Continental Asia and monsoon China, 600-1400

中国被广泛认为是以中国为中心的，从长城到南海岸，其文明与长城以北的野蛮游牧民族形成了鲜明的对比。我建议，一个更有用的划分是“季风中国”，一个热带山地，在中期(约600年-1400年)成为PADI油田和海上贸易之一，以及一个大陆地带，长期以来包含一系列混合了不同程度农业、畜牧业和陆上贸易的生态系统。这使得过渡带再向南800英里，位于黄河和长江之间的淮河流域，削弱了文明的中国和野蛮的游牧民族之间的环境决定论对比，并提供了看待北方地区的新方法。从600年到1400年，中国王朝逐渐失去了对大陆地区的控制，但一项以中国为中心的学术研究表明，中华帝国北部几乎没有发生过什么重大影响。现在，新的和正在进行的研究表明，在公元600年之前已经广泛相互联系了几个世纪的大陆地区，在整个中期继续享受着复杂的相互作用。这个项目追溯了从黄河流域到蒙古草原，从丝绸之路绿洲到日本的实践、信仰和物质文化的共享剧目。在中国的王朝序列中列出的政权和草原上的游牧政治单位中，也可以找到类似的忠诚理念，这种理念支撑着流动性和适应性强的政治结构。佛教习俗从丝绸之路传到辽朝(907-1125年)和奚霞(1038年-1227年)，然后传到日本。同样未上釉的灰色陶器在甘肃走廊、整个蒙古和满洲里至少有1200件。相比之下，在宋朝(960-1276)，人们越来越关注季风区，我们知道统治精英接受了新的僵化的忠诚和政治组织思想，并通过支持反佛教的新儒家正统来回应佛教对民众的控制，这种正统规定了行为，而技术进步创造了新的、独特的精品陶瓷类型。这项研究将论证季风中国不仅脱离大陆生长，而且试图定义自己不同于“野蛮人”的北方人。这两个地区的贸易似乎也更多地指向其他邻国--分别跨越南中国海和陆上丝绸之路--而不是彼此。这种对中国地理的彻底反思开启了广阔的新研究领域，尤其是在大陆地区。它的目的是改变人们对这个我们称之为中国的地方的思维方式，不仅是过去的，也是现在的。这不仅会引起学者的兴趣，也会引起政策制定者、媒体、出于商业目的而需要了解中国的人和普通公众的兴趣。该项目根据我自己对忠诚度、政治网络和物质文化的初步研究，以及与中国、蒙古、日本、韩国、丝绸之路和南海中国有关的考古学和历史分析的新发现，重新解释了现有的学术研究。这种方法强调政治史的社会方面，包括统治集团内部个人之间的关系，中央决策与边境地区发生的事情之间的关系，以及精英与日常生活之间的关系。九个月的分析和写作将为第五卷的第二卷带来6万字的贡献，包括一部新的世界史，这是一项史无前例的国际承诺，旨在撰写一部追踪全球社会从史前时代到现在的演变的综合历史，将由C.H.贝克和哈佛大学出版社用英语和德语出版。还将有会议论文、一篇文章、一次公开演讲以及为学术和政策网站以及媒体提供的文章。

China is widely conceived as centring on 'China Proper', running from the Great Wall to the south coast, its civilisation contrasted, still, with the 'barbarian' pastoral nomads north of the Wall. I propose that a more useful division is between 'monsoon China', a tropical, mountainous land that in the Middle Period (c. 600-1400) became one of padi fields and maritime trade, and a continental zone that had long comprised a range of ecologies mixing varying degrees of agriculture, stock-rearing and overland trade. This places the transitional zone 800 miles further south, in the River Huai basin, between the Yellow River and the Yangzi, undermining the environmentally determinist contrast between 'civilised' China and 'barbarian' nomads, and offering new ways of viewing the northern zone in particular.From 600 to 1400 the dynasties of imperial China progressively lost control over the continental zone, but a sinocentric scholarship has suggested that little of consequence happened north of the Chinese empire. Now new and ongoing research suggests that the continental zone, already extensively interconnected for centuries before 600, continued to enjoy complex interactions throughout the Middle Period. This project traces a shared repertoire of practices, beliefs and material culture that was drawn on from the Yellow River valley to the Mongolian steppe and from the Silk Road oases to Japan. Similar ideas of loyalty, which underpinned fluid and adaptive political structures, are found in regimes listed in China's dynastic sequence and in nomadic political units from the grasslands. Buddhist practices travelled from the Silk Road to the Liao (907-1125) and Xi Xia (1038-1227) dynasties and on to Japan. The same unglazed grey pottery is found in the Gansu corridor, throughout Mongolia and in Manchuria down to at least 1200.By contrast, in the Song dynasty (960-1276), increasingly focused on the monsoonal zone, we know that ruling elites embraced newly rigid ideas of loyalty and political organisation, and responded to Buddhism's hold on the populace by sponsoring an anti-Buddhist neo-Confucian orthodoxy that prescribed behaviour, while technological advances produced new and distinctive types of fine ceramics. This research will argue that monsoon China not only grew apart from the continental zone but also sought to define itself against the 'barbarian' northerners. Both regions also appear to have directed their trade more towards their other neighbours - across the South China Sea and the overland Silk Roads respectively - than towards each other.This radical rethink of China's geography opens up vast new areas of research, particularly in the continental zone. It aims to transform ways of thinking about the place we call China, not only in the past but also in the present. This will be of interest not just to scholars but to policymakers, the media, those needing to understand China for business purposes, and the general public.The project reinterprets existing scholarship in light of my own primary research on loyalty, political networks and material culture, and new findings in archaeology and historical analysis relating to China, Mongolia, Japan, Korea, the Silk Roads and the South China Sea. The approach emphasises the social aspects of political history, including the relationships between individuals within ruling groups, between central decisions and what happened in the borderlands, and between elite and everyday life. Nine months of analysis and writing will produce a 60,000-word contribution to Volume 2 of five comprising a New World History, an unprecedented international undertaking to write an integrated history tracing the evolution of global society from prehistoric times to the present, to be published in English and German by C.H. Beck and Harvard University Press. There will also be conference papers, an article, a public lecture and pieces for scholarly and policy websites and the press.