Abstract
East Asia has a long prehistory, but its recorded history spans only the last 4000 years for China, about 2000 for the rest of the region. By 4000 years ago, several unrelated language phyla were established, a fact important for understanding the spread of agriculture and civilization. China’s history begins with the Xia Dynasty, continues through Shang and Zhou. Zhou fell apart into warring states, whose competition stimulated thought and technical progress. From this arose a number of ideas for statecraft and governance, ranging from near anarchy through kinship-based and kinship-modeled government to a strong “legalist” tradition of government by strict laws and regulations. These systems later were incorporated in the ruling strategies of the great dynasties. Agricultural science and metallurgy progressed.
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Anderson, E.N. (2019). Before Empire: State Formation in China and Proto-states Elsewhere. In: The East Asian World-System. World-Systems Evolution and Global Futures. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16870-4_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16870-4_3
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