Late Imperial China

Catalog description

This lecture course -- the first of a two-part sequence -- examines the history of late imperial China through the early 19th century. We begin with the Song dynasty transformation: the rise of gentry society and imperial absolutism, the institution of Confucian orthodoxy, the shift of the population and the economic center of gravity to the south, the commercialization of the economy, and change in the relative status of women and men. We then trace China's subsequent political and social history, including the following themes: inner vs. outer court politics; law, government, and society; intellectuals and political dissent; gender, family, and kinship practices; patterns of peasant life and rebellion; traditional foreign relations and first contacts with the West; internal sources of the decline of imperial order.