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1 - The Emergence of China’s Imperial Urban Civilization (Antiquity to 220 CE)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2021

Toby Lincoln
Affiliation:
University of Leicester
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Summary

The chapter describes how the Chinese imperial urban civilization emerged. The urban system developed from a loosely linked collection of cities into an imperial network with the main capital, Chang’an, as the political, economic, and cultural centre. Roads and waterways allowed goods and people to move around the empire, and trading routes to the west linked China to central Asia and beyond. From their origins as small settlements with earthen walls, Chinese cities developed according to prescribed plans that linked imperial power on earth with divine power in heaven. These were set out in the Record of Investigation of Crafts (Kaogongji), an ancient Chinese text. Chinese cities became nodes in an imperial bureaucracy, and although there was no autonomous municipal government, in Chang’an and other capital cities, officials were responsible for urban management. Chinese cities had an urban culture. Kings and emperors lived in their palaces, only emerging to conduct rituals such as sacrifices to ancestors and gods. An imperial administrative elite ran the empire, and merchants, shopkeepers, and artisans traded goods and set up businesses in markets in Chang’an and other cities, which were described in poems that reflected on urban life.

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Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Lewis, Mark Edward. The Construction of Space in Early China. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Lewis, Mark Edward. The Early Chinese Empires Qin and Han. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Feng, Li. Early China: A Social and Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Nylan, Michael and Wankeerberghen, Griet, eds. Chang’an 26 BCE: An Augustan Age in China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Shelach, Gideon. The Archaeology of Early China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.Google Scholar

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