Empire without Emperors?
Rethinking aspects of China’s “modernization”
China’s republican revolution of 1911 is overwhelmingly considered— notwithstanding ongoing debates over its nature, course, and outcomes—a necessary and positive step on the country’s path toward social and political “modernization.” Yet if viewed in the context of traditional Chinese political culture, the haphazard abolition of the millennia-old monarchic form of rule appears as less prudent.
In this talk Professor Pines will address short- and long-term repercussions of China’s transformation from a monarchy into a republic and reassess its political and cultural consequences. A renewed analysis of advantages and disadvantages of China’s abolition of monarchic rule may be of interest to historians of traditional and modern China and also of some relevance to those concerned with China’s ongoing attempts to redefine its cultural image.
Professor Yuri Pines
Born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1964 Yuri Pines works at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on political thought of pre-imperial (pre-221 BCE) China and on the political culture of imperial China. He is also involved in studies of political, social, and religious history of pre-imperial and early imperial (Qin) China and of early Chinese historiography.
His major monographs include The Everlasting Empire: Traditional Chinese Political Culture and Its Enduring Legacy (Princeton, 2012); Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era and Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009 and 2002). His new study, The Book of Lord Shang: Apologetics of State Power in Early China is forthcoming in Columbia University Press, 2017.
For further details see http://www.eacenter.huji.ac.il/Pines and https://huji.academia.edu/yuripines
This Distinguished Lecture from Professor Pines will take place in Lecture Theatre 2 at the University of Edinburgh’s Business School from 6pm on Thursday 17th March. Following on from the lecture and Q&A there will be a networking drinks reception.
No booking is required.
Professor Qin Hui 秦晖 is Professor of History at Tsinghua University, China. His research has covered several fields in economic history, social history and the history of ideas. He has published more than twenty books including Fields and Garden Poetry and Rhapsodies (田园诗与狂想曲), Ten Treatises on Tradition (传统十论), Out of the Imperial System (走出帝制), Common Baseline (共同的底线), Issues and Isms (问题与主义), Revelations from South Africa (南非的启示
