Thursday Mar 03, 2022
Chinese Revolutionary Forerunners
We’re going to go back into history and look at some of the precursors to revolutions that we’ll be covering in our podcast. It wasn’t like somebody woke up one day and decided to throw a nice revolution and the whole nation came, there are precedents in Chinese history for revolution.
About the "Mandate of Heaven"
In this podcast, we're just going to call it "political legitimacy." If a government figures out how to keep itself in power and address enough of the needs of the people to get them to go with it, then there you have it.
Revolutionary Chinese Figures and Events
Qin Shihuang: Ruler of Qin (247-221 BC), First Emperor of China (221-210 BC)
Legalism school of thought, “burning of books and burying of scholars,” end of the “Hundred Schools of Thought” of the Warring States Period
Great Wall
Other public works, unified weights and measures, national road system, unified writing system
Coming of Buddhism (100s AD)
Buddhism challenged the, to that point, traditional structure of Chinese society.
During the Tang Dynasty, Emperor Wuzong (814-846, contemporary of the Byzantines, early Islam) repressed Buddhism as un-Chinese.
The inheritance of past revolutions conflicts with the inheritance of other revolutions down the years.
Usurpation of Wang Mang (9-23 AD)
The ruling dynasty slipped gears, some idealists found themselves in charge, tried some reforms, but ruling dynasty was restored
Though the Han were eventually overthrown, the imperial system sustained.
Dynastic Succession as Formalized Revolutionary Succession
Each dynasty did things differently, it’s not like it was one long sleepy succession of dreamy emperors, in America and Europe we just don’t know anything about it.
Dynastic succession meant refreshing in initiative, revolutions in policy.
Cycles of division and then ultimate reunification: history established that China pretty much always “gets the band back together.”
Yellow Turban Revolt (184-205 AD)
At the end of the Han Dynasty, a weird religious cult took off, rebelling against the corruption in the imperial court.
Some guy gets an apparition from a Taoist sage, then on the basis of his widespread popular support, decides to have a go at seizing the realm.
In Chinese history, things like this are the opportunistic infections that strike as the political “immune system” falls apart.
You see stuff like this toward the end of a dynasty. We’re going to cover the Taiping Rebellion in more detail.
Some Main Points
Today’s revolution inherits a lot of the furniture from the last revolution.
So far, it seems that there being one unified China is the thing that keeps poking through any time of disruption, the warlords in the warlord era weren’t starting something new, they were just protecting their slice of the pie.
Introduction of new ideas and religions is going to shake things up, one possible hinge on which a revolution will turn.
China’s boundaries fluctuate through history, but China continues for, like, ever. What “should” China’s boundaries be? History kind of solves that.
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