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Cargando... The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development (Princeton Studies in Contemporary China, 13)por Yuhua Wang
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How social networks shaped the imperial Chinese state China was the world's leading superpower for almost two millennia, falling behind only in the last two centuries and now rising to dominance again. What factors led to imperial China's decline? The Rise and Fall of Imperial China offers a systematic look at the Chinese state from the seventh century through to the twentieth. Focusing on how short-lived emperors often ruled a strong state while long-lasting emperors governed a weak one, Yuhua Wang shows why lessons from China's history can help us better understand state building. Wang argues that Chinese rulers faced a fundamental trade-off that he calls the sovereign's dilemma: a coherent elite that could collectively strengthen the state could also overthrow the ruler. This dilemma emerged because strengthening state capacity and keeping rulers in power for longer required different social networks in which central elites were embedded. Wang examines how these social networks shaped the Chinese state, and vice versa, and he looks at how the ruler's pursuit of power by fragmenting the elites became the final culprit for China's fall. Drawing on more than a thousand years of Chinese history, The Rise and Fall of Imperial China highlights the role of elite social relations in influencing the trajectories of state development. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)951.03History and Geography Asia China and region History 1644-1912 (Qing)Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: No hay valoraciones.¿Eres tú?Conviértete en un Autor de LibraryThing. |
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The explanation focuses on the relationship between the state administration (particularly the emperor) and powerful local elites across the country. He argues (and illustrates with data) that this social structure changed from a star network in the 7th - 10th centuries to a bowtie network in the 11th - mid 19th century and disintegrated to a ring without central control in the late 19th century. Surprisingly, the imperial rulers were most secure in their position when the Chinese state was weak, and insecure when central control was strong.
But I did not find the mode of presentation particularly enlightening. The author crams many different viepoints into his analysis of each imperial dynasty. Everything is presented in short subchapters without much detailed explanation. The book reads almost like a literature review: the cited sources probably state what the author says they do, but he does not add much additional insight by presenting a few graphs.
The author also jumps quite quickly from one topic to another. Even though I usually favor theory ahead of minutiae, this book would have been better with more detailed examples of successful and unsuccessful central imperial control through the centuries. In addition to fast-forwarding through more than a millenium of Chinese history in 200 pages, the author could well have expanded the book by pausing for a closer look a state-periphery relations from time to time.
In conclusion, this book presents and interesting historical perspective on state development, but it's not a great pleasure to read it.