and the West and illustrate the scale, diversity, and creativity of the cross-cultural exchange along the continental and maritime Silk Roads. Features and Benefits: Synthesizes historical information from Chinese, Arabic, Persian, and Latin sources that are otherwise inaccessible to English-speaking audiences. Presents in an accessible manner individual life stories that serve as a springboard for discussing themes such as military expansion, cross-cultural contacts, migration, conversion, gender, diplomacy, transregional commercial networks, and more. Each chapter includes a bibliography to assist students and instructors seeking to further explore the individuals and topics discussed. Informative maps, images, and tables throughout the volume supplement each biography.
Author: Paul Jakov Smith Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 1684173817 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 549
Book Description
This volume seeks to study the connections between two well-studied epochs in Chinese history: the mid-imperial era of the Tang and Song (ca. 800-1270) and the late imperial era of the late Ming and Qing (1550-1900). Both eras are seen as periods of explosive change, particularly in economic activity, characterized by the emergence of new forms of social organization and a dramatic expansion in knowledge and culture. The task of establishing links between these two periods has been impeded by a lack of knowledge of the intervening Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). This historiographical "black hole" has artificially interrupted the narrative of Chinese history and bifurcated it into two distinct epochs. This book aims to restore continuity to that historical narrative by filling the gap between mid-imperial and late imperial China. The contributors argue that the Song-Yuan-Ming transition (early twelfth through the late fifteenth century) constitutes a distinct historical period of transition and not one of interruption and devolution. They trace this transition by investigating such subjects as contemporary impressions of the period, the role of the Mongols in intellectual life, the economy of Jiangnan, urban growth, neo-Confucianism and local society, commercial publishing, comic drama, and medical learning.
Author: John D. Langlois Jr.
Author: David M. Farquhar
Author: Elizabeth Endicott-West
Author: Martin Bauch
Author: Morris Rossabi
Author: Reuven Amitai
Author: Beatrice Forbes Manz
Author: Michal Biran
Author: Marco Polo
Author: Paul Jakov Smith