Traditional China from Antiquity to 1550
This course will trace Chinese history from the origins of classical Chinese civilization in the Shang and Zhou periods to the evolution of an agrarian society under the imperial state.
Outcomes: Students will gain an understanding of how domination by aristocratic lineage gave way to the Confucian state and society based on peasant farming; and how a bureaucratic and autocratic polity existed in symbiosis with a socioeconomic elite that maintained itself through the dominance of the agrarian economy as well as through increasing access to the sources of commerce and trade.
Outcomes: Students will gain an understanding of how domination by aristocratic lineage gave way to the Confucian state and society based on peasant farming; and how a bureaucratic and autocratic polity existed in symbiosis with a socioeconomic elite that maintained itself through the dominance of the agrarian economy as well as through increasing access to the sources of commerce and trade.