Tuesday, January 11, 2005

China, The Chou and Ch'in dynasties

This transitional period is examined in Chi Li, The Formation of the Chinese People (1928, reprinted 1967), useful for information on the ethnic history of ancient China; Herlee Glessner Creel, The Birth of China (1937, reprinted 1954), still regarded as one of the standard references, and The Origins of Statecraft in China, vol. 1 (1970), the first Western book to include extensive materials from bronze inscriptions - especially significant on the activities of non-Chou peoples; Cho-yun Hsu, Ancient China in Transition (1965), a standard work on social structure and social mobility in the Chou period; Derk Bodde, China's First Unifier (1938, reprinted 1967), and Statesman, Patriot, and General in Ancient China (1940, reprinted 1967), works covering the effort of the first emperors and their courts to accomplish unification; Arthur Cotterell, The First Emperor of China (1981), a popular history that includes a description and historical analysis of 7,000 terra-cotta life-size figures buried in 210 BC; Yu-ning Li, The First Emperor of China (1975), Yu-lan Fung, A History of Chinese Philosophy, 2nd ed., 2 vol., trans. from the Chinese (1952 - 53, reprinted 1983), coverage of the thought of different schools in ancient China; and Xueqin Li, Eastern Zhou and Qin Civilizations (1986), an account of archaeological findings of the period from the 8th to the 3rd century BC.