Continental Asia and monsoon China, 600-1400

中国被广泛认为是以“中国本土”为中心，从长城一直延伸到南海岸，其文明仍与长城以北的“野蛮”游牧民族形成鲜明对比。我建议一个更有用的划分是“季风中国”，一个热带，多山的土地，在中期（c. 600-1400）成为稻田和海上贸易之一，和一个大陆区，长期以来包括一系列生态混合不同程度的农业，畜牧业和陆路贸易。这将过渡带向南800英里，在黄河和长江之间的淮河流域，破坏了“文明”中国和“野蛮”游牧民族之间环境决定论的对比，并提供了观察北方地区的新方法。从公元600年到1400年，中国王朝逐渐失去了对大陆地区的控制，但一个以中国为中心的学者认为，中国帝国的北方几乎没有发生什么重要的事情。现在，新的和正在进行的研究表明，在公元600年之前的几个世纪里，大陆地带已经广泛地相互联系，在整个中世纪继续享受着复杂的相互作用。该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共同实践、信仰和物质文化。类似的忠诚观念支撑着流动性和适应性的政治结构，在中国王朝序列中的政权和草原上的游牧政治单位中都有发现。佛教修行从丝绸之路传到辽（907-1125）和西夏（1038-1227）朝代，然后传到日本。在甘肃走廊，蒙古和满洲都发现了同样的无釉灰陶，至少可以追溯到1200年。相比之下，在宋朝（960-1276），越来越关注季节带，我们知道统治精英们接受了忠诚和政治组织的新僵化观念，并通过赞助一种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，而技术进步则产生了新型独特的精美陶瓷。这项研究将论证季风中国不仅从大陆区分离出来，而且还试图将自己与“野蛮”的北方人区分开来。这两个地区似乎也更倾向于将贸易导向其他邻国——分别横跨南中国海和陆路丝绸之路——而不是彼此之间。这种对中国地理的彻底反思开辟了广阔的新研究领域，特别是在大陆地带。它的目的是改变人们对中国的看法，不仅是过去的看法，也是现在的看法。这不仅会引起学者的兴趣，也会引起政策制定者、媒体、那些出于商业目的需要了解中国的人以及普通公众的兴趣。该项目根据我自己对忠诚、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、丝绸之路和南中国海有关的考古和历史分析的新发现，重新诠释了现有的学术研究。这种方法强调政治历史的社会方面，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。9个月的分析和写作将为第二卷（共五卷）贡献6万字的内容，其中包括《新世界历史》，这是一项史无前例的国际事业，旨在撰写一部追踪从史前时代到现在全球社会演变的综合历史，将由C.H. Beck和哈佛大学出版社以英语和德语出版。还将有会议论文、一篇文章、一场公开演讲，以及学术和政策网站和媒体的文章。

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.