Reddit mentions of The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (History of Imperial China)

Great read on this for anyone interested: https://www.amazon.com/Early-Chinese-Empires-History-Imperial/dp/0674057341

Firstly, sorry I cannot give you a detailed answer here. I did ancient Chinese as one half of my undergraduate degree, but haven't read anything recently (i.e. years).

However, I can direct you to some sources that I read which really helped inform me about the late Eastern Han/Three Kingdoms era.

• The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han by Mark Edward Lewis is incredibly insightful in regards to society, government, and military of the Qin and Han Dynasties, while his other book China between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties deals with with post-Han China.
  
• Imperial Warlord: A Biography of Cao Cao covers the life of Cao Cao (obviously!) as well as the political situation he found himself in, which includes his position under Dong Zhuo.
  
• The Government of the Qin and Han Empires by Michael Loewe gives a fantastic insight into how the governments of the early empires was run!
  
  In regards to some of your questions, I'll take a shot at answering from memory (sources as above basically!)
  
  > if Dong Zhuo and others are so bent on being that powerful, why would they stop at Prime Minister?
  
  Dong Zhuo was thought to have been preparing to name himself Emperor under a new dynasty. But even besides that, we did try to rise higher than Prime Minister. He named himself Imperial Father, as in Father to the Son of Heaven (the Emperor Xian). This is important, as in Chinese political society where filial piety was important, the Emperor was the father of the empire, with only heaven as his superior. By naming himself the Imperial Father, he was de facto naming himself above the Emperor.
  
  In regards to regional warlords accepting the legitimacy of the Han Emperor while fighting each other, you need to understand where the political authority was seen to have originated, which was the The Mandate of Heaven (mostly). It was more politically difficult to get the rest of the empire to accept that you had gained the Mandate and the Han had lost it than to simply kidnap the emperor and issue decrees in his name (as Dong Zhuo and Cao Cao did). By acting 'under' Han imperial authority, warlords in control of the Emperor had more legitimacy to their actions than without him. This was made easier by the fact that the majority of later emperors in the Eastern Han were child emperors, who were the sovereign in name only, with court officials or eunuchs with real authority governing the state in the Emperor's name.
  
  Apologies I could not be more detailed, I have not read any of my books on this in a long time. But I think once my thesis is done, this question has knocked enough nostalgia into me to revisit them!

The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han is a good introduction to the subject. It also is the first of a series of great books on the history of Imperial China that are written by scholars but meant for a (somewhat more) general audience.

Perry Link is always a good read, he wrote Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Cities. Even if it's rather old, it's still a basic academic book that dissects early 20th century popular fiction against all odds that are placed against it in China (i.e. of no literary value etc.). I guess you best get it at your library.

Many praise Shanghai as the city that transformed itself from a small fishing village to a metropolis. Marie-Claire Bergère shows otherwise, it is one of the best histories on Shanghai you can get.

I often had trouble understanding ancient Chinese society and how it worked. Mark Edward Lewis gives a very good introduction there, also written in a very nice style.

What I still want to read is Douglas (Doug) Guthrie's, Social Connections in China (2002), as it researches how guanxi works.

Soon there's a book coming out on "Leftover Women" by Leta Hong Fincher, which is also on my very long To-read-list.


"Factory Girl's" is worth a read indeed, I loved it (although the author's personal experience was sometimes interrupting the main narrative too much).

erikmyster, thx for the tips above, I didn't know the titles...

Hi, Thank you for taking your time to answer. I'm looking for the Zhou-Qing Periods. I know that is "pretty much the entire history", but I am more interested in chronicles or annals that would give a good well rounded understanding on each dynasty. I have been eyeing The Cambridge History of China for awhile , but the book seems to be quite old in publishing, and the reviews online on websites seem mixed? Is it a valuable resource and not outtdated? They are quite expensive on Amazon!!

Have you ever used History of Imperial China (Harvard Press release)

Are the official annals like Ming Shi not translated into English? I'm Chinese, but my ability to read is frustrating haha.

My personal project is creating a website on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean history for context when one travel. One of my planned pages on the website is a brief history summary for each dynasty.

This series is as "broad" an overview as I am familiar with - granted, I have a specialist interest in Chinese history, language, and culture, and have an undergraduate degree in history which makes me shy away from really broad histories as inaccurate, so YMMV. I did listen to a teaching company audio lecture series called "From Yao to Mao: 5000 years of Chinese History" which might be of interest to you; I found frustratingly general, but he was treating major facets of time/themes in 30 min lectures.

I haven't read the Three Kingdoms yet - been hoping to do that in the original. :) Sorry I can't be more helpful on that score.