Sublime

Classical Period—that span of Chinese history between the eighth and third centuries BCE. During this time lived some of the greatest philosophers of China: Lao-tzu, Confucius, Han-fei-tzu, Chuang-tzu, Sun-tzu, and Mo-tzu.

Eighteenth-century China saw the end of serfdom, abolished by the Yung-cheng emperor,93 and a new freedom to buy and sell land. The number of market towns rose steadily. In the Kiangnan region on the lower Yangtze, where water communications had favoured the growth of large commercial cities, cotton cloth was manufactured on a large scale by villag

On the eve of the close encounter with the West, China’s distinctive political trajectory (still dominated by its symbiotic relationship with Inner Asia) propelled it not towards an all-powerful oriental despotism (imagined by Europeans) – which might have permitted drastic change in the face of external challenge – but instead still further toward

This great southward expansion, absorbing new land and people into the Chinese world, was the crucial stage in the ‘making’ of China. It added the hugely productive rice-growing region (where double and triple cropping was possible) to the agrarian economy. It brought new crops and commodities from the sub-tropical south to stimulate a rise in dome