59508a No.14169[Last 50 Posts]
Chinese History - 秦漢三國 Edition
With ~3000 years of recorded history (the grander-sounding ~5000 years in colloquial Chinese discussion includes the traditional pre-history and creation myths), Chinese history is just too large to seriously discuss as a whole, so let's talk about a particular portion of it: the fascinating time of the Qin-Han-Sanguo that marked the first Imperial age.
After centuries of warring states, Qin 秦 conquered the known civilized world, inaugurating the Imperial Era, only to collapse in its second generation. From its ashes Han 漢 built a 400 year Empire that taught the civilized world it belonged together as one, leading to a disastrous shock when the known world was divided into Three Empires 三國 for nearly 100 years. A remarkable era that would set the standard for traditional historic thought in China for the next 1700 years.
59508a No.14170
dee13b No.14195
>>14169Why would I care about a place that still uses hieroglyphics after 3000 years?
They are absolutely irrelevant except as a place to import tea from
08f61d No.14227
>>14195>漢字>hieroglyphicsHow ignorant can you be?
972d59 No.14271
So I've read that Han only needed a standing army of about 5,000, comparable to a single Roman legion, even though Han and Rome both boasted a population of about 60 million. What's that say about those two Empires?
5d309d No.14277
>>14227They might as well be hieroglyphic sandscript, looks like a bunch of opium addict tard scribbles to me
3f7a58 No.14279
>>14277汉字 has greater symbol-to-sound fidelity than written English.
32a365 No.14284
>>14271the empire was more stable and not expanding? also AFAIK the han empire practiced levee en masse (qin dynasty for example was proto-authoritarian)
162676 No.14285
>>14284I might be misremembering this but didn't China typically frown on soldiers? like it was one of the lowest jobs you could get.
ae1ede No.14286
>>14285Bureaucrats and scholars and such were high class and valued, if I recall, so I imagine warriors were relatively undervalued at the same time
fd14b1 No.14322
>>14285You're thinking merchants. In traditional Confucian perspective merchants contributed little to society.
11a1b9 No.14323
>>14322I'm mildly inspired to write a little comparative study on the attitude of society towards merchants. Seems like they get a bad rep throughout many cultures and many centuries.
972d59 No.14400
File: 1422754780482.jpg (33.97 KB, 650x366, 325:183, chinese_crossbow_recreatio….jpg)
Some information on Han/Sanguo era military:
>The basic weapons were much the same as those carried four centuries earlier by the tomb figures of the First Emperor: spears, halberds and swords, with smaller versions for close-quarter fighting and personal defence. Wooden and bamboo bows were used on occasion, but the most effective was the composite bow, made from horn, bone, sinews and wood glued together, with a killing range of 150 metres. Its use, however, required training and skill; the celebrated feat of archery by which Lü Bu saved Liu Bei in 196 was surely achieved with a composite bow. In addition, since at least the fourth century BC the Chinese had mastered the mechanism of the crossbow, and with a range up to 200 metres that provided good defence for infantry in the field, even against horsemen armed with the compound bow.
>Here is further contrast to Rome: some legionary troops were trained with simple bows and sling-shots and used those weapons when appropriate, notably in sieges and naval fighting. In pitched battle, however, the first attack was the javelin throw, followed by a charge with sword and shield; longer-range weapons were left to light-armed auxiliary troops and skirmishers. In China, on the other hand, one of the five regiments of the professional Northern Army was composed of archers - probably crossbowmen - while it is very possible that the Chang River regiment, which comprised Wuhuan auxiliaries, carried compounds bows.
59508a No.14617
>>14400This is probably going to piss off all the Rome-obsessives, but I think the Han army could easily take the Romans with their ranged weaponry.
5d309d No.14630
>>14617I feel like the Roman shields and formations are adequate protection against arrows. Sure a few guys would get rekt but nothing major. You'd need to have them change formation or something by engaging with infantry, but by doing so you'd be making your own troops vulnerable to the arrows.
Not a romeaboo, or at least not to the extent that some of the people on this board are. It's just from my reading the Romans seemed to handle arrows pretty well.
56e8a9 No.14633
>>14630>>14617This has been debated for decades but the basic conclusion is that both armies were rather equal and whatever army was fighting on its home turf would win barely due to supply problems the other side would face
d2e552 No.14718
Grorious three kingdoms warfare!
I'm writing an essay on Cao Cao as my A2 coursework, but I don't have access to anything interesting or specific (like Crespigny's "Imperial Warlord"). If anyone has info on the dude himself, I'd appreciate it; I've had to rely on shitty Wikipedia aggregates D:
The most interesting things I've been able to write about have been the Empty Fort Strategy and Mao Zedong D:
59508a No.14722
>>14718I have a personal copy of "Imperial Warlord" and can help you out.
I do hope you know about though Empty Fort became famous because of the fiction of Zhuge Liang using it,the basic idea of Empty Fort was a real thing that was actually used by several commanders (though not Zhuge Liang).
972d59 No.14786
>>14718三國志 Sanguozhi is public domain and easy to find. The only issue is that it's Classical Chinese, but there are a few translations of excerpts floating around.
武帝紀 "Annals of Emperor Wu [aka Cao Cao]" is the first chapter of SGZ and covers most of the basics about his life and career. I know of at least two public domain translations floating around the web.
I can go over some of it with you in a series of posts, if you'd like.
11bba8 No.14800
The patterns of Chinese history completely and utterly fascinates me to my core. It is so different from anything we know of in the rest of the world. God I love it.
f3e2bd No.14801
>>14630
>It's just from my reading the Romans seemed to handle arrows pretty well.Unless they were fired by Persians.
24b0b5 No.14811
Who was the faggotiest emperor and why is it huizong?
seriously, look at this dirty fucking fudge fairy's fag face.
I bet you he dressed up as a courtesan and had his eunuchs rub his little faggot-boy face with their dickstubs.
ps qianlong a best, song-fags can get fucked
9497fa No.14812
>>14811What did he do? Is it just because you don't like his weird ugly face?
972d59 No.14814
>>14812He was an Emperor of Song 宋 reputed to have focused on luxuries and pleasures at the expense of the state and the army, leading to weakness that the Jurchens to the north exploited to conquer the northern half of China and found the Jin 金 Dynasty. Huizong himself was captured and became a prisoner for the rest of his life, though Song survived and made peace with Jin at the cost of all territory north of the Huai.
But he's far outside the Qin-Han-Wei era we were talking about.
acc093 No.14815
>>14722I'm using the Empty Fort Strategy as an example of historical debate surrounding Cao Cao; some professors and a dude on the internet discussed whether or not he was the original user IIRC. More info is always good, and very much appreciated!
>>14786As in legible, clean translations? Will search ASAP, sounds very useful.
If you want to share info It'd be interesting :D.
My due date is the end of this month, so at this point I'm just tweaking the paragraphs and writing a conclusion. Extra juicy facts to insert are a bonus.
Ta muchly, semianons.
9497fa No.14816
972d59 No.14824
>>14815Some general stuff you might want to point out is how hard to be able to attribute anecdotes and stuff. Loads of stuff ends up getting attributed to famous people who had nothing to do with it because attributing something to a famous name is a cheap and easy way to make that thing famous too.
"Emtpy City" 空城 as a generic strategy of purposefully appearing weak wasn't exactly novel even in the 200s, considering that it's such a natural conclusion of basic principles outlined in Master Sun's Art of War 孙子兵法. There's no reason to believe that was Empty City was "invented" any time near the Three Kingdoms. For added perspective, the semi-automatic repeating crossbow is often called colloquially "Zhuge's Crossbow" 诸葛弩 after credited inventor Zhuge Liang, but archaeological evidence have found such repeating crossbows already in tombs hundreds of years before Zhuge Liang's time. Hell, archaeologists have found ancient Zhou 周 cities with ceramic pipes for running water and plumbing.
For Cao Cao in particular, numerous anecdotes have naturally become associated with him because of his fame, and it can be hard to tell which, if any, are true.
You might also want to mention or briefly discuss the "spectrum" of Chinese historiography. At the top you have the so-called "Standard Histories" 正史, which were the official records and histories maintained by the patronage of the Imperial Court itself. These naturally tried to be as official and accurate as possible, but obviously there are lapses (every now and then you have historians who believe in the supernatural) and proximity to the Court naturally biased accounts; you're learn more about Court politics than how commoners lived, for example. From then on you have less official histories and various collections of anecdotes, some of which might be true and some which are demonstratively false, all the way down until you reach the level of outright fiction and legend, like the novel 三国演义.
You probably should briefly address the novel, namely how its popularity has irrevocably colored popular conception of the actual history. The oft-quoted "Seven Parts History Three Parts Fantasy" is frequently taken out of context; that quote was actually part of a condemnation of the novel's effects on popular conception, not a praise for historical accuracy. Despite claims of "historical accuracy," the novel is not above including outright invented battles or changing the outcomes of historical battles. For example, no historical records, not even those of Shu-Han, makes the claim that Zhuge Liang ever used anything like Empty City against Sima Yi. (The record Weilue 魏略 claims a certain Wen Ping used it against Sun Quan in 226; this is probably the "historical origin" of the anecdote, though there are other earlier battles that could be said to have used the same basic idea of "Empty City" too and we have no reason to believe Wen Ping was completely original in the idea.)
Don't get the wrong idea though. There's certainly a lot of stuff we "know" and a lot of stuff we can "trust." But it can be hard to sift through all the stuff that was "possible," "impossible," and "known to be fiction" to get there if you're not careful.
da551b No.14889
>>14630In terms of ranged weaponry and artillery, china takes the lead by a VAST margin. There's a big difference between the bare bones archery of the Mediterranean and packing a squad of dudes with semi-automatic firing weapons. Especially when you consider Han era soldiers had a greater variety of more effective melee weapons to compliment that.
Rome had numbers but numbers aren't everything.
1ccf0e No.14891
>>14801Pretty pleb comment actually despite the keks, since Roman military record against Persians before the late Dominate was rather good: they routinely defeated them in pitched battles (if the Parthians or Persians dared to risk them, usually they didn't) and sacked Ctesiphon multiple times.
I think the myth about Persian military performance comes from some plebeian anglo historians.
As for the Chinese history, it's interesting to think how different a culture they'd been if Qin had prevailed. Han threw their lot with the Confucian doctrine and consciously elevated the scholar-class above the military, and while this focus provided some desperately needed bureaucrats for the permanently understaffed Empire, it also made them more vulnerable to military disasters due to talented men going to civilian service, and army depending on either levies or auxiliary mercenaries while being led by civilians who distrusted the officers. Qin on the other hand was a Prussia of its time, thoroughly militarised and holding military service as their highest merit. Legalism always had influence but it'd be an entirely different world if Qin had not suffered the misfortune of having weak leaders right after the consolidation.
972d59 No.14896
>>14891Personally I'd say that the heavy warfare focus of the Three States and the great expansion of the Tang is evidence that China can effectively militarize if the need arises. Wei's had its agricultural garrisons, and Wu had its aggressive conquest of the south to get resources to fend off Wei, while all three states saw the rise of "military families" where soldiering became a family tradition for some.
The problem for China has probably always been finding the proper balance between military and civil affairs. The Sima family's usurpation of Wei had its origins in Sima Yi's and Sima Shi's military power, but then Sima's Jin dynasty abolished the agricultural garrisons which caused problems when the Xiongnu and Xianbei got uppity. Tang conquered expanded greatly with distant territories commanded by Governor-Generals, only for ambitious Governor-Generals to rebel and try to carve out their own states. After Tang's collapse the "Five Dynasties" era was full of short-lived states where usurpation by powerful Generals were a constant problem and Dynasties rarely lasted more than one or two generations. When Song took power, it put a stop to this by removing the authority of Generals and placing a notoriously low emphasis on military matters, but that left the Empire vulnerable when the Jurchens came and ended up founding a rival claimant Dynasty of Jin.
2ab650 No.14897
>I will never be Cao Cao
>I will never have ladies and consorts to my heart's content
The fact that modern China is cracking down on unofficial concubinage even more pains me.
da07cc No.14898
>>14897It's all fun and games until you realize that he ended up outliving like almost half of his consorts and his sons, including his firstborn Ang and his favorite Chong.
5d309d No.14901
>>14889>numbers aren't everythingTell that to Russia and the Ottomans
the rest of your comment was quality. I forgot about the whole Han ranged weaponry fetish 08f61d No.14913
>>14815http://kongming.net/novel/sgz/caocao.phphttp://kongming.net/novel/sgz/caocao-2.phpThese are two translations of the Wudi Ji 武帝紀 "Annals of Emperor Wu," the first by Jack Yuan and second by Adrian Loder. The second is the better translation by far, especially because it also includes Pei Songzhi's annotations.
A word of warning: it can be a dry read. Remember, these are Annals, not a novel.
Also something to be aware of from the start: in the traditional histories, you'll generally come across what can be understood to be posthumous names/titles. When you see stuff like "Emperor Huan this" or "Emperor Ling that," remember that they were never actually called Huan or Ling etc. until after they died.
In traditional Chinese culture the personal name is just that: personal. Typically only your elders or superiors can call you by that without it being offensive. The histories therefore will typically use posthumous names, which are titles of respect granted to great people, usually Emperors. Cao Cao's posthumous titles are Taizu 太祖 "Grand Ancestor" and Wu 武 "Martial." and you'll often see him referred to as such through various historical documents.
Pei Songzhi's annotations are generally excerpts from other works to expand the original or provide alternative accounts. He freely includes differing accounts on the same topic that outright contradict each other, generally leaving the reader to interpret it, though he does occasionally make comment on his own beliefs of accuracy on some anecdotes.
Do keep in mind that these accounts aren't necessarily reliable. For example, the first annotation cites Cao Man Zhaun 曹瞞傳 "Biography of Cao Man" or "Biography of Cao the Deceiver," which was written by an anonymous author in the rival state of Wu 吴, as the source of the claim that Cao Cao was also named Jili 吉利 and had a childhood name A'man 阿瞞 "Little Trickster." These claims are quite suspect, for Jili "Fortunate and prosperous" is an offensive name in Confucian perspective, and Cao Man Zhuan loves to emphasize Cao Cao's reputation as treacherous. History is always caveat lector.
fd14b1 No.15096
>>14889>>14901I find it somewhat ironic that it's Rome that is assumed to have numbers. Sure, Han's standing army was small but they loved to raise ridiculously large "armies" of conscripts for intimidation/shielding purposes to supplement the actual professionals.
f2e9aa No.15139
>>15096Peasants that would run at the first clash with the enemy, on the other hand Rome had a big, prepared, professional and quite veteran army.
I have no doubt that the romans would win such an engagement if it came only to the armies on the field.
1ccf0e No.15184
>>14896Quality post. It could be said that Roman militarism was its eventual undoing, since even the imperial army remained difficult to control, and after the legions became truly provincial (in the sense that the senatorial class no longer supplied most of the highest officers and the men and especially the officers came from local military families who had extensive ties to the region and each other) they cast the empire to a century of civil war and finally ruin.
China avoided that fate but at the cost of occasional military underperformance. Since they also lacked a lasting feudal aristocracy with established fortresses of their own, they were vulnerable when chaos or poor leaders arose.
fd14b1 No.15474
Happy New Year fellow students of Chinese history.
>Say what you say about Christianity, but counting the years after his birth make an awesome Schelling point which facilitates tracking events in time. When were you born? 1980? So that’s 34 years ago. Well the ancients didn’t believe that some guy in Judaea was the son of the only one God. So how did they count their years? Well in the absence of Jesus Christ, you have to use the next awesome guy. In China, the Kings. So it was “in the 5th year of King something of Zhou…”, which isn’t as easy but it’s still manageable.
>Then came the unified Empire, and the martial emperor of the Han Dynasty [漢武帝] had this great idea of naming the years himself. So every 5 years or so he would decree that from day on we are in the era of Great Start [太初], or Awesome Light [元光], or whatever cheesy title worthy of a teenage diary he could come up with. And all official documents were to be dated using the regnal era. It’s hard enough to remember all the rulers in the thousands of years of Chinese history. Imagine every ruler changing the era name every time he had a mood change. It’s hard to be a Chinese historian. No wonder their histories are so good.
4eed68 No.15693
>>14617well with what>>14630 said, the Roman Shields were not only hard as fuck but round so that projectiles and even a half assed spear thrust would bounce off, and if you remember the Punic wars, it is said that those wars had the most projectiles used in a war in the Ancient world. Then there is Artillery, which Romans had Mastered to an Art. Formations of Legions were better and more flexible than most Chinese Formations, and could be easily split up and group back together again, then once the Roman troops get close to the Chinese troops, Bolts may penetrate the Scutum, but once the Romans throw the Pilums its all fucking over. Because of the Pilums shape it will bust around 2 square inch hole in a shield while the shaft is only 1 square inch, and so it don't lose much momentum and either hits you or leaves you without a shield. Then you have to take into account the Roman Troops were a professional Army and not a citizen Army.
>Be Han Army Fighting Roman Legions>Fucking Fireballs are raining down >be a citizen army so everyone is losing their shit>Battle hardened veterans are the only ones really staying in formation>get to their Shield wall>they throw a huge fucking volley of throwing spears>they trained for years in throwing them>hit pretty hard>they charge forcing the battle into a close quarters fight>large swords are hard to use>they are stabbing alot>Their Armour is hard to Pierce, Arrows/slings hardly do anything >they put effort into keeping their Helmets to the point where Hearing and sight isn't obstructed>form a tightly knit sheild wall with their swords through the Gaps>they are stampeding what little remains of the Army>whoa to Romans war lasts more than one yeartl;dr a Professional army will always wreck a citizen one, though I may have cherry picked at some points and if anyone has any points that can challenge or disprove what I said I would be Glad to hear it.
59508a No.15811
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
This might fall outside the specified Qin-Han-Sanguo period, but thought this survey of language evolution quite interesting.
d2e552 No.15893
>>14913>>14824Thanks guys, your info has been rather useful and I'll make sure to read those annals whenever I get a bit of downtime.
Currently I'm in the final stage, got my due date tomorrow morning. Gonna have to wing the "research diary"… I'll make sure to mention the help from historianons.
>>15811On the topic of language how hard would you say Mandarin/Standard Chinese is to learn, from a European perspective? Is it so tonal that someone who's partially deaf (:C) would have excessive difficulty in determining the minutiae?
>I don't just ask out of interest in Chinese cartoons I swear eb3bbd No.15913
OP do you have an information about the use of musketeers by the Chinese? Especially battles with musket-armed horse nomads would be useful. Information on pre-modern Asian battles in English is very hard to find.
972d59 No.16199
>>15893Tones carry a functional load comparable to vowels, so yeah, tones are important.
However, Chinese is a very analytic language, as in you'll depend heavily on context to figure out what something means. This actually allows you to "get by" easily enough the more you know.
If you're really interested in Chinese history though, you'll be learning the old literary "Classical Chinese" rather than the modern language. It's very different, though perhaps not as extreme as Latin vs English for a western counterpart to the situation.
29f066 No.18710
Can anyone recommend me some materials on both the Three Kingdoms period and the Boxer Rebellion? Specifically the Rebellion, I can't really find too much source material on it. I read Jung Chang's biography on Cixi, and whilst it did give some background on the war, it focused a lot on her abdication of the palace. So, any material anyone can recommend?
16a7b4 No.18725
>>18710
Thanks for reminding me that the 清史 will never be finished.
Damn Civil War, Japanese Invasion, and Cultural Revolution…
Sorry, can't help you.
29e2f3 No.21961
>>18710
Jane E. Elliott (2002). "Some did it for civilisation, some did it for their country: a revised view of the boxer war." Chinese University Press. p. 143. ISBN 962-996-066-4.
http://books.google.com/books?id=wWvl9O4Gn1UC&q=chinese+fire+power+pinned+down+enemy#v=snippet&q=defeat%20peasants%20not%20humiliated%20at%20all&f=false
3b5935 No.21962
Are Manchu Chinamen? Like Macedonians to the Greeks. Or more like Mongols?
000000 No.21963
087360 No.21965
My favourite thing about Chinese history is they had a chance to have a global spanning empire with colonisation of the Americas and Australia but they decided isolation was cooler.
c7fd3f No.21966
>>21962
They're Chinese but not Han.
7ad330 No.21969
>>21962
The Manchu willingly commited ethnic suicide, they don't really exist anymore as a separate group. If they still lived however, they would probably be comparable to Mongols, who they were closer to both linguistically and geographically than the Han.
3e072c No.21971
>>21969
how did they commit ethnic suicide, in reality they just got out populated by Han
4ee9a9 No.21995
>>15811
What the fug, those rolled r's early on are very weird to hear in Chinese.
3b5935 No.22003
>>21965
Well, no, not really. They were colonizing constantly. Chinese moved out to the peripheries of the country and enlarged it, and all the countries surrounding China have Chinese minorities made up of colonists.
000000 No.22011
>>21971
they were culturally assimilated, nowadays hardly anyone speaks Manchu
6e10f4 No.22012
>>15693
Not to mention Scorpio's and if auxiliries were involved then mountains/forests wouldn't matter much.
>>21962
A combined bunch of Mongols, Chinese, and coastal siberian villagers mingiling together over the centuries.
36b635 No.22020
>>15811
My god. Even Ænglisc have more similarity with English.
81ef47 No.22037
>>22003
>and all the countries surrounding China have Chinese minorities made up of colonists.
But how old are some of these "colonies"? I thought most were just immigrant Chinese communities.
I know that there are plenty of Chinese in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia; but I don't know of any significant Chinese communities in Burma, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Kazakhstan, Russia (outside the Far East), South Korea, or Japan.
7ad330 No.22138
>>22011
Manchu as a language is extinct, unfortunately.
6e10f4 No.22188
>Tfw no total war china spaning from the end of the shang dynasty to the conquests of ghengis khan.
879219 No.22198
>>22188
I'd settle for an ROTK edition, but that sounds fucking grand.
6e10f4 No.22285
>>22188
>>22198
>tfw you will never be Qin
>tfw you will never stop the smelly han from rising
6606f8 No.22293
>>22285
you could play Rise of the Phoenix (SNES) although you can only play Chu instead of Qin since Qin is assassinated at the beginning
5a487d No.22302
>>22188
>>22198
A warring states period one would be pretty neato
e6fba4 No.22321
>>22188
There was a mod in development for Medieval II
6606f8 No.22360
You guys might want to try reading Kingdom (Manga). It has the setting of the warring states. It could be historical but I don't have any knowledge of the time period because I don't want to spoil myself. You might cringe how unrealistic it is due to people slicing up each other like paper, but that's fiction for you.
>>22198
Civilization IV has a mod that retains the heroes. It's called three kingdoms. There's another mod for Civilization V but it's more stale as compared to Civilization IV. Civilization IV is still the best. Civ V is just garbage
>>22302
>warring states
There's a mod for Civilization IV or probably CIvilization IV warlords. I forgot if it's a mod or a scenario of Civ IV.
d2e552 No.22533
>>22321
Rise Of Three Kingdoms, yes.
It's released and it's pretty good.
29e2f3 No.22546
>>21965
>>22003
>>22037
The Chinese Empire has traditionally spread more often by colonization of Chinese attempting to escape Imperial authority rather than by the efforts of the Imperial authority itself. We can actually keep this quite relevant to the thread's Qin-Han-Sanguo window, because the early Imperial period is actually a great case study of this.
During Qin and Han, the land south of the Yangzi was sparsely populated and still mostly wilderness. Therefore criminals, bandits, poor, and anyone trying to escape Imperial rule fled south, where they established emigrant communities and conquered and assimilated native tribes. Han of course made efforts into bringing these wayward southern communities back under control, but with limited success; it's attention was stretched thin by the need to defend the northern frontier.
During the collapse of Han, even more refugees fled the war in the heartlands to find refuge in the south. And it was upon this network of powerful local families that Sun Quan and his followers built the Empire of Wu in defiance of Wei. Sun Quan pushed an aggressive campaign of colonization and expansion into the south in order to have the resources to fight off Cao Cao and his successors in the north.
In traditional Chinese perspective, territory is not very valuable without manpower to use it, and so manpower can often be held in higher regard. In fact, in the early days of Sun Ce and Sun Quan, some campaigns were launched with the aim of capturing peasants to settle their territory rather than conquer more territory. Sima Yi's campaign into Liaodong spread Chinese power further northeast than ever before, but due to concerns about maintaining control of the people over such distances, Sima Yi withdrew instead of establishing garrisons, bringing the captured local population with him.
With this sort of policy, it is understandable that the Chinese Empire grew more slowly than the European Colonial Empires of the 1900s. But on the other hand, the Chinese Empire is in a sense still here, the only major territorial loss being Mongolia, while Europe has lost Africa and the Americas. So can one really say that there is a "better" policy?
6e10f4 No.22602
I just finished warching the 2010 war of the three kingdoms ( show based on romance of the three kingdoms), never thought a historical could make me feel so bad.
fb945e No.22962
>>22546
It depends on the era. During the Tang dynasty, there was an invasion of Gogoryu Kingdom and the attempted conquest of the Kingdom of Silla in the modern day Korea peninsula, which were done militarily. While the Tang expansion and settlement to the west was driven by a desire to stop the invading nomadic barbarians permanently.
While the later Song Dynasty seemed to be dealing with fragmented states comprised of the former Tang Dynasty and tried to reunify them in what amounted to a 'civil war,' so they didn't really have the priority to expand.
The Ming Dynasty did expand into Yunnan, primarily because there were Yuan Dynasty (Mongol) troops there, and decided to colonize it after the Yuan soldiers were defeated. Also, they used a combination of military and political control over Tibet.
Finally, there were periods of Chinese dynastic control over Vietnam, through different time periods, essentially making the Vietnamese Kingdom under Chinese rule.
I would argue that for most of the time, China had to contend with internal power struggles to keep their territories together far more than external, and there could have been a fear of the Emperor that any grand military conquests would ultimately give prestige to the general, and the soldiers might actually follow the general into a coup against the Emperor that would result in the succession of portions of the China or the complete usurpation of the ruling dynasty.
6e10f4 No.23938
>mfw watching /his/ movie night and all these Romeaboos don't know anything about three kingdom era
Please get on Chinkfags and educate these gaijins.
bb4295 No.23948
>>14170
Sauce?
And why would the Japs inflate China like that? I thought the Japs looked down on other east Asians
2afd14 No.23951
>>23938
You weren't exactly a font of knowledge yourself, Captain Wikipedia.
6e10f4 No.23956
>>23951
this is true,
But every time I mentioned something fags got mad because of "spoilers".
b05c8a No.24027
>>23956
>"spoilers"
>for a tale nearly a couple of millennia old
6e10f4 No.24034
>>24027
Well Romance of the Three Kingdoms war written during the Qing dynasty so more like 400 years old.
313022 No.24043
>>21962
they're related to the mongolians, last chinese emperor Pu-yi was manchu.
Note that they ruled before north china many years.
2bdeed No.24385
>>23948
Because Japs don't know history.
f56b01 No.25560
>>24034
Sanguo Yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) was written during the end of Yuan/beginning of Ming.
19ecd0 No.26044
>>24385
can someone translate or find a translated version?
19ecd0 No.26046
>>24385
wait, after googling I find that map there is one of the Tang dynasty not the Han dynasty in the map you replied to,
please get things right next time.
29e2f3 No.26055
>>26044
>>26046
Yeah, it's a Chinese-made Tang Dynasty map, and an accurate one at that.
The Japanese-made map of Han is totally off-kilter though, seeing as it puts the Xiongnu all the way in Russia.
90c353 No.26327
>>26304
>mfw come up with badass strategy that uses fire
>it fucking starts to rain
>Sima Yi is fucking bawling
>mfw Sima Yi will probably kill me and sacrifice my hat to fucking Ahman
5b137a No.26357
>>22602
Tangential trivia:
Chen Jianbin, who starred as the Emperor Wu Cao Cao, also starred as the Yongzheng Emperor in the 2011 series "Empresses in the Palace" (Chinese title "Rear Palace: the Legend of Zhen Huan"), which depicts the brutal harem politics in the Qing Court.
This little pop history lecture by Yuan Tengfei was probably referencing the series:
>Yongzheng was the most hard working emperor in the history of China. The craziest emperor of them all. How crazy? Every year, he would only rest the day of his birthday. In 13 years of rule, he left 18,000,000 characters [divide per 3 and you get a rough equivalent in english words] of handwritten records. Do the math, more than a million characters per year. More than me and I write best-selling books. And I’m a speaker, I speak and other write down and edit what I spoke. But the Yongzheng emperor was writing. 3-4k characters every day. A normal guy typing 4k characters on a PC gets tired. The Emperor wrote 3-4k with a brush!
>You think the Emperor had time every day to think about this or that concubine? He didn’t have time for that. So when you look at the Qing palace and look at all those Travel Records of the Yongzheng emperor, pictures of him fishing, hunting, travelling, why did he had all those pictures made? He really envied that sort of life. He couldn’t do all that. So he got tired, got himself some Daoist potion of eternal life, and died of mercury oxide poisoning.
000000 No.26358
>>26304
>tfw I have yet to download Three Kingdoms
2bdeed No.26470
>>21969
Snagged a copy of "China's Last Empire: The Great Qing" by William T. Rowe from Harvard's History of Imperial China series. In it is a brief discussion on the question as to whether Manchu really was an ethnic group by the modern definition.
Also included is this interesting story: A local scholar published a scathing essay denouncing Qing rule on the grounds of Han ethnic superiority to the Manchu and calling for rebellion. The reigning Yongzheng Emperor published a counter essay stating that "Manchu" was a regional term, not an ethnic term, coming very close to denying the existence of ethnicity at all. When his son and successor the Qianlong Emperor ascended however, he declared great pride in his Manchu ethnicity, insisted on preserving a separate Manchu identity from the Han, ordered the scholar's execution, and banned his father's essay as heretical.
90c353 No.26502
What were the relations between the Indians and the Chinese? I mean they are very close to each other so I'm surprised they didn't influence each other more.
dc4d00 No.26505
>>14400
Now, you also need to point out that repeating crossbows such as the one on your pic were no the same as the 200m range ones (which seems quite a lot tbh).
The Chu Ko Nu was a peasant weapon, and it's "effective" range was about 10m. More powerful models have been seen attached to boats, but need two people to operate them.
14ec13 No.26547
>>26502
Buddhism comes to mind.
3ed096 No.26593
>>26505
Calling it a Chu Ko Nu (Zhuge Nu) triggers my autism, seeing as Zhuge Liang is not actually the inventor of the weapon as is commonly believed.
Saying Kuan Dao (Guan Dao) bothers me too.
d3d47e No.26596
>>26593
So should it be called lian nu?
90c353 No.26599
>>26593
>guan dao
mah nigga
f56b01 No.26632
It's a shame but not surprising that the Sanguozhi has not been translated to English; all the professional English-speaking historians need to be able to read Classical Chinese anyways, so they have no reason to actually translate it. They just read it and write their papers.
Luckily Chinese-speaking historians often do translate the classics into modern Chinese. So, going off of one such translations, here's Chen Shou's appraisals of one of the major historical figures of the time in the Sanguozhi (with original text):
>評曰：漢末，天下大亂，雄豪並起，而袁紹虎視四州，彊盛莫敵。太祖運籌演謀，鞭撻宇內，攬申、商之法術，該韓、白之奇策，官方授材，各因其器，矯情任算，不念舊惡，終能總御皇機，克成洪業者，惟其明略最優也。抑可謂非常之人，超世之傑矣。
>At the end of Hàn the world was in chaos; heroes vying for supremacy appeared all around; Yuán Shào like a tiger eyed four provinces, his power flourished and none could match him. Tàizǔ devised far-sighted strategies, fought and struggled across the realm, using the governing methods of Shēn [Bùhài] and Shāng [Yāng], and replicating the strategic genius of Hán [Xìn] and Bái [Qǐ]. He dispensed awards to officials carefully, to each according to his ability, and made appointments by proper standards, disregarding personal grievances. In the end he was able to dominate and control the Imperial government, accomplishing his great enterprise, because his intelligence and planning were of the highest excellence. At the least it may be said that he was not an ordinary man, that he was the most outstanding hero of his time.
913c1b No.26643
>>26632
It never ceases to baffle me how much information the Chinese writing system can convey in such few characters.
It's a shame that you have to learn several hundreds of them.
Also,
>He dispensed awards to officials carefully, to each according to his ability, and made appointments by proper standards, disregarding personal grievances.
True meritocracy? In my <literally everything> ?
d3d47e No.26646
>>26643
>several hundreds of them.
I thought they were in the thousands. Chinkese is autismal.
2bdeed No.26650
>>26643
>>26646
Yeah, there are several thousand characters, but there are only about 200 or so "radicals." The complexity of Chinese characters comes from the fact that these radicals can interact in two-dimensions instead of one (i.e. 心+亡 = 忙 or 心+亡 = 忘?), that these radicals can function either as semantic or as phonetic (i.e. 心 = "heart" or "mind" meaning, 亡 = "wang" sound, 忘 read as "wang" means "to forget"), and characters can have long "spelling" by stacking a large number of radicals and smaller characters together.
The number of Chinese characters is also theoretically infinite, because with long spelling and 2D interaction you can create a whole lot of new combinations of radicals to form new characters. It's as easy as taking an existing character and slapping on a new radical to the side or bottom. This potentially big problem has been somewhat cut off by electronic computers, which has put something of a lid on people's ability to make up new characters.
Also, Classical Chinese is a lot more compact than modern Chinese. Most "words" (in the western sense) in modern Chinese are two or three characters long, whereas in the language of the ancient Chinese each character tended to be their own word. The grammar is also very different, and largely relies on context to figure out meaning. Modern Chinese is more explicit.
漢末 = "Han end," or "at the end of Han"
In modern Chinese, it'd probably written as 在东汉末年 “At Eastern Han's final years"
Chinese is hard, but it gets slightly easier as you go, because you start getting an innate sense in how the characters are "spelled." The one day you catch yourself inventing new characters that you think should be added to the Chinese language, and realize how they ended up with tens of thousands characters over three thousand years.
d0df68 No.26662
>>26660
Prosciutto pls They are based on Images, like stick figures that's how people learn them, and through the complex script they are able to express poetic meaning that can't be said through the Latin alphabet.
d0df68 No.26663
>>26660
Also Nice going on Deleting your post
d0df68 No.26664
d3d47e No.26665
>>26662
I forgot the flag on but now you've betrayed me fgt.
>through the complex script they are able to express poetic meaning that can't be said through the Latin alphabet
I heartily laugh at you, barbarian.
d0df68 No.26667
>>26665
>Implying it isn't Western Scum that are the Barbarians
What was that about Rome having a hundred Mile long Canal? Oh wait that was China.
Seriously China is pretty much the Epitome of civilization, the only reason Europe progressed ahead is because of all the conflict in Europe at the time led to advancement of technology.. of which China wasn't far behind
d3d47e No.26675
>>26667
>steam engine
>automata
>computers
>advanced law
>advanced philosophy
Roman Empire a best, go flood your rice fields.
>China is the best buuuuut…
Ha. Barbarian.
d0df68 No.26681
>>26675
Whats that about cast iron, or Gunpowder, or paper.
>Roman Empire a best
The Roman Empire died after a few hundred years the Chinese culture kept on living to this day with the same culture only being slightly different from the Original Zhou Dynasty that started 3200 years agoalbeit sometimes civil warring and being ruled by Barbarians but Romans had much more of that :^)
d3d47e No.26683
>>26681
>The Roman Empire died after a few hundred years the Chinese culture
>Empire
>culture
Nice flawed comparison there, but no cheating please. Roman culture, as law, literature, philosophy and religion, is all around the world. But it evolved, and last time I checked stagnation isn't a virtue. Check and mate Cao Cao.
1361b7 No.26684
>>26681
Tbh yeah, even mao zedong couldn't wiped out chinese culture. People cheering for rome, becuase without them europeans wouldn't civilized.
By culture chinese are way ahead
d0df68 No.26692
>>26683
>roman culture andlaw and Philosophy is al around the world
When was the last time you wore Roman robes to a festival?
What I was saying is that the Chinese culture wasn't limited to just one Nation and that it was pretty much impossible to wipe out due to the sheer advances of it all, the closest was everything went as Normal except Mongols are in charge, people were still Chinese and there was never anything close to a "Dark Age" other than the warring states Period which was a time of warfare and many advanced in scientific knowledge.
check mate
73536a No.26693
Here's some wisdom from /int/
d0df68 No.26697
>>26693
>/int/
Opinion discarded
9e34a6 No.26699
>>26697
You gotta admit, at least halfchan /int/ was funny. It was like dogfighting, except with autistic shitposters instead of dogs and misplaced, fanatic nationalism instead of savage instinct.
70c5fa No.26701
Well we seem to have been derailed a bit, but while we're on the topic of foreign relations, here are a few excerpts from Volume I of the Cambridge History of China, about foreign relations in the time of the Han Dynasty
Being an older book, it uses Wade-Giles instead of pinyin
>According to Tsou Yen's theory, there are nine large continents (ta chiuchou) in the world, and each is further divided into nine regions. The nine continents are separated from one another by vast oceans, and the nine regions of each continent are also separated from one another by a circling sea. China, known as the Spiritual Continent of the Red Region (ch'ih-hsien shen-chou), constitutes but one of the nine regions of a large continent. In other words, China occupies only one of the eighty-one divisions of the entire world. Moreover, in Tsou Yen's system, it is not even clear whether China is located in the central regions of its own continent
So while modern translations of 中國 use "middle kingdom" and certain commentators often use this reading to emphasize the "yellow peril" of a chauvinistic China that views itself as the center of the world, such a view is not really accurate. A better view is probably the 中-外 "internal-external" definition rather than the 上-中-下 "up-middle-down" definition, in which case 中國 is "our country" contrasted with 外國 "foreign countries."
>Moreover, as their geographical knowledge of the world grew with time,
the Han Chinese even came to the realization that China was not necessarily the only civilized country in the world. This is clearly shown in the fact that the Later Han Chinese gave the Roman Empire (or, rather, the Roman Orient) the name of Great Ch'in (Ta Ch'in). According to the Hou-Han shu, the Roman Empire was so named precisely because its people and civilization were comparable to those of Chin
But on the other hand it does not appear that China had much interest in the outside world; managing its own affairs was always a higher priority.
>But if the Han Chinese were not sinocentric in the geographical sense,
they were indeed sinocentric in the politico-cultural sense. For the order of
the world as a whole was never their concern; rather, they were concerned
with the establishment and maintenance of the Chinese world order, which
was by definition sinocentric.
d0df68 No.26709
>>26701
>ch'in
Thats how it's pronounced but it's spelled for some fucking reason by everyone as Qin
5b137a No.26719
>>26709
Qin is the pinyin transcription, Ch'in is the Wade-Giles transcription. Pinyin is the accepted international system for transcribing Chinese characters with Latin letters.
And though they may sound similar to your ear, Wade-Giles Ch' is not the same as English Ch.
Pinyin (and Wade-Giles) do not use letters exactly the same way as English does. But this is to be expected, because the languages use different sounds. You don't complain that the Spanish pronounce or spell "Los Angeles" incorrectly, do you?