American high school history textbooks divide human history into several major waves of civilization. The first wave of civilization lasted from 3500 BC to 500 BC, during which the seven major civilizations of Sumerian, Egyptian, Carroll, Indian, Chinese, Central Asian and Olmec were the core.
These seven civilizations have been mentioned in the author's previous article, interested friends can click on the author's avatar to read the previous article "How do American high school history textbooks describe Chinese civilization?" 》。
So which countries will be the centerpiece of the second wave of civilization?
Let's take a look at how American high school history textbooks are written:
When we leave the first wave of human civilization and go to the second wave of civilization, we first pull the camera to a wide angle and look at the entire agricultural civilization, which is a 5000-long period of time between 3500 BC and the Industrial Revolution of 1750 AD. In these 5,000 years of long time, the grandest trend of civilization is the process of globalization, that is, the process of sweeping the whole earth in the new way of organizing human society such as city-states and states.
At that time, this new type of social organization, the city-state, was undoubtedly the most shocking and powerful, but these civilizations were also very fragile.
The city-states that conquered each other in the plains of Mesopotamia had long since been absorbed by the more powerful Babylonian and Assyrian empires. By the middle of the penultimate millennium BC, the Indus Valley civilization, the Central Asian civilization, and the Small Northern civilization off the coast of Peru had all fallen apart and disappeared.
The Egyptian civilization was constantly invaded by foreign nations, first by its neighbor Nubia, then by the Assyrian Empire, Alexander the Great, and finally by the Roman Empire.
The Olmec civilization suddenly disappeared around 400 BC, and no one knows the specific reason. At the same time, China's Zhou Dynasty also fell apart into the Warring States Period.
But history has not retreated to its beginnings as the bleakness of the first civilization dissipated.
New civilizations were being conceived, during the 1,000 years from 500 BC to 500 A.D. A new wave of civilization was replaced by a new group of more powerful states, or city-state societies, in the Mediterranean Basin, India, China, Mesopotamia, and the Andes.
At the same time, small-scale civilizations also appeared in Ethiopia, West Africa, Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia.
In short, civilization continues to expand globally.
Rome, Persia, India, and the Chinese Empire were at the heart of the Second Wave of Civilization. (This may be the "four ancient civilizations" in the minds of Americans.)
Population, territory, and culture dwarfed the kingdoms of the first wave of civilization. These vast empires ruled vast territories and ethnically diverse populations with a single form of government.
How do American high school history textbooks learn Chinese history in the second wave of civilization?
The timeline is as follows:
Warring States ---> Qin Empire ---> Han Empire ----> Yellow Turban Army Uprising ---> the han Empire disintegrated.
The following is an excerpt from the original text:
Empires always developed like this—rising, expanding, declining, and collapsing!
China: From the Warring States to the Empire
At the other end of Eurasia at the same time as the Roman Empire, a vast empire was taking shape ---- the Chinese Empire.
Unlike the Roman Empire, the Chinese Empire was not a completely new empire, but a restoration of the old imperial order (i.e., reunification into a single state and restoration of the zhou dynasty).
As one of the cores of the first wave of civilization, the state of China was formed around 2200 BC. After the Xia, Shang, and Three Dynasties, the scale became even larger.
But around 500 BC, the empire disintegrated. Entering the fragmented Warring States Era, the seven kingdoms fought each other one after another, and the situation of national unity no longer existed.
For most Chinese, this situation is absolutely unacceptable. The rulers of the various kingdoms were desperate to restore national unity.
One of the countries known as "Qin" succeeded, known in history as Chin-shee-huang-dee (Qin Shi Huang).
At that time, the Qin state already had a very efficient bureaucratic system, equipping the army with iron weapons, developing agriculture, and the population was greatly increased. He also adopted a set of political ideas, called the Jurists, encouraged the rule of the country with clear rules and decrees, and established a series of harsh punishment systems.
The First Emperor did not have the same ambivalence towards his empire as Augustus, and he pushed the territory of China to the extreme. The south advanced all the way to northern Vietnam (with a large extended reading of Vietnam's fight against the Chinese rulers) and northeast to North Korea. To the northwest, he drove out the nomads. Although the territory of later China has expanded or shrunk to varying degrees in its long history, there have been occasional interruptions. But in general, the unified China of the First Emperor is basically today's China.
Since the new empire was based on the previous dynasty, the process of unifying the Chinese Empire was much faster than that of the Roman Empire. But this in no way means that the process of reunification does not require the use of force, or is less brutal.
Scholars who dared to oppose the First Emperor were sentenced to capital punishment, and books were burned. The aristocrats, who opposed the centralized system, were forced to move to the capital. Thousands of laborers were requisitioned to build the Great Wall to defend against "barbarian" invasions from the north, as well as to build a large mausoleum as his resting place.
On the positive side of the First Emperor, he unified weights and measures, currency, width of axles, and writing.
The tyranny of the First Emperor did not last long, and it collapsed in 206 BC. The Han Dynasty (205 BC – 220 AD) succeeded the Qin Dynasty in centralized rule, adjusting harsh edicts and making them moderate. Replace legal thought with Confucius's moral system as the basic philosophical theory of governing the country.
The Han Dynasty truly unified the Chinese Empire and established a complete political system that lasted until the 20th century.
The picture below is an extended reading material for Vietnam's resistance to Chinese aggression.
Empires are always confronted with revolt from conquered nations.
In the historical process of the expansion of the Chinese Empire, Vietnam was under Chinese rule for nearly 1,000 years from 111 BC to 939 AD.
This passage tells the story of a sisterly uprising organized by a pair of sisters in 40 AD, and Zheng Bian and his sister Zheng Yi. The sisters were also aristocrats, and her husband was sentenced to death for opposing the collection of taxes by officials sent by China. Then the angry sister and her sister organized a huge uprising. Of course, it also failed in the end.
To this day, the Vietnamese have a large number of streets and temples named after the sisters.
This uprising had a profound impact on the status of women in Vietnam, which Vietnamese will always remember. When oppressed by foreign tribes, it was the Vietnamese women who rose up in resistance.
Therefore, although Vietnam also belongs to the Confucian cultural circle, their status as women is higher than that of Chinese women.
Focus on the author, tomorrow we will continue to learn how American high schools study Chinese history.