Research

Questions in Confucian-Legalist State

In addition to these macro/temporal questions, this book also addresses numerous

meso/micro questions important for understanding patterns of Chinese history. These
include: What was the nature of the city-states that emerged during the Western Zhou
dynasty? Why were hegemonic interstate relations during the early Eastern Zhou period
not dominated by a succession of different hegemons, as the conventional wisdom of
historians has it? Why did war rituals not determine some of the most crucial patterns of
Eastern Zhou warfare, given the great importance of rituals in ancient Chinese war- fare?
Why were Chinese philosophies and philosophers highly eclectic? Why was historical
rationalism (i.e., judging the effectiveness of an action by his- torical precedent and from
holistic/dialectic perspectives) a dominant mode of thinking among ancient Chinese
philosophers, and what were the conse- quences of this? Given the fierce and frequent
interstate wars during the late Eastern Zhou period, why did nationalistic identities not
play a major role in shaping the thinking of ancient China’s elite?19 Why was the state of Chu,
dominant during the early Eastern Zhou period, unable to retain that domi- nance during
the latter part of the period? Why was the state of Qi never a superpower during the late
Eastern Zhou period, as historians generally believe? What conditions shaped the dynamic
relationships between nomadic, nomadic-pastoral, and sedentary peoples and polities?
Why did the most powerful nomadic empires of the world all emerge in the north of China
and not in other parts of Eurasia, and why were Manchurian semi-nomadic tribes more
capable than the fully nomadic peoples of establishing durable empires in China? Why
should active participation of the gentry in local affairs dur- ing the Southern Song (1127–
1279), late Ming, and late Qing dynasties not be understood as the emergence of a nascent
“public space,” undermining the Confucian-Legalist state? How could the late imperial
Chinese state maintain its rule with reasonable efficiency, having only a relatively small,
numerically stable body of bureaucrats even while the Chinese population was undergo-
ing rapid growth? Why was Chinese popular religion able to develop at the expense of
institutional religions such as Buddhism and religious Daoism during and after the Song
dynasty? Why did the development of unorthodox Confucianism during the late Ming
dynasty not lead to a Chinese reformation that would have completely undermined the
Neo-Confucian domination of thought and action? Why did the Zunghars fail in their
geopolitical competi- tion with the Manchu Qing dynasty (1644–1911)?