The Troubled Empire
The Troubled Empire
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DOI：
10.4159/9780674056206
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发表时间：
2010-06
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影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
T. Brook
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作者：
T. Brook
12世纪70年代蒙古人的占领改变了中国历史的进程。建立了1500年的儒家帝国突然被外国占领。中国在1279年统一为元朝之前的样子已经不再是未来的样子了。四个世纪后，另一波草原入侵者取代了明朝，又一次被外国占领。《麻烦的帝国》探讨了在这两次戏剧性的入侵之间，中国发生了什么。如果有什么能定义这一时期的复杂动态，那就是天气的变化。亚洲和欧洲一样，经历了一个“小冰河期”，随着13世纪气温的下降，忽必烈向南迁移到了中国。他的元朝在不到一个世纪的时间里就灭亡了，但蒙古的价值观在明朝的制度中得以延续。17世纪30年代的第二次寒流，加上干旱，明朝无法承受，明朝被满族侵略者征服。在这一背景下——这一时期中国第一部连贯的生态史——蒂莫西·布鲁克探讨了专制、社会复杂性和商业化的发展，特别关注了中国融入更大的南海经济。这些变化不仅塑造了中国的未来，而且促成了早期现代世界的形成。
The Mongol takeover in the 1270s changed the course of Chinese history. The Confucian empire - a millennium and a half in the making - was suddenly thrust under foreign occupation. What China had been before its reunification as the Yuan dynasty in 1279 was no longer what it would be in the future. Four centuries later, another wave of steppe invaders would replace the Ming dynasty with yet another foreign occupation. "The Troubled Empire" explores what happened to China between these two dramatic invasions. If anything defined the complex dynamics of this period, it was changes in the weather. Asia, like Europe, experienced a "Little Ice Age", and as temperatures fell in the thirteenth century, Kublai Khan moved south into China. His Yuan dynasty collapsed in less than a century, but Mongol values lived on in Ming institutions. A second blast of cold in the 1630s, combined with drought, was more than the dynasty could stand, and the Ming fell to Manchu invaders. Against this background - the first coherent ecological history of China in this period - Timothy Brook explores the growth of autocracy, social complexity, and commercialization, paying special attention to China's incorporation into the larger South China Sea economy. These changes not only shaped what China would become but contributed to the formation of the early modern world.