This July join RAS council members Aryeh Amihay and James Miller for the first ever RAS China History Summer School. Over four weekly Zoom meetings in July, we will take you on a journey through China's history from the Bronze Age to the Qing dynasty. We will do this by examining four key issues or controversies that have arisen amongst historians.

1. July 7: Dating China's Bronze Age. In this session we will examine China's state-sponsored Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project. This initiative aimed to scientifically establish an absolute chronology for the Western Zhou dynasty, and reasonable approximations for the Xia and Shang dynasties. The project has attracted extensive discussions among scholars in China and across the world regarding its methodologies and findings.
2. July 14: The Han Dynasty Confucianism-Legalism Controversy. Following the downfall of the Qin dynasty which had espoused a Legalist political philosophy, conventional history regards the Han dynasty as one that embraced Confucian philosophy as the bedrock of Chinese politics and governance. Despite the Confucian rhetoric, archeological evidence shows the continued influence of punitive legal codes that are more consistent with the previous dynasty's approach. Was the Han dynasty just Confucian on the outside, but really Legalist on the inside?

3. July 21: Tang Cosmopolitanism. Recent historians have begun to understand much better the Tang dynasty's connections with Central Asia and foreign diasporas, including Sogdians, Persians and Turks. At the same time, it is clear that foreign religions including Zoroastrianism and Nestorian Christianity had an impact on Chinese society. Looking eastwards, the court also engaged in diplomatic and cultural exchanges with to Korea and Japan. All this leads to the question of how cosmopolitan was Chinese society during the Tang dynasty?
4. July 28. The New Qing History. American scholars such as Mark Elliott and Pamela Crossley have expanded our understanding of the Qing dynasty by using texts and sources in Manchu, Tibetan and other non-Han languages. This has led to the formation of a "new Qing history" which understands the Qing not so much as a "Chinese dynasty" but as a "multiethnic empire" quite distinct from earlier Han-led dynasties. Needless to say their approach has been quite controversial in China.

Format

The history summer school will take place via Zoom on Monday evenings. Short readings will be distributed via email before each session (please check your spam folder). Note that we will adopt a seminar format rather than a lecture format, so we ask each person kindly to turn their camera on so that we can all participate more fully in the educational experience.