Chinese
History
History
Links
Chinese history is a vast field of intellectual inquiry.
Advances in archeology and documentary research constantly
produce new results and numerous new publications. An excellent
and concise survey of the entire course of Chinese history up to
the 1970s is China: Tradition and Transformation by John K.
Fairbank and Edwin O. Reischauer. For a more in-depth review of
modern Chinese history (beginning of the Qing dynasty to the early
1980s), Immanuel C.Y. Hsu's The Rise of Modern China should
be consulted. Hsu's book is particularly useful for its
chapter-by-chapter bibliography. Maurice Meisner's Mao's China
and After: A History of the People's Republic presents a
comprehensive historical analysis of post-1949 China and provides
a selected bibliography.
There are a number of excellent serial
publications covering
Chinese history topics. These include China Quarterly, Chinese
Studies in History, and Journal of Asian Studies. The Association
for Asian Studies' annual Bibliography of Asian Studies provides
the most comprehensive list of monographs, collections of
documents, and articles on Chinese history.
This information was found on a good
site by Leon Poon
lpoon@chaos.umd.edu for a more detailed list of references
check out his References
for History of China
Chinese
History Timeline -
compiled by Leon Poon with the use of
Army
Area Handbook see below
| Dates |
Dynasty |
|
| ca. 2000-1500 B.C. |
Xia |
 |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() 1700-1027![]() B.C. |
Shang |
 |
| 1027-771 B.C. |
Western
Zhou |
  |
| 770-221 B.C. |
Eastern Zhou |
 |
| 770-476
B.C. -- Spring and Autumn period |
 |
| 475-221
B.C. -- Warring States period |
|
| 221-207 B.C. |
Qin |
 |
| 206 B.C.-A.D. 9 |
Western
Han |
 |
| A.D. 9-24 |
Xin
(Wang Mang interregnum) |
 |
| A.D. 25-220 |
Eastern
Han |
|
| A.D. 220-280 |
Three
Kingdoms |
 |
| 220-265 --
Wei |
 |
| 221-263 --
Shu |
 |
| 229-280 -- Wu |
 |
| A.D. 265-316 |
Western Jin |
 |
| A.D. 317-420 |
Eastern Jin |
|
| A.D. 420-588 |
Southern and
Northern Dynasties |
   |
| 420-588 |
Southern Dynasties |
|
| 420-478 -- Song |
 |
| 479-501 -- Qi |
 |
| 502-556 -- Liang |
 |
| 557-588 -- Chen |
 |
| 386-588 |
Northern Dynasties |
|
| 386-533 -- Northern Wei |
|
| 534-549 -- Eastern Wei |
|
| 535-557 -- Western Wei |
|
| 550-577 -- Northern Qi |
|
| 557-588 -- Northern Zhou |
|
| A.D. 581-617 |
Sui |
 |
| A.D. 618-907 |
Tang |
 |
| A.D. 907-960 |
Five
Dynasties |
 |
| 907-923 --
Later Liang |
 |
| 923-936 --
Later Tang |
|
| 936-946 --
Later Jin |
|
| 947-950 --
Later Han |
|
| 951-960 --
Later Zhou |
|
| A.D. 907-979 |
Ten Kingdoms |
 |
| A.D. 960-1279 |
Song |
|
| 960-1127 --
Northern Song |
|
| 1127-1279 --
Southern Song |
|
| A.D. 916-1125 |
Liao |
 |
| A.D. 1038-1227 |
Western Xia |
|
| A.D. 1115-1234 |
Jin |
 |
| A.D. 1279-1368 |
Yuan |
 |
| A.D. 1368-1644 |
Ming |
 |
| A.D. 1644-1911 |
Qing |
 |
| A.D. 1911-1949 |
Republic
of China (in mainland China) |
 |
| A.D. 1949- |
Republic of
China (in Taiwan) |
| A.D. 1949- |
People's
Republic of China |
 |
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HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
Prehistory:
Hominid activity dates back 4 to 5 million years in China, and evidence
has been found of early paleolithic hominids living some 1 million
years ago. The remains of Homo erectus (Peking Man or Sinanthropus
pekinensis), found southwest of Beijing in 1927, date from around
400,000 years ago. Some 7,000 neolithic sites (some as old as ca. 9000
B.C.) have been found in North China, the Yangzi (Changjiang or
Yangtze) River Valley, and southeast coastal areas. These sites include
a neolithic agricultural village in Shaanxi Province dating from around
4500 B.C. to 3750 B.C., which had a moat for security and evidence of
wood-framed, mud and straw houses, colored pottery, slash-and burn
farming, and burial sites in nearby cemeteries. The oldest neolithic
city found in China was uncovered by archaeologists in Henan Province
and dates back to between 4,800 and 5,300 years ago.
Early
History:
The first recognized dynasty—the Xia—lasted from about 2200 to 1750
B.C. and marked the transition from the late neolithic age to the
Bronze Age. The Xia was the beginning of a long period of cultural
development and dynastic succession that led the way to the more
urbanized civilization of the Shang Dynasty (1750–1040 B.C.).
Hereditary Shang kings ruled over much of North China, and Shang armies
fought frequent wars against neighboring settlements and nomadic
herders from the north. The Shang capitals were centers of
sophisticated court life for the king, who was the shamanistic head of
the ancestor- and spirit-worship cult. Intellectual life developed in
significant ways during the Shang period and flourished in the next
dynasty—the Zhou (1040–256 B.C.). China’s great schools of intellectual
thought—Confucianism, Legalism, Daoism, Mohism, and others—all
developed during the Zhou Dynasty.
The intersection of migration,
amalgamation, and development has characterized China’s history from
its earliest origins and resulted in a distinctive system of writing,
philosophy, art, and social and political organization and civilization
that was continuous over the past 4,000 years. Since the beginning of
recorded history (at least since the Shang Dynasty), the people of
China have developed a strong sense of their origins, both mythological
and real, and kept voluminous records concerning both. As a result of
these records, augmented by numerous archaeological discoveries in the
second half of the twentieth century, information concerning the
ancient past, not only of China but also of much of East, Central, and
Inner Asia, has survived.
The
Imperial Period: Over several
millennia, China absorbed the people of surrounding areas into its own
civilization while adopting the more useful institutions and
innovations of the conquered people. Peoples on China’s peripheries
were attracted by such achievements as its early and well-developed
ideographic written language, technological developments, and social
and political institutions. The refinement of the Chinese people’s
artistic talent and their intellectual creativity, plus the sheer
weight of their numbers, has long made China’s civilization predominant
in East Asia. The process of assimilation continued over the centuries
through conquest and colonization until the core territory of China was
brought under unified rule. The Chinese polity was first consolidated
and proclaimed an empire during the Qin Dynasty (221–206 B.C.).
Although short-lived, the Qin Dynasty set in place lasting unifying
structures, such as standardized legal codes, bureaucratic procedures,
forms of writing, coinage, and a pattern of thought and scholarship.
These were modified and improved upon by the successor Han Dynasty.
Library
of Congress – Federal Research Division Country Profile: China, August
2006
3
(206
B.C.–A.D. 220). Under the Han, a combination of the stricter Legalism
and the more benevolent, human-centered Confucianism—known as Han
Confucianism or State Confucianism—became the ruling norm in Chinese
culture for the next 2,000 years. Thus, the Chinese marked the cultures
of people beyond their borders, especially those of Korea, Japan, and
Vietnam.
Another recurrent historical theme has been the unceasing
struggle of the largely agrarian Chinese against the threat posed to
their safety and way of life by non-Chinese peoples on the margins of
their territory. For centuries most of the foreigners that China’s
officials saw came from or through the Central and Inner Asian
societies to the north and west. This circumstance conditioned the
Chinese view of the outside world. The Chinese saw their domain as the
self-sufficient center of the universe, and from this image they
derived the traditional (and still used) Chinese name for their
country—Zhongguo, literally Middle Kingdom or Central Nation. Those at
the center (zhong) of civilization (as they knew it) distinguished
themselves from the “barbarian” peoples on the outside (wai), whose
cultures were presumed to be inferior by Chinese standards. For
centuries, China faced periodic invasions from Central and Inner
Asia—including major incursions in the twelfth century by the Khitan
and the Jurchen, in the thirteenth century by the Mongols, and in the
seventeenth century by the Manchu, all of whom left an imprint on
Chinese civilization while heightening Chinese perceptions of threat
from the north. Starting in the pre-Qin period, Chinese states built
large defensive walls that, in time, composed a “Great Wall.” The Great
Wall is actually a series of noncontiguous walls, forts, and other
defensive structures built or rebuilt during the Qin, Han, Sui (A.D.
589–618), Jin (1115–1234), and Ming (1368–1643) periods, rather than a
single, continuous wall. The Great Wall reaches from the coast of Hebei
Province to northwestern Gansu, officially 6,000 kilometers in length,
although unofficial estimates range from 2,700 kilometers to as many as
50,000 kilometers, depending on which structures are included in the
measurement.
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The Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties
represented high points of Chinese cultural development and interaction
with distant foreign lands. The Yuan, or Mongol, Dynasty (1279–1368)
was a period of foreign occupation but of even greater interaction with
other cultures. Despite these periods of openness, which brought
occasional Middle Eastern and European envoys and missionaries, the
China-centered (“sinocentric”) view of the world remained largely
undisturbed until the nineteenth century when China first clashed with
the European nations. The Manchu had conquered China and established
the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), ushering in a period of great conquest
and a long period of relative peace. When Europeans began arriving in
increasing numbers, Chinese courtiers expected them to conduct
themselves according to traditional tributary relations that had
evolved over the centuries between their emperor and representatives of
Central Asian states who came via the Silk Road and others who came
from Southeast Asia and the Middle East via the sea trade. The Western
powers arrived in China in full force at a time of tremendous internal
rebellion and rapid economic and social change. By the mid-nineteenth
century, China had been defeated militarily by superior Western
technology and weaponry, and the government was plagued with ever
mounting rebellions. As it faced dynastic breakdown and imminent
territorial dismemberment, China began to reassess its position with
respect to its own internal development and the Western incursions. By
1911 the millennia-old dynastic system of imperial government was
hastily toppled as a result of the efforts of a half century of reform,
modernization, and, ultimately, revolution.
Library of Congress – Federal Research Division Country Profile: China,
August 2006
4
Republican
China: The end of imperial rule was followed by nearly
four decades of
major socioeconomic development and socio political discord. The
initial
establishment of a Western-style government—the Republic of China—was
followed by several efforts to restore the throne. Lack of a strong
central authority led to regional fragmentation, warlordism, and civil
war. The main figure in the revolutionary movement that overthrew
imperial rule was Sun Yatsen (1866–1925), who, along with other
republican political leaders, endeavored to establish a parliamentary
democracy. They were thwarted by warlords with imperial and
quasi-democratic pretensions who resorted to assassination, rebellion,
civil war, and collusion with foreign powers (especially Japan) in
their efforts to gain control. A major political and social movement
during this time was the May Fourth Movement (1919), in which calls for
the study of “science” and “democracy” were combined with a new
patriotism that became the focus of an anti-Japanese and anti
government
movement. Ignored by the Western powers and in charge of a southern
military government with its capital in Guangzhou, Sun Yatsen
eventually turned to the new Soviet Union for inspiration and
assistance. The Soviets obliged Sun and his Guomindang (Nationalist
Party). Soviet advisers helped the Guomindang establish political and
military training activities. A key individual in these developments
was Jiang Jieshi (1888–1975; Chiang Kai-shek in Yue dialect), one of
Sun’s lieutenants from the early revolution days. But Moscow also
supported the new Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which was founded by
Mao Zedong (1893–1976) and others in Shanghai in 1921. The Soviets
hoped for consolidation of the Guomindang and the CCP but were prepared
for either side to emerge victorious. The struggle for power in China
began between the Guomindang and the CCP as both parties also sought
the unification of China.
Sun’s untimely death from illness in 1925
brought a split in the Guomindang and eventually an uneasy united front
between the Guomindang and the CCP. Jiang Jieshi’s military academy
trained a new generation of officers who would soon embark on the
Northern Expedition. Zhou Enlai (1898–1976), who later become premier
of China under the communists, was a political commissar at this
academy. Jiang, who succeeded Sun Yatsen, broke with his Soviet
advisers and with the communists but by 1927 was successful in
defeating the northern warlords and unifying China. The years 1928 to
1937 are often referred to as the Nanjing Decade because of the
national development that took place under Jiang’s presidency before
World War II when China’s capital was in Nanjing (Southern Capital).
The Northern Expedition had culminated in the capture of Beijing, which
was renamed Beiping (Northern Peace). Thereafter, the Nanjing
government received international recognition as the sole legitimate
government of China.
With the 1927 split between the Guomindang and
the CCP, the CCP began to engage in armed struggle against the Jiang
regime. The Red Army was established in 1927, and after a series of
uprisings and internal political struggles, the CCP announced the
establishment in 1931 of the Chinese Soviet Republic under the
chairmanship of Mao in Jiangxi Province in south-central China. After a
series of deadly annihilation campaigns by Jiang’s armies, the Red Army
and the CCP apparatus broke out of Jiangxi and embarked on their epic
12,500-kilometer Long March of 1934–35 to a new stronghold in Shaanxi
Province in the north. During the march, Mao consolidated his hold over
the CCP when in 1935 he became chairman, a position he held until his
death in 1976.
Library
of Congress – Federal Research Division Country Profile: China, August
2006
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5
Japan
invaded Manchuria in 1931, established the puppet government of
Manchukuo in 1932, and soon pushed south into North China. The 1936
Xi’an Incident—in which Jiang Jieshi was held captive by local military
forces until he agreed to a second front with the CCP—brought new
impetus to China’s resistance to Japan. However, a clash between
Chinese and Japanese troops outside Beiping on July 7, 1937, marked the
beginning of full-scale warfare. Shanghai was attacked and quickly
fell. An indication of the ferocity of Tokyo’s determination to
annihilate the Guomindang government is reflected in the major atrocity
committed by the Japanese army in and around Nanjing during a six-week
period in December 1937 and January 1938. Known in history as the
Nanjing Massacre, wanton rape, looting, arson, and mass executions took
place, so that in one horrific day, some 57,418 Chinese prisoners of
war and civilians reportedly were killed. Japanese sources admit to a
total of 142,000 deaths during the Nanjing Massacre, but Chinese
sources report upward of 340,000 deaths and 20,000 women raped. Japan
expanded its war effort in the Pacific, Southeast, and South Asia, and
by 1941 the United States had entered the war. With Allied assistance,
Chinese military forces—both Guomindang and CCP—defeated Japan. Civil
war between the Guomindang and the CCP broke out in 1946, and the
Guomindang forces were defeated and had retreated to a few offshore
islands and Taiwan by 1949. Mao and the other CCP leaders reestablished
the capital in Beiping, which they renamed Beijing.
People’s
Republic of China: The communist takeover of the mainland
in 1949 set
the scene for building a new society built on a Marxist-Leninist model
replete with class struggle and proletarian politics fashioned and
directed by the CCP. The People’s Republic of China was barely
established (October 1, 1949) when it perceived a threat from the
United States, which was at war in North Korea, and elected to support
its neighbor, the new communist state, the Democratic People’s Republic
of Korea. The Chinese People’s Volunteer Army invaded the Korean
Peninsula in October 1950 and, along with its North Korean ally,
enjoyed initial military success and then a two-year stalemate, which
culminated in an armistice signed on July 27, 1953. Meanwhile, China
seized control of Tibet. It also had embarked on a political
rectification movement against “enemies of the state” and promoting
“class struggle” under the aegis of agrarian reform as part of the
“transition to socialism.”
Periods of consolidation and economic
development facilitated by President Liu Shaoqi (1898–1969) and Premier
Zhou were severely altered by disastrous anti-intellectual (such as the
Hundred Flowers Campaign, 1957), economic (the Great Leap Forward,
1958–59), and political (the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,
1966–76) experiments directed by Mao and his supporters. During this
time, China had broken with the Soviet Union by 1959, fought a border
war with India in 1962, and skirmished with Soviet troops in 1969. In
1969 Mao anointed Lin Biao (1908–71), a radical People’s Liberation
Army marshal, as his heir apparent, but by 1971 Lin was dead, the
result of an airplane crash in Mongolia following an alleged coup
attempt against his mentor. Less radical leaders such as Zhou and Vice
Premier Deng Xiaoping (1904–97), who had been politically rehabilitated
after his disgrace early in the Cultural Revolution, asserted some
control, and negotiations were initiated with the United States, ending
a generation of extreme animosity toward Washington. The 1976 death of
Mao ended the extremist influence in the party, and, under the
leadership of Deng Xiaoping and his supporters, China began a period of
pragmatic economic reforms and opening itself to the outside world.
Library
of Congress – Federal Research Division Country Profile: China, August
2006
6
Reform-era
activities began in earnest in 1978 and eventually made China one of
the largest world economies and trading partners as well as an emerging
regional military power. The Four Modernizations (agriculture,
industry, science and technology, and national defense) became the
preeminent agenda within the party, state, and society. The well-being
of China’s people increased substantially, especially along coastal
areas and in urban areas involved in manufacturing for the world
market. Yet, politics, the so-called “fifth modernization,” occurred at
too slow a pace for the emerging generation. China’s incipient
democracy movement was subdued in 1978–79 at the very time that China’s
economic reforms were being launched. As Deng consolidated his control
of China, the call for political reform came to the fore again in the
mid-1980s, and pro-reform leaders were placed in positions of
authority: Zhao Ziyang (1919–2005) was appointed premier, and Hu
Yaobang (1915–89) CCP general secretary. Deng himself, satisfied with
being the “power behind the throne,” never held a top position. The
democracy movement, however, was violently suppressed by the military
in the 1989 Tiananmen incident.
In the years after Tiananmen,
conservative reformers led by Deng protégé Jiang Zemin (later to become
president of China, chairman of both the state Central Military
Commission and party Central Military Commission, and general secretary
of the CCP) endured and eventually overcame world criticism. When Deng
went into retirement, the rising generation of technocrats ruled China
and oversaw its modernization. Political progress gradually occurred.
Term limits were placed on political and governmental positions at all
levels, succession became orderly and contested elections began to take
place at the local level. Tens of thousands of Chinese students went
overseas to study; many returned to participate in the building of
modern China, some to become millionaires in the new “socialist economy
with Chinese characteristics.” As a sign of its emerging superpower
status, in October 2003 China launched its first “taikonaut” into space
on a 22-hour journey. The second space launch, with two taikonauts,
took place in October 2005 and involved a 115-hour flight. In the next
stage of space exploration, China plans to conduct a space walk in 2007
and a rendezvous docking in orbit between 2009 and 2012. It also plans
to launch a moon-orbiting unmanned spacecraft by 2007 and to land an
unmanned probe on the moon by 2010.
As the
twenty-first century began, a new generation of leaders emerged and
gradually replaced the old. Position by position, Jiang Zemin gradually
gave up his leadership role and by 2004 had moved into a position of
elder statesman, still with obvious influence exerted through his
protégés who were embedded at all levels of the government. The
“politics in command” of the Maoist past were subliminally present when
technocrat Hu Jintao emerged—by 2004—as the preeminent leader
(president of China, chairman of both the state Central Military
Commission and party Central Military Commission, and general secretary
of the CCP) with grudging acceptance by Jiang and his supporters.
China Army Area Handbook
More
Chinese History sites
- General History
- Paul Frankenstein's Brief
History of China
- Concise
Political History of China
- Classical
Historiography For Chinese History
- The
Chinese Empire
 Gateway
Service Center of Chinese Academic Journal Publications:
- University
of Oregon East Asian Library
-
Exploring
Ancient China
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China
Historical Geographic Information System (CHGIS) (collaborative
project with objective to "create a flexible tool that can be used to
investigate any sort of geographically specific data related to China,
involving numerous universities) (Yenching Institute, Harvard U., et.
al.) |
|
A
Country Study: China (historical,
cultural, political and economic information, from ancient to modern
times, arranged by topic) (Robert L. Worden, Andrea Matles Savada and
Ronald E. Dolan, Library of Congress, Washington, DC) |
|
Concise Political History of China (annotated
timeline, with material compiled from Compton's Living
Encyclopedia within larger Chinese Cultural Studies site)
(Paul Halsall, U. North Florida) |
|
Barend J. ter Haar's Website (includes
bibliographies on Violence, Protest, and other topics in Chinese
History) (Barend J. ter Haar, U. Leiden) |
|
Paul Halsall (U. North Florida)
Chinese Culture (Brooklyn
College course web-site, with links to articles and images) |
|
A
Country Study: Macau (historical,
cultural, political and economic information, from ancient to modern
times, arranged by topic) (Robert L. Worden, Library of Congress,
Washington, DC) |
|
Taiwan Maps (from the
Perry-Castañeda Library
Map Collection) (U. Texas, Austin) |
|
Leon Poon (U. of Maryland) History
of China (sections with a timeline and with articles
arranged by topic) |
|
China (images
and multimedia resources, includes "bibliographies" section with
numerous resources on Chinese culture and history) (Marilyn Shea, U.
Maine, Farmington) |
|
Silk Road Seattle (virtual
exhibits, including maps and articles, exploring the Silk Road to the
17th Century) (Daniel C. Waugh, U. Washington) |
|
Leon Poon (U. Maryland) Ancient Dynasties (1 of
2 overview article and image pages on Ancient Dynasties, within larger
history of China site) |
|
The Chou, 1050-256 BC (overview,
within the World Civilizations: China: The Middle Kingdom pages)
(Richard Hooker, Washington State U.) |
|
China: History (article
on early China) (Robert Crowley, U. Illinois, Springfield) |
|
Emuseum: China (timeline
on ancient and imperial Chinese periods, with articles and maps)
(Minnesota State U., Mankota) |
|
Han Dynasty (overview
article and images, within larger site on ancient and imperial China)
(Minnesota State U., Mankota) |
|
Warring
State Project ("a
center and international contact point for research on China's
classical period (the 05th through 03rd centuries," includes project
description, other resources) (U. Massachusetts, Amherst) |
|
Zhou Dynasty (overview
article and images, within larger site on ancient and imperial China)
(Minnesota State U., Mankota) |
|
Emuseum: China (timeline
on ancient and imperial Chinese periods, with articles and maps)
(Minnesota State U., Mankota) |
|
T'ang Dynasty (overview
article and images, within larger site on ancient and imperial China)
(Minnesota State U., Mankota) |
|
The Legacy of Genghis Khan (virtual
exhibits, with historical information, including Mongol history in
China and Iran) (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) |
|
Ming Dynasty (overview
article and images, within larger site on ancient and imperial China)
(Minnesota State U., Mankota) |
|
Formosa (virtual exhibit
on 19th century Taiwan through Western eyes, with maps, timelines, and
more) (Reed C., Portland, OR) |
|
The
Qing Dynasty (articles
and links, arranged by topic, within the John Fairbank memorial Chinese
History Virtual Library) (Robert Gray, U. of Michigan) |
|
Qing Dynasty (overview
article and images, within larger site on ancient and imperial China)
(Minnesota State U., Mankota) |
|
Frederick S. Litten (I. for the
History of Science, Ludwig-Maximilians-U., Munich) 'The
CCP and the Fujian Rebellion" (essay in translation
of thesis on Communist involvement in 1930's insurgency) (1988) |
|
Leon Poon (U. Maryland) Republican China (1 of a
series of overview articles on Republican China, within larger history
of China site) |
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