Big Era Four: Landscape Unit 4.2

Why This Unit?

Many teachers discuss modern China in their world history courses. They may mention that the Chinese style of statecraft began more than three millennia ago in the Shang period and continued to the twentieth century. It also spread in some measure to other parts of East Asia, including Japan and Vietnam. This unit explores this formative period when "big government" became an enduring characteristic of mainland East Asia. The unit will help teachers explain more fully how the early Chinese rulers used technologies in ways that differed from those in early complex societies in the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, and Indus valleys. The centralized authority created by the Shang dynasty encouraged innovation in tools for both military power and agriculture. The Shang period also laid the foundation for the "Mandate of Heaven," which is a concept that most teachers use to show the unbroken style of statecraft practiced by rulers of China. Shang monarchs used prescribed ritual sacrifices to ask their ancestors to relay messages to Di, their central deity. During the Zhou dynasty that followed, Di became a more abstract idea of moral order in the cosmos. The Zhou concept led to the formalized idea of the "Mandate of Heaven."

This unit will also introduce the historical debate over how the relationship between predominantly sedentary, agricultural states in East Asia and predominantly pastoral nomadic tribes in Inner Asia affected the style of centralized states in both regions.

Historians also rely on evidence from un-looted tombs to interpret how early complex societies looked and worked. Teachers can build on students' interest by showing them pictures of the interesting treasures that were found in ancient Egypt in the tomb of King Tut or in the Jade burial site of Qin China. Students will see the important role that royal tombs played in the social hierarchy of complex society in East Asia.