Description
"The longest aristocratic age in Chinese history is the Springs-and-Autumns period (Chunqiu, 770-453 BCE). It is often paired and understood with the subsequent Warring States period (453-221 BCE) as part of the same continuum, the formative age of China's political and cultural traditions. However, sinologist Yuri Pines sees this period as markedly different from what followed it. This was an age when political fragmentation was considered the norm and not an aberration, when many states were moving from a monarchic to oligarchic form of rule, when political participation of the lower strata was acceptable and even partly institutionalized, when pedigree mattered more than ability in determining an individual's career, and when the concept of the Mandate of Heaven had little to do with the notion of universal rule. In many respects, this age, Pines argues, represented an inversion of traditional Chinese political values rather than their affirmation. In this new political history of the Springs-and-Autumns period, Pines has three objectives. The first is to introduce the reader to this insufficiently understood era by drawing on newly available material and paleographic evidence, coupled with more nuanced reading of textual sources. The second is to analyze the policies adopted by Springs-and-Autumns statesmen on their own terms, as they conducted China's longest experiment with a polycentric society, and to evaluate the positive and negative outcomes of those policies. Lastly, the book situates this age within the longue durée of Chinese history. In doing so, Pines addresses several questions: What were the lessons learned from the Springs-and-Autumns by political thinkers of the subsequent Warring States era and by their imperial-era heirs? What do three centuries of aristocratic and polycentric rule teach us about continuities and ruptures in China's historical trajectory? How are they related to different paradigms through which China's past is analyzed domestically and by outsiders?"--