Abstract
This chapter concerns China’s relationship to the outside world in the period of the T’ang dynasty 618 to 907, more particularly the period of the ‘Golden’ T’ang down to the great rebellion of An Lu-shan in 755, though sidelong glances will be taken at the periods of the Northern Wei and Sui which preceded and of the ‘Silver’ T’ang, Five Dynasties and early Sung which followed. Its argument is that in this period, which we will call late antiquity, the separate worlds of classical antiquity were drawn into a new unity, thanks to the magnetic pre-eminence of T’ang China — political, social, economic, and intellectual — and to the acquisitive cosmopolitanism of the T’ang court. For a brief moment under emperor Hsüan-tsung, 712–756, China was genuinely the centre of the world, the heir and supplanter of the Buddhist world institution. The new secular synthesis, however, was precocious, rarefied and fragile, and collapsed when the rebellion of An Lu-shan destroyed the extravagent imperial court which supported it.1
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Notes
For T’ang China, see particularly Edward H. Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand (University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles 1963);
Edwin G. Pulleyblank, The Background of the Rebellion of An Lu-shan (Oxford University Press, Oxford 1955);
D.C. Twitchett, Financial Administration under the T’ang Dynasty (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1963);
Arthur F. Wright and Denis Twitchett (eds) Perspectives on the T’ang (Yale University Press, New Haven and London 1973).
For the empire of Justinian see P. Brown, The World of Late Antiquity from Marcus Aurelius to Muhammed (Thames and Hudson, London 1971);
W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1972);
Evelyne Patlagean, Pauvreté Économique et Pauvreté Social à Byzance, 4 e –7 eSiecles (Mouton, Paris, La Haye 1977).
C.P. Fitzgerald, China. A Short Cultural History (The Cresset Press, London 1954) p. 884.
For monastic capitalism in China, see Jacques Gernet, Les Aspects Économiques du Bouddhisme dans La Société Chinoise due V eau XeSiècle, (École Française D’Extrême-Orient, Saigon 1956).
Quoted in Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (Academic Press, New York 1974).
For plague in late antiquity, see Jean-Noel Biraben, Les Hommes et la Peste en France et dans les pays européens et mediterranéens. Tome I. La Peste dans L’Histoire (Mouton, Paris, La Haye 1975).
For the Romanitas of the early Byzantine empire, see Gilbert Dagron, Naissance d’une Capitale, Constantinople et ses Institutions de 330 à 451 (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1974).
For P’ei Cheng and Chinese law in late antiquity, see Etienne Balazs, Le Traité Juridique du ‘Souei-chou’ (E.J. Brill, Leiden 1954) especially pp. 22, 64, 147–9.
For the Chinese horse administration in Central Asia, see Henri Maspero (ed.) Les Documents Chinois de la Troisième Expedition de Sir Aurel Stein en Asie Centrale (The Trustees of the British Museum, London 1953) pp. 87–92, 113–49.
D. Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London 1971) p. 48.
For changes in Chinese agriculture in late antiquity, see Michel Cartier, ‘L’ Exploitation Agricole Chinois de L’Antiquité au XIV e siècle: Evolution d’un Modele’, Annales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, vol. 33 no. 2, (March-April 1978) pp. 365–88.
For capitalism in Western antiquity, see Paul Veyne, Le Pain et Le Cirque, Sociologie Historique d’un Pluralisme Politique (Editions du Seuil, Paris 1976) especially pp. 118–40. Much of what M. Veyne says could be applied to China.
Ho Ping-ti ‘Lo-yang, A.D. 495–534. A Study of Physical and Socio-Economic Planning of a Metropolitan Area’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 26 (1966) pp. 52–101 and 86.
I. Umnyakov and Y. Aleskerov, Samarkand, A Guide Book (Progress Publishers, Moscow 1972) pp. 15–16.
For the spread of Nestorianism to China, see P.Y. Saeki, The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China (SPCK, Tokyo 1951).
J.W. McCrindle (ed.) The Christian Topography of Cosmas, An Egyptian Monk (Hakluyt Society, London 1897) pp. 365–6, 368.
Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China Vol. I (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1954) p. 216.
Paul Wheatley, The Golden Khersonese (University of Malaya Press, Kuala Lumpur 1961) pp. 218, 219.
Raymond K. Kent, Early Kingdoms in Madagascar, 1500–1700 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York 1970).
A.L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India (Grove Press, New York 1959) pp. 189, 526.
Fernand Braudel, La Mediterranée et le Monde mediterranéen d l’époque de Philippe II (Librairie Armand Colin, Paris 1949) p. 336.
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© 1995 S. A. M. Adshead
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Adshead, S.A.M. (1995). World Centre: China in Late Antiquity, 400 to 1000. In: China in World History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23785-2_2
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