I love your channel guys but all these products that are alternatives of cigs causes pneumoconiosis, maybe less aggressive that tabacco or weed (which cause direct inhalation of carbon particles) but it will still cause permanent damage which can be eventually fatal.
@@CsStoker I'd have never been able to quit smoking if I hadn't switched to a vaporizer first. It killed the cravings and withdrawal and was much easier to go off of than tobacco was, mostly because vaping is just no where near as satisfying, lol. Smoked for 7 years, switched to a vape for 3 months, and have quit for 4 years now.
I am Dutch, 32 years old. I remember browsing the internet as teenager, including UA-cam and I was dying for this kind of content. Chinese history, culture and art was (and even still) feels like a fascinating mystery and a unique perspective on the world apart from the western one. I cherish this.
If you want more content on China, then I recommend the (Fall of Civilizations podcast, Han Dynasty episode)... Their episode on the Khmer Empire is also great.
Finally, a comprehensive pre-Chinese Empire video! This topic is scarce on UA-cam tbh. Maybe its because of the language barrier plus scarce resources. Keep it up man!
It's a 23 minute video so I'm not sure I'd call it "comprehensive" 😅 hopefully this becomes popular so he can make a series going into more depth covering the period.
@@jonathanwilliams1065 this is a myth propagated by the Han dynasty to discredit the Qin. Qin Shi Huang had Confucian scholars and some of their works burnt, but he kept a copy of everything that was publicly destroyed. Xiang Yu was the person who actually caused a large loss of literature and history by razing the capital to the ground when he overthrew the Qin.
Agreed. It's also frustratingly rare and underrepresented in academia compared to the over focus on Greco Roman history. It's nice to see more focus on the Far East for a change
Regarding the Great Wall, the vast majority of people have misunderstood its purpose. The Great Wall is not simply a standalone wall, but rather an entire defensive system. Similar to the Roman Limes along the Rhine and Danube, besides the Great Wall itself, it also encompasses numerous fortresses and strongholds. During defensive operations, the Great Wall provides early warning and constrains enemy movements, allowing the rear fortresses to swiftly launch counterattacks. Despite the high cost of the entire system, it significantly reduces the need for imperial troops along the borders, thereby greatly diminishing the empire's overall defense expenditure. Furthermore, one crucial reason for extending the Great Wall to mountain peaks is its function in economic blockade. Through the Great Wall, the empire controls all potential trade networks (nomadic tribes) and can implement economic blockades as needed, achieving the effect of 'winning without fighting.' The efficacy of the Great Wall is evident; as long as the empire maintains internal stability, hardly any nomadic tribe has managed large-scale breaches of the wall. Only when the empire falls into turmoil can nomadic tribes break through the defenses and penetrate the empire's interior.
I adore all of the videos this channel puts out, but I must say what really has this channel stand out to me aside from its adept comprehension of history is its fantastic and well drawn artwork. I feel the videos would not be the same without the detailed and enriching artwork. This video specifically because of the depiction of ancient Chinese clothing and armor, showing styles and designs I have never seen or imagined, as my own focus is mainly European. Truly enlightening.
hey, thanks for this comment! we love to hear it! we built some very good relations with artists over the years (and more recently also with publishing companies) to be able to have such illustrations in our videos. It's a lot of work, (costs quite a bit of money too) but we think it's worth it. So, we are especially thankful for the comment and you noticing and appreciating the artwork!
Great depiction of the 17th century Chinese common infantry type at 0:09, because China at the time were like the Europeans undergoing transitioning from older Tercio type tactics to newer linear tactics. The proliferation of guns also rendered most low ranking Chinese troops went into battlefield without armour since firearms finally became more cost effective at this point. The Chinese matchlock musket seen in the video, were longer and has bigger buttstock similar to the European counterparts due to the changing trends of the battlefield, and it finally replaced handcannons and earlier Portuguese Arquebuses. The funny thing is throughout 80 years of Chinese film making developments, most Chinese film producers depicted the Ming era and Manchu Soldiers fought like an Ancient armies with Medieval era weaponry due to lack of historical research and also due to huge influence of Wuxia genre(One man with Jedi capabilities mowing down dozens of enemies).
It's 16th century Ming northern army, the northern army historically perfered the triple barrel handgun because it can be used as a mace. You are talking about the Qing, which had at most 60% musketeers, China pretty much always had something similar to the Tercios. Warring states Chinese armies had 60% crossbowmen, and fought like a pike and shot manner, with field fortifications and impressive fortresses which were only rivaled in the west with the advent of star forts. The transition to linear tactics only happened after the opium wars.
Maybe, but seriously now in Taiwan Chinese and Hongkong Chinese they don't like Ancient China history because they believe now China become dictatorship country because ancient China history is empire but if understood ancient japan history will know shogun of shogunate they like ancient China is empire but they don't care they still think Chinese people just like china is dictatorship
@@zack2804 You mean Mesopotamia? In China we usually consider Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greek, Ancient Mesopotamia and China as 4 most ancient civilizations, and China is youngest of them.
@0 No, if we're talking about "GREATEST", then it would be Persia, Egypt and China. Mesopotamia had the earliest civilizations, but they would all eventually be triumphed by the Achaemenid dynasty, which created a civilizational golden age far before a Greek identity even existed. Cyrus the Great is considered as history's first humanist, creating the world's first multicultural empire. And China definitely isn't the "newest". Both Persian and Chinese civilizations date back to 6,000 years.
@@pig1800 That’s incorrect, you probably meant to say Indus Valley instead of Greek, because - Sumerian civilization matured circa 3500 BCE - Egyptian civilization matured circa 3200 BCE - Indus Valley civilization matured circa 2800 BCE - Chinese civilization matured circa 2050 BCE - Greek civilization matured circa 1650 BCE This is if you don’t consider the insignificant mini-civilizations like the Elamite or Minoan ones.
Mandate of Heaven explained using Zoomer lingo : "You are so cringe ngl Big Sky Daddy depicted you as Soyjak and me as Chad. Get L+Ratio'd, all those Gyatts are mine now." Typing this makes me want to drink immortality elixir.
Yes, but I'd imagine 95% of people including nobles and other important figures actually believing in this mandate considering how central it is to chinese history. And you know, not everyone is educated and some are stubborn etc, etc.
Not just an excuse, but a "divine justification" that everyone (including the usurpers themself) will believe in if he succeeds. "If god/heaven didn't look after them, how would they succeed"?
Liangzhu was definitely china's earliest civilization. It has hallmarks of a civilization including monumental architecture. For example, It produced the world's earliest large scale hydraulic works 5100 years ago
Earliest that we have significant archaeological evidence for - there's a good chance previous civilizations who didn't produce long lasting archeological remnants existed for significant periods before that. Much like we're learning occurred in the near east.
Bro. This is exactly the video I've been needing forever. Maybe this will help inspire me to start over the asian side of my Minecraft world. The old world was so nice, and while the geography is excellent, even better than the old world. I just don't have the inspiration to begin it.
This was a very good overview of Chinese military history, my one quibble is a matter of pronunciation. You pronounced "Zhou" as "Shu" consistently in the piece. In Chinese, the "ou" has a sound similar to the English "oh" and the "zh" has a sound much like the English "j" but a little softer, perhaps between the English "j" and the English "sh". So "Zhou" would be pronounced similar to the English name "Joe".
Same goes for the pronunciation of "Qin", which he pronounced like "dshin". That however is the pronunciation for another dynasty, the Jin. Correct would be "tshin", from which also the name "China" derives.
@@BakeRollsGarlic7 That's true, though I have a lot more sympathy for westerners trying to pronounce those sounds. It took me a long time to clarify the difference between "q", "ch", "x", "sh", "j", and "zh" in pinyin; there's a lot more variation in those type of sounds than there is in any western language I'm familiar with. The difference between "ou" and "oo/u", however, should be pretty clear even to western ears.
Love the dancing panda at the end. About the 400k army in a battle comment, I’d love to see the process as to how historians would estimate true army sizes. For example, Gaugemala ‘s wiki page states the modern size of the Persian army as high as 250k vs a much higher ancient source account. Wondering how factors such as length of the battle, if it was close to logistic enablers such as rivers, decisiveness of a battle in ensuring victory, closeness to city/dense population areas, mass grave/burial sites, and conscription practices influence modern estimations of ancient battles Edit: also the narrative purpose and temporal closeness of written sources also would play a role
Always odd that historians seem to arbitrarily diminish the sizes of ancient armies, based on assumptions of what the population and local resources could presumably support, yet take so many other archaeological evidences at face value, with nowhere near the same level of skepticism.
Well I remember reading somewhere that said a trick ancient historian used to inflate army sizes was to include woman and children and logistic support such as servants or baggage carriers. But I guess for the Chinese army size account I would think it would be somewhat more accurate as during the Warring States period there was an increase in centralization and bureaucracy. This was because the state that can mobilize the most men for the army will usually conquer the other. So I guess there were extensive and mostly reliable records of these conscriptions and army sizes.
@@BeingFireRetardant archaelogical evidence are primary sources, in themselves not used by someone to change the narrative. Early writing is invariably mostly propaganda with political intent. From Caesar to Napoleon generals wrote their victory pamphlet for political goals and as propaganda (in these two cases we do know that they did that). So your statement is very weird in that regards. Yes, archaelogists do assume it less likely someone put a vase in the ground to trick them vs. that a politican lied on his propaganda pamphlet. The high figures simply conflict with populations at the time and what seems feasible logistically. Also there are simply conflicts in counting for military purposes. In fact for better logistical planning Eastern armies from ancient Persia to the Ottoman Empire counted everyone and everything in an army aka soldiers, retinue, camp followers and animals(!), not just soldiers. Other effect can be counting all enemy armies in a war while only counting your single army defeating one for your own side. Oftentimes they may not be even malicious, it can occur simply because e.g. theatre numbers were the only numbers known or a chronist did not know that ancient Persians counted army size that way and was proud he had researched Persian sources at all and happy to take the higher numbers. In some cases empires also inflated the might of the armies and played into propagating outlandish army sizes to intimidate their foes. That is also an easy way how you get to giant numbers and the valiant underdog for the just cause deigned by fate to win against any odds is always a strong motif for political reasons.
Laws in the warring states clearly stated that Chinese males aged 16 and over were required to be drafted into the military. Moreover, at that time China was the most populous country in the world with 40-45 million people. Each state may have a population of up to 7 million people. In addition, the ancient Chinese also had agencies specifically responsible for growing rice for use in warfare.
For many Chinese, the Xia dynasty did actually exist. Many surnames including common ones first derived from the time of Xia according to their family history. Archaeology of physical evidences might not agree. But other sources might say that Xia indeed did exist.. Secondly, Qin Shi Huang Di wasn't the first emperor of China. It is to do with the features of Chinese characters and their sounds. There are 2 characters that both mean emperor's but with some difference. Huang is the sound of one of the 2. It literally is written as the character of 'white' over the character for 'king'. White king means pure king of absolutely untainted ethical standards and morality. Well, no humans could be that saintly. So this character literally means an emperor of divinity or god emperor or a mythical god. It is NOT a human emperor. The second character that also mean an emperor has the sound of DI. It means a human person emperor. An actual person that is the emperor. Before the 'first' emperor there were other human emperors. Yellow emperor eg, is seen as THE ancestor of all Chinese. Archaeology might see him as non-existent ever, but in the mind of all Chinese says otherwise. The great grandfather of the 'first' emperor once claimed himself the human emperor of the west (the western Di). The founding king of the Xia dynasty is seen as the Woo Di or Human emperor Woo. Technically, hence the 'first' emperor wasn't China's first emperor or human emperor. What the confusion is due to the combination of the 2 characters for 2 types of emperor used by him.. He called himself 'Divine' (Huang) 'Human Emperor' (Di) or Huang Di. Qin Shi means Qin dynasty's First. Qin Shu Huang Di means Qin dynasty's First divine human emperor. In China, no one dares to call themselves divine. This guy was a Maga maniac. And guess what he attracted the wrath of the real divine. That is why the moment he died, rebellions happened and toppled his dynasty that lasted not even 15 years. That is why, after his dynasty, not one, repeat NOT one, future emperor ever dared to use the same 'Divine' 'Human Emperor' title at all. Not one.. All of them called themselves in formal way xyz Human emperor.... But the term 'Divine' 'Human Emperor' or 'Huang Di' stuck in informal uses since. This explains the confusion. One more point about the 'First' emperor. He wasn't actually the one that conquered all China for the first time. First of Xia and Shang king/emperor did it. So did the Zhou's Wu King too. Hence another confusion. The 'First' emperor only reunited China and brought in a new style of governing the empire. Also, it was his ancestors over 150 years that laid the foundation for his success in such a short period. The battles he fought in forming his dynasty were 23:19 smell scale vs some of the battles his ancestors did in those 150 years. Frankly, without his ancestors, he wouldn't have done it. The Zhou dynasty went through fragmentation very quickly due to the feudal system it used. Literally each of domains were self governing with own tax system and even military. Automatically it means that Zhou was destined to be suffering from chaos forever till it was toppled and another system brought in. That constant warfare especially from 700'sBCE means that many tried to find an intellectual ways of brining peace into the then China. Hence you had the flowering of different schools of thoughts of how to achieve such. The 100 schools if thoughts is the expression. One of these, the Legalism was adopted by the home state of Qin Shi Huang Di about 150 years before he took all China. Legalism means that rules of laws applicable to all from king to peasant. It also meant rewards are given due to merits instead of by birth right. It leads to strict applications of laws and regulations as well as punishments for any breach. It also means that promotions and awards in the government is due to capabilities instead of the ranks in the society. This greatly increased outputs from agriculture and strengthening of the military. Other ancestors ripped the benefits of these reforms in fighting large wars vs their enemies. This series of wars greatly weakened Qin's enemies. Qin Shi Huang Di hence didn't and shouldn't get the sole credit for the outcome of brining the empire back together AGAIN. This makes sense as you look at the European experiences. Not one state has ever taken all Europe. Not even the Romans. It'd take incredible reforms and determinations and luck of winning wars for a long hundreds of years to happen. But it has never and likely will never given the size of population these days. The period before the 'first' emperor serves the back story of many rebellions in China since. That period lasted over 500 years and such fragmented China happened a few times after his time. The next dynasty was founded by a commoner with no loyal blood connection at all. Not even a proper education, this founding emperor of Han Dynasty also changed and left one of the main ethos in Chinese mind. That is, anyone could become the emperor of China. No blue blood and no divinity involvement. This means a lot of Chinese at any time believes that they could too found a new dynasty. That is also why China has more years of fragmentation of civil wars these last 2,200 years than peaceful unified periods. That is, it is the NORM for China to be fighting internally. It's THE Chinese FATE.
"Xia" is semi-mythical, meaning it is historical and indeed existed, but not entirely in a way the traditional historiographical account puts it, kind of like Jesus' account in the Bible. And Chinese actually give a lot of credit to the empirical evidences of it. Yu Dynasty is actually the first (founded by the son of Huangdi), but mainstream Chinese consensus already determined that to be entirely mythical, because civilization proper began with the Xia/Erlitou. It is quite safe to say Qin Shi Huang is indeed the first to unify all of China, as the territorial concept of "China" had already matured as far back to the time of the legends. The Yanhuang people of the Longshan culture/Huaxia society was eyeing on the whole of Yangtse river area in addition to the Yellow river as part of their domain. And during the Xia-Shang-Zhou dynasty they were already eyeing the entire mainland as part of its dominion. It was just not until the Qin were they able to exert control over the areas that they were claiming. China is currently in a divided/fragmentation period. Only this time the unique thing and one that is the first ever in history is, there is a faction that seeks to exit Chinese history due to influence from information and psychological war by external forces. Every other time in history have Chinese considered themselves to be Chinese and always seek to restore/reunite it in one competing way or another.
After Qin Shi Huang Di unified all 7 states into 1 big empire one thing he did first is to wipe off all 6 other noble families until no one's left and erased all their traces to ensure no noble families stage a rebellion against him. He did all of this is to ensure no other warring states period like before gripping China for so many centuries happen again in the future. Next step is to form a unified system of governance, legal system, currency, formalized fashion and clothing, and writing system to be standardized across his new unified empire. It seems legit at first but it failed miserably and crumbles down and disinterested quickly right after his death. This time the one that stage a rebellion is not from other noble families in exile or rival noble families from neighboring kingdoms because he already wiped them off, instead it was from angry peasants. But the new dynasty risen by commoners adopted all unified standardized system Qin Shi Huang Di has created and this unified system survived to this very day, but adding more to it with Rule of Law to introduce the concept of justice to all level of society China had never experienced before. This seems to worked very well as the Han dynasty instead of lasting only 15 years they did last for over 4 century and still remained the longest lasting dynasty in China's history. Probably it was because of Qin Shi Huang Di's unified system no matter how many dynasties comes and goes and different political systems changes from one to another China remained exist to this day.
Xia, so far, has no discernible written language, which is why the western scholars and experts dispute its existence. However, the keyword is "discernible". By the time of the beginning of Shang Dynasty, there was already mature written words with structure. This would also mean that there has to be something that eventually evolved into what the Shang used.
I adore the panda that dances at the end. My curiosity is piqued by the idea of a 40,000-strong army in a battle remark; I wonder how historians get at these estimates. As an example, according to Gaugemala's wiki page, the Persian army was 250k strong in modern times, which is far lower than the much larger ancient source account. Curious about the aspects that impact modern evaluations of historical battles. These include the length of the war, its proximity to logistic facilitators like rivers, the battle's decisiveness in guaranteeing victory, its proximity to cities or densely populated areas, mass graves or burial sites, and conscription practices.
Wow, this video packed 10,000 years of history into 23 minutes! 🤯 I learned so much about the early foundations of China's rise to power. Particularly interesting was the development of bronze casting.
Thank you for the video, if I have to nitpick, the Zhou is pronounce “Joe” not “shoe”, in fact there is another dynasty in the three kingdom period called “Shu”
This is not what I expected from this channel but I'm glad it happened! So will you continued into the imperial periods in the next videos? If so, I will be looking forward for the ones about the Great Tang and the Great Song.
The Song could really use a video. They have a rather unfair reputation for being militarily weak despite taking the Mongols 40ish years to conquer (and before that they forced the Jin into a stalemate for around a century.) This view is ofc not mainstream in scholarship anymore, but it's still pervasive in pop culture understanding of their military.
@@limonbatteryThe Song at the start was stronger than any other regime but then the first emperor retired most of the best generals for fear that they might turn on him. Even then the Song would have destroyed or maybe even conquered the Liao if it truly put in the resources.
@@limonbattery The Song started as a general who usurped the dynasty he served under and the warlord era that preceded the Song. A major reason why the Song couldn’t expand as well as the Tang or the Ming is because they lost the best horse pastures to the Khitan Liaos. Another major reason is that China still haven’t figured out how to curtail powerful generals at the time. It took until the Ming that they were able to rotate generals and separate them from the troops to avoid a power base.
Sanxingdui is not considered part of China proper at the time. It was a separate civilization and culture. I think the video is only talking about how Han Chinese united China and became an imperial power. If we're including Sanxingdui, may as well include Dian, Yelang, Âu Lạc, and all the other Baiyue kingdoms of the south.
@@conho4898 "Han Chinese" did not exist at that period. They consisted and were made up of many different ancient groups of people including the Baiyue (many different tribes). Before that, the Chinese kingdoms/states/empires in the central plain of China considered and regarded themself as "Hua Xia" people which also consisted and were made up of many ancient tribes.
Great to see you dive into Chinese history! You love to see it. If you plan to do more on that part of history, consider taken 20min to check the basic pronunciation rules of Pinyin, the transliteration of the chinese characters. You can ignore tones for this audience, but for example “Zhou” is more close to the english name Joe than the word shoe. The cherry on the top would be to not use simplified chinese characters, since these weren’t introduced until the 20th century or so. Anyway, love your work!
Hey, thanks for the comment. This is well out or comfort zone / field of expertise, so we're actually pretty happy that - besides a few comments regarding wrong architectural depictions - the only substantial criticism seems to be that much of the pronunciation is wrong. We will work on it next time!
@@SandRhomanHistoryit’s a great attitude you guys have keep up the great work! And I do agree pronunciation is important, of course nobody expects you to pronounce words like a native speaker, but it can get really confusing if Chinese words are pronounced completely wrong. It would be as if I made a video on George Washington but pronounced his name as geh-ore-geh Was-hinge-ton. Even if you’re a native English speaker you might have to do a double take to process what is being said.
The pronounciation is terrible. Funnily enough he doesn't mention the new discoveries in Sichuan and Inner Mongolia, especially the impressive stone complex at Shimao.
In re: all the pronunciation comments: Pinyin is not intuitive. Suffice it to say, you need prior knowledge of the system to pronounce it. (Just use Google Translate, when I tried it, it was accurate). But don’t worry about tones or retroflexing initials. Deciding what phonological features to preserve or alter might merit a dissertation. Thanks for the excellent history
We pay artists to create them. The charaters / chariots / soldiers are pretty much all commissioned pieces. the backgrounds are mostly liscenced from various platforms.
Some probably still did and bronze still had cultural significance such as being used to make certain items. But by then iron was already used widely during the Warring States period. I guess you can categorize the early Zhou dynasty still mainly using bronze and chariots. Plus I would think iron was much more accessible and cheaper to use to equip massive armies that were common during the late warring states period.
They used bronze primarily as there was significantly more experience working with bronze and bronze weapons being easier to mass produce since it can be cast. Iron is far more abundant and does not need trade routes to sources of tin and copper, which makes it more accessible in most situations. However, if one has access to both tin and copper in large quantities, it makes sense to fit out a mass peasant army numbering in the tens if not hundreds of thousands with bronze weapons due to ease of production compared to iron, which may be cheaper on a smaller scale.
Bronze would have been absurdly expensive for ancient China considering the major bronze making areas were in Mediterranean. You need Tin to make Bronze, and Tin is rarer than Uranium. Mediterranean people were able to make armies equipped with bronze weapons because they brought large quantities of Tin from the "Tin islands" of Ancient Britain. As the video already mentions, only Nobles could afford Bronze weapons. Could be the reason why Ancient China had better iron manufacturing
@@elusiveshadow5848 You didn't have the Shang bronzes in mind probably when you wrote that. China is the richest in bronze vessels in the world dated to the Bronze Age. Any museum on East Asiatic Art will show you plenty of the "Shang dynasty bronzes" with their intricate dragon decorations. Are you assuming all that came from the Mediterranean, or what are you basing your allegation on?
Actually I verified the thing and they did (still) use exclusively bronze weapons in China at the time of the terracotta army, in about 200 BC, and of not a very high quality apparently.
incredible video. people get furious over a minor pronunciation mistake... man, can't we just appreciate that this content is based on several scholarly sources. it's well made too. they clearly put a lot of effort into it. but no, Chinese people have to come and complain over and over again.
Hope you make a video on the new model army to fjnslize your pike and shot armies series. I keep hearing how the NMA is much better than the sweddish batallions during the English civil war
Great content, but a couple of notes on the pronunciation: Qin : Chin (where name China originated) Zhou : Jou (not quite the ‘j’ sound, but close. Anything Chinese that starts with ‘z’ can be pronounced with the ‘j’ sound)
According to our oral history and folk song, our ancestor escaped from the tyrant king, Qin Shihuangdi (221BC) as they were used as a forced labor in the construction of the Great Wall of China. Sinluang village was where once our ancestors lived, and Mahou Taubei ( Minhau in Chinese) was the cave mountain from which our forefathers began their migration. Rongmei Naga people of North East India believed Yunan Province in China to be their original place of origin. According to our oral history , frequent floods, raids from Barbarians and forced labor was the main reason for migration.
There's quite a few pronunciation errors in this video, but there's also some incorrect use of ancient characters (for example, 战车 is in simplified when it should be in large seal script). A much worse error, however, is citing a textbook from 2006 claiming that the Zhou were a simple continuation of the Shang. This is definitely not true, at least in the current literature (possibly only from the Chinese side), as it's now known that the Shang were far more egalitarian and less hierarchical than the Zhou. The Zhou established patriarchal rule and inheritance, whereas the Shang were matrilineal. There's a bunch of other social and class changes the Zhou instituted and influence they absorbed from the "barbarians" they conquered, but that gets really into the weeds.
Wow, when you read into Chinese history like this, and it makes you realize that China went through development through these centuries of warring to become an empire. And Now, China as we see it today, is a historically rich culture with many dynasties and teachings taught from the past. It learned about a form of democracy with the mandate of heaven, a form of freedom. They warred with professionalism and had beauracracy. Today, China with its historical experience, truly does have a chance of becoming a shining empire again.
They were 1/3 of the world GDP about 300-400yrs ago, before the british sacked them in the opium war. China will return to its former glory. Its GDP has quadrupled in the last 14 yrs. Quadruple!!
Thanks for making this video and shedding some light on pre-imperial China! I'm curious, at 10:23, it's implied that not all Shang soldiers were armed with bronze weapons. What other material would their weapons have been made of? Also, some notes in case you plan on making more videos about Chinese warfare: the "ZH" consonant pair in modern Chinese pinyin is pronounced closest to the "J" sound in English, maybe "Dsch" if you prefer German, or "ДЖ" in Russian. So "Zhou" would be pronounced like the name "Joe", more or less. The "X" consonant is closest to "SH" in English, and the "Q" is closest to "CH" as in "chicken".
Another great video! Keep up the great content and can't wait for more videos on ancient china or ancient java or ancient Vietnam or even ancient India!!
1059BC - The conjunction occured around June according to the astrology natal chart. The conjunction also opposes the Lot of Fortune in the 7th house of open enemies. Therefore, it was interpreted as a sign of imminent warfare that's soon the come. Would have shared the natal chart i've created here but it doesn't allow any upload of pictures 😅
Great documentary short. But I have to tell you that “Zhou” is NOT pronounced “shoe” like tie your shoe, but rather “Joe” like cup of joe or the biblical name JOEseph.
The Shang people were very savage. Although they have advanced combat technology, they like to eat barbarians. The reason the Aryans could not defeat the Shang was because the Shang were more aggressive than they were, and among the excavated bones were eaten white men.
The ancestors of the Mongols were as short as those of southern China, while the north central Chinese were tall and strong. After the victory in the war, the Chinese took away the short women of the weaker tribes, resulting in the descendants becoming shorter and shorter, and the tall Chinese began to become rare.
Try to imagine remaining in a chariot like that while moving at the full speed of the team of horses. Now, imagine trying to remain on the chariot while shooting an arrow , throwing a spear or swinging a dagger-axe. An amazing feat to be certain.
A very cool look into early chinese history and warfare. I had no idea chariots were so important, it seems like it would be much easier to use riders mounted on horses, rhinos, or really another other animal. By comparison a chariot needs a lot more work to make a single effective fighting unit as the wagon/harness needs to be built and 3 men trained in specialized roles. Infantry focused armies definitely seem easier to raise, train and maintain.
there was no stirrup yet, so riding a horse, especially for any extended period of time was difficult. plus war was ritualized at the time, there was no real need for calvary, conducting flank attacks and sneak attacks were considered cowardly and unbefitting of nobles. it was only later with the increasing threat from the nomads and warfare becoming "real" rather than a ritual, that china got rid of chariots and created cavary.
horses at the time were small, and had weak spines, not partially ridable until one of the dynasties stole some "heavenly horses" with an large army, from an "Greek" city state (left overs from alexanders conquests) in central asia
Sometimes those folktale are actually real history but since the tale pass down by one mouth to other mouth making the true event become even more vague. It just need to dig it deeper since there's always that one person who continue to pass down the tale that haven't change. Hopefully if they still alive
When you don't use the Wade-Giles (or Pinyin if you must) Romanization pronunciations of some of these names, you end up just saying the same thing for many of them because you are not a Chinese speaker and neither are most of your audience. You neither have the ability to convey the difference linguistically, nor does your audience have the ear for it. It's confusing, and it doesn't have to be that way. For example, Qin, Jin, and Xin being the main thing. Substitute those for Chin, Jin, and Shin (they may be different depending on who you ask).
10:26 So what was the poor soldiers' equipment made of? Stone? Its facinating how "China" after the period shown in this video, has been more or less the same state (I guess the Qin-empire was the first time the idea of a "unified China" came into existence?) Yes I know there were a few civil wars, warring states-periods and changes of dynasties. But its more like the same state that has gone through several iterations and built itself up gradually, rather than a series of different states and empires succeeding each other, like in other parts of the world. Its so consistent, like the same council of ministers kept China on the same course throughout several dynasties and emperors. Which I suppose is what happened, isn't it.. Got to wonder though, how much of this is actually true, and how much is fabricated history to give the later dynasties more legitimacy? Also its interesting how the chinese state managed to keep itself together all this time. Rather than being replaced by a rival power when it fell, it got back on its feet under new management every time. Was this because all the other independent states around China was really just copying chinese state-building? So the "legacy" of the empire was so valuble that it was better to proclaim yourself "the next chinese empire" rather than replace it with something new? Or was it more like a Persian situation, where you had the same bureaucracy-system and infrastructure, which was just taken over by various conquerors and emperors?
Before you learn Chinese and read some official history books written in Chinese, it is best not to assume that "Chinese historical poetry is homogeneous, continuous, and uninterrupted". The construction of institutions and the development of productivity are closely related. The "ghost and god" ideology of the Shang Dynasty gave rise to a culture of human sacrifice, oracle bone inscriptions, and drinking. The highly developed bronze smelting technology left behind a large number of exquisite and huge bronze artifacts (try searching for "Houmu Wuding" and "Siyang Fangzun") and strengthened the country's military power, further concentrating power. The Zhou Dynasty overthrew the Shang Dynasty and learned from it. It developed the "ritual education" and "patriarchal system", using etiquette to restrain the common people and clan to restrain the royal family. Based on these two systems, it implemented the "enfeoffment system" to expand its territory and eliminate enemies while ensuring the stability of the royal family. As a result, China's territory was greatly expanded. Due to underdeveloped productivity, the "well field system" is implemented economically, with limited intervention in agricultural production and direct taxation. Although this method of taxation is efficient, it can only be used for relatively small economic scales. The Qin and Han dynasties ended the Zhou dynasty, and the people and rulers who experienced the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods were unwilling to bear this kind of rebellion anymore. Therefore, they must pursue further national unity, material and spiritual aspects. So the "emperor" system was born, with a more stable inheritance system called the "legitimate eldest son inheritance system", a selection system for talents recommended by local officials called the "censorial system", a refined government balance system called the "three officials and nine ministers system", a vast road network called the "galloping road", a "land reclamation system" led by the central army, and a "land private ownership", "salt and iron state-owned", and "unified coinage rights" based on developed economies. The university "Taixue" established in the capital established senior officials to serve as the president, with the "Confucian ideology" centered on cultivating physical and mental harmony and family governance of the world as the national ideology. The emperor regularly held scholar conferences to discuss the "White Tiger View". Meetings and so on. However, the excessive emphasis on ideology in the Han Dynasty also led to the overthrow of the Han Dynasty by the most famous (not the most talented) Confucian scholar, Wang Mang, and the establishment of a "new" dynasty. However, his retro behavior (using old economic, diplomatic, and military systems) brought huge economic and humanitarian disasters, and the people who could not survive rebelled one after another. In the end, among the various rebels, another distant family member, Liu Xiu, rebuilt the country and still named it the "Han" dynasty to show his identity and legitimacy. The failure of the "New" dynasty proved that China was not static, otherwise its retro policies would not have caused so much destruction that they spawned a large number of opponents to overthrow it. Of course, the "Han" dynasty established by Liu Xiu was vastly different from the previous "Han" dynasty that was replaced by the "New" dynasty. As for where the difference lies, let those curious individuals who are truly interested in Chinese history discover it. Perhaps try starting by personally searching Wikipedia (a better suggestion is to use a machine to translate your own questions, then search on the Chinese "Baidu" encyclopedia, and then translate those Chinese back to read, with serious advice from a Chinese person)
thats because since the han dynasty it was ingrained into Chinese thought that if you wanted to be a ruler, your goal was the entirety of china. any who merely want to control a small state was seen as illegitimate by well...everyone, meaning you had no right to rule, meaning anyone can and should rise up and take your place. any invaders that conquered china still needed to rule the place, and since china already already has a established system, the invaders just used that and so china broke but always came back together.
May you delve forth into the history of the Han dynasty and their epic, calamitous end that bloomed into the romanticized period of the Three Kingdoms! As long as you are ready to uncover these military histories after learning the standard Mandarin pronunciations of significant terms coming up!
Numbers in warring states period should be taken with a grain of salt but remember, Zhou dynasty fielded nearly 100k men with yeoman and knights equivalent alone. With the liberation of peasantry, it's not farfetched to say that armies of major states could definitely field an army of around 100k on average.
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You are one of five I would actually give business to a sponsor on youtube. I hope it's enough for you to continue your awesome videos sir!
I love your channel guys but all these products that are alternatives of cigs causes pneumoconiosis, maybe less aggressive that tabacco or weed (which cause direct inhalation of carbon particles) but it will still cause permanent damage which can be eventually fatal.
@@CsStoker I'd have never been able to quit smoking if I hadn't switched to a vaporizer first.
It killed the cravings and withdrawal and was much easier to go off of than tobacco was, mostly because vaping is just no where near as satisfying, lol. Smoked for 7 years, switched to a vape for 3 months, and have quit for 4 years now.
Puedes hacer un vídeo sobre la guerra en el antiguo Perú?
What The Hell
I am Dutch, 32 years old. I remember browsing the internet as teenager, including UA-cam and I was dying for this kind of content. Chinese history, culture and art was (and even still) feels like a fascinating mystery and a unique perspective on the world apart from the western one. I cherish this.
welcome to China
@@油炸薯条-e6y Ni Hao brother!Good fortune to you, from the Netherlands!
We Chinese want know how west scientists appeared in 1300-1600.
If you want more content on China, then I recommend the (Fall of Civilizations podcast, Han Dynasty episode)... Their episode on the Khmer Empire is also great.
@@Heaven596 Ancient Greek and Medieval Persian, Hindu and Buddhist science traditions began trickling in.
Finally, a comprehensive pre-Chinese Empire video! This topic is scarce on UA-cam tbh. Maybe its because of the language barrier plus scarce resources. Keep it up man!
It's a 23 minute video so I'm not sure I'd call it "comprehensive" 😅 hopefully this becomes popular so he can make a series going into more depth covering the period.
It’s scare a in general because Qin destroyed all historical records before his time
@@jonathanwilliams1065 this is a myth propagated by the Han dynasty to discredit the Qin. Qin Shi Huang had Confucian scholars and some of their works burnt, but he kept a copy of everything that was publicly destroyed. Xiang Yu was the person who actually caused a large loss of literature and history by razing the capital to the ground when he overthrew the Qin.
You are aware UA-cam is not the only source of information on the internet right
Agreed. It's also frustratingly rare and underrepresented in academia compared to the over focus on Greco Roman history. It's nice to see more focus on the Far East for a change
Regarding the Great Wall, the vast majority of people have misunderstood its purpose. The Great Wall is not simply a standalone wall, but rather an entire defensive system. Similar to the Roman Limes along the Rhine and Danube, besides the Great Wall itself, it also encompasses numerous fortresses and strongholds. During defensive operations, the Great Wall provides early warning and constrains enemy movements, allowing the rear fortresses to swiftly launch counterattacks. Despite the high cost of the entire system, it significantly reduces the need for imperial troops along the borders, thereby greatly diminishing the empire's overall defense expenditure. Furthermore, one crucial reason for extending the Great Wall to mountain peaks is its function in economic blockade. Through the Great Wall, the empire controls all potential trade networks (nomadic tribes) and can implement economic blockades as needed, achieving the effect of 'winning without fighting.' The efficacy of the Great Wall is evident; as long as the empire maintains internal stability, hardly any nomadic tribe has managed large-scale breaches of the wall. Only when the empire falls into turmoil can nomadic tribes break through the defenses and penetrate the empire's interior.
I adore all of the videos this channel puts out, but I must say what really has this channel stand out to me aside from its adept comprehension of history is its fantastic and well drawn artwork. I feel the videos would not be the same without the detailed and enriching artwork. This video specifically because of the depiction of ancient Chinese clothing and armor, showing styles and designs I have never seen or imagined, as my own focus is mainly European. Truly enlightening.
hey, thanks for this comment! we love to hear it!
we built some very good relations with artists over the years (and more recently also with publishing companies) to be able to have such illustrations in our videos. It's a lot of work, (costs quite a bit of money too) but we think it's worth it. So, we are especially thankful for the comment and you noticing and appreciating the artwork!
Great depiction of the 17th century Chinese common infantry type at 0:09, because China at the time were like the Europeans undergoing transitioning from older Tercio type tactics to newer linear tactics. The proliferation of guns also rendered most low ranking Chinese troops went into battlefield without armour since firearms finally became more cost effective at this point. The Chinese matchlock musket seen in the video, were longer and has bigger buttstock similar to the European counterparts due to the changing trends of the battlefield, and it finally replaced handcannons and earlier Portuguese Arquebuses.
The funny thing is throughout 80 years of Chinese film making developments, most Chinese film producers depicted the Ming era and Manchu Soldiers fought like an Ancient armies with Medieval era weaponry due to lack of historical research and also due to huge influence of Wuxia genre(One man with Jedi capabilities mowing down dozens of enemies).
It's 16th century Ming northern army, the northern army historically perfered the triple barrel handgun because it can be used as a mace. You are talking about the Qing, which had at most 60% musketeers, China pretty much always had something similar to the Tercios. Warring states Chinese armies had 60% crossbowmen, and fought like a pike and shot manner, with field fortifications and impressive fortresses which were only rivaled in the west with the advent of star forts. The transition to linear tactics only happened after the opium wars.
中国出现了世界上第一把火枪
@@yujiuyu8817 不只這樣，連服化道具都搞爛。
Thanks
That’s why I love this channel always talking about topics that are important but overlooked a lot
@bojose1004 I wish I had more access but I do not speak the language
China is one of the most ancient civilizations on Earth. It has a very rich and fascinating history and culture.
Maybe, but seriously now in Taiwan Chinese and Hongkong Chinese they don't like Ancient China history because they believe now China become
dictatorship country because ancient China history is empire but if understood ancient japan history will know shogun of shogunate they like ancient China is empire but they don't care they still think Chinese people just like china is dictatorship
Egypt, Persia, and China are the main three.
@@zack2804 You mean Mesopotamia? In China we usually consider Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greek, Ancient Mesopotamia and China as 4 most ancient civilizations, and China is youngest of them.
@0 No, if we're talking about "GREATEST", then it would be Persia, Egypt and China. Mesopotamia had the earliest civilizations, but they would all eventually be triumphed by the Achaemenid dynasty, which created a civilizational golden age far before a Greek identity even existed. Cyrus the Great is considered as history's first humanist, creating the world's first multicultural empire. And China definitely isn't the "newest". Both Persian and Chinese civilizations date back to 6,000 years.
@@pig1800 That’s incorrect, you probably meant to say Indus Valley instead of Greek, because
- Sumerian civilization matured circa 3500 BCE
- Egyptian civilization matured circa 3200 BCE
- Indus Valley civilization matured circa 2800 BCE
- Chinese civilization matured circa 2050 BCE
- Greek civilization matured circa 1650 BCE
This is if you don’t consider the insignificant mini-civilizations like the Elamite or Minoan ones.
The Mandate of Heaven is just a nice excuse to overthrow the current ruler.
based
Mandate of Heaven explained using Zoomer lingo :
"You are so cringe ngl Big Sky Daddy depicted you as Soyjak and me as Chad. Get L+Ratio'd, all those Gyatts are mine now."
Typing this makes me want to drink immortality elixir.
Yes, but I'd imagine 95% of people including nobles and other important figures actually believing in this mandate considering how central it is to chinese history. And you know, not everyone is educated and some are stubborn etc, etc.
Not just an excuse, but a "divine justification" that everyone (including the usurpers themself) will believe in if he succeeds. "If god/heaven didn't look after them, how would they succeed"?
@@arya31ful reading that gave me a fucking stroke.
Liangzhu was definitely china's earliest civilization. It has hallmarks of a civilization including monumental architecture. For example, It produced the world's earliest large scale hydraulic works 5100 years ago
How about 三星堆 sanxingdui？
Earliest that we have significant archaeological evidence for - there's a good chance previous civilizations who didn't produce long lasting archeological remnants existed for significant periods before that. Much like we're learning occurred in the near east.
Bro. This is exactly the video I've been needing forever. Maybe this will help inspire me to start over the asian side of my Minecraft world. The old world was so nice, and while the geography is excellent, even better than the old world. I just don't have the inspiration to begin it.
Thanks!
I love the illustrations on this video! Keep up the top notch work good sir!
Disregard all the pronunciation bs and people hating on u for literally only mentioning that some people believe xia is myth. Its a great vid!
Thank you for covering China. It is a delight to escape European centric history for the fascinating history of the Far East
The images of ancient Chinese soldiers you draw are very accurate, as good as or even better than our history textbooks.
I was hooked from start to finish. This ancient history documentary makes learning about the past so exciting.
Love to learn more about China!!
This was a very good overview of Chinese military history, my one quibble is a matter of pronunciation. You pronounced "Zhou" as "Shu" consistently in the piece. In Chinese, the "ou" has a sound similar to the English "oh" and the "zh" has a sound much like the English "j" but a little softer, perhaps between the English "j" and the English "sh". So "Zhou" would be pronounced similar to the English name "Joe".
Same goes for the pronunciation of "Qin", which he pronounced like "dshin". That however is the pronunciation for another dynasty, the Jin. Correct would be "tshin", from which also the name "China" derives.
@@BakeRollsGarlic7 That's true, though I have a lot more sympathy for westerners trying to pronounce those sounds. It took me a long time to clarify the difference between "q", "ch", "x", "sh", "j", and "zh" in pinyin; there's a lot more variation in those type of sounds than there is in any western language I'm familiar with. The difference between "ou" and "oo/u", however, should be pretty clear even to western ears.
Love the dancing panda at the end. About the 400k army in a battle comment, I’d love to see the process as to how historians would estimate true army sizes.
For example, Gaugemala ‘s wiki page states the modern size of the Persian army as high as 250k vs a much higher ancient source account. Wondering how factors such as length of the battle, if it was close to logistic enablers such as rivers, decisiveness of a battle in ensuring victory, closeness to city/dense population areas, mass grave/burial sites, and conscription practices influence modern estimations of ancient battles
Edit: also the narrative purpose and temporal closeness of written sources also would play a role
Always odd that historians seem to arbitrarily diminish the sizes of ancient armies, based on assumptions of what the population and local resources could presumably support, yet take so many other archaeological evidences at face value, with nowhere near the same level of skepticism.
Well I remember reading somewhere that said a trick ancient historian used to inflate army sizes was to include woman and children and logistic support such as servants or baggage carriers. But I guess for the Chinese army size account I would think it would be somewhat more accurate as during the Warring States period there was an increase in centralization and bureaucracy. This was because the state that can mobilize the most men for the army will usually conquer the other. So I guess there were extensive and mostly reliable records of these conscriptions and army sizes.
@@aceflaviuskaizokuaugustusc8427Also every able male the age from 16 ( sometimes even younger ) to 60 was under conscription.
@@BeingFireRetardant archaelogical evidence are primary sources, in themselves not used by someone to change the narrative. Early writing is invariably mostly propaganda with political intent. From Caesar to Napoleon generals wrote their victory pamphlet for political goals and as propaganda (in these two cases we do know that they did that). So your statement is very weird in that regards. Yes, archaelogists do assume it less likely someone put a vase in the ground to trick them vs. that a politican lied on his propaganda pamphlet.
The high figures simply conflict with populations at the time and what seems feasible logistically.
Also there are simply conflicts in counting for military purposes. In fact for better logistical planning Eastern armies from ancient Persia to the Ottoman Empire counted everyone and everything in an army aka soldiers, retinue, camp followers and animals(!), not just soldiers. Other effect can be counting all enemy armies in a war while only counting your single army defeating one for your own side.
Oftentimes they may not be even malicious, it can occur simply because e.g. theatre numbers were the only numbers known or a chronist did not know that ancient Persians counted army size that way and was proud he had researched Persian sources at all and happy to take the higher numbers. In some cases empires also inflated the might of the armies and played into propagating outlandish army sizes to intimidate their foes.
That is also an easy way how you get to giant numbers and the valiant underdog for the just cause deigned by fate to win against any odds is always a strong motif for political reasons.
Laws in the warring states clearly stated that Chinese males aged 16 and over were required to be drafted into the military. Moreover, at that time China was the most populous country in the world with 40-45 million people. Each state may have a population of up to 7 million people. In addition, the ancient Chinese also had agencies specifically responsible for growing rice for use in warfare.
Let’s go! Spring and Autumn!
For many Chinese, the Xia dynasty did actually exist.
Many surnames including common ones first derived from the time of Xia according to their family history. Archaeology of physical evidences might not agree. But other sources might say that Xia indeed did exist..
Secondly, Qin Shi Huang Di wasn't the first emperor of China.
It is to do with the features of Chinese characters and their sounds.
There are 2 characters that both mean emperor's but with some difference.
Huang is the sound of one of the 2. It literally is written as the character of 'white' over the character for 'king'. White king means pure king of absolutely untainted ethical standards and morality. Well, no humans could be that saintly. So this character literally means an emperor of divinity or god emperor or a mythical god. It is NOT a human emperor.
The second character that also mean an emperor has the sound of DI. It means a human person emperor. An actual person that is the emperor.
Before the 'first' emperor there were other human emperors. Yellow emperor eg, is seen as THE ancestor of all Chinese.
Archaeology might see him as non-existent ever, but in the mind of all Chinese says otherwise.
The great grandfather of the 'first' emperor once claimed himself the human emperor of the west (the western Di).
The founding king of the Xia dynasty is seen as the Woo Di or Human emperor Woo.
Technically, hence the 'first' emperor wasn't China's first emperor or human emperor.
What the confusion is due to the combination of the 2 characters for 2 types of emperor used by him..
He called himself 'Divine' (Huang) 'Human Emperor' (Di) or Huang Di.
Qin Shi means Qin dynasty's First. Qin Shu Huang Di means Qin dynasty's First divine human emperor.
In China, no one dares to call themselves divine. This guy was a Maga maniac. And guess what he attracted the wrath of the real divine. That is why the moment he died, rebellions happened and toppled his dynasty that lasted not even 15 years.
That is why, after his dynasty, not one, repeat NOT one, future emperor ever dared to use the same 'Divine' 'Human Emperor' title at all. Not one..
All of them called themselves in formal way xyz Human emperor....
But the term 'Divine' 'Human Emperor' or 'Huang Di' stuck in informal uses since.
This explains the confusion.
One more point about the 'First' emperor.
He wasn't actually the one that conquered all China for the first time. First of Xia and Shang king/emperor did it. So did the Zhou's Wu King too.
Hence another confusion. The 'First' emperor only reunited China and brought in a new style of governing the empire.
Also, it was his ancestors over 150 years that laid the foundation for his success in such a short period. The battles he fought in forming his dynasty were 23:19 smell scale vs some of the battles his ancestors did in those 150 years. Frankly, without his ancestors, he wouldn't have done it.
The Zhou dynasty went through fragmentation very quickly due to the feudal system it used. Literally each of domains were self governing with own tax system and even military. Automatically it means that Zhou was destined to be suffering from chaos forever till it was toppled and another system brought in.
That constant warfare especially from 700'sBCE means that many tried to find an intellectual ways of brining peace into the then China.
Hence you had the flowering of different schools of thoughts of how to achieve such. The 100 schools if thoughts is the expression.
One of these, the Legalism was adopted by the home state of Qin Shi Huang Di about 150 years before he took all China.
Legalism means that rules of laws applicable to all from king to peasant. It also meant rewards are given due to merits instead of by birth right.
It leads to strict applications of laws and regulations as well as punishments for any breach. It also means that promotions and awards in the government is due to capabilities instead of the ranks in the society.
This greatly increased outputs from agriculture and strengthening of the military.
Other ancestors ripped the benefits of these reforms in fighting large wars vs their enemies. This series of wars greatly weakened Qin's enemies.
Qin Shi Huang Di hence didn't and shouldn't get the sole credit for the outcome of brining the empire back together AGAIN.
This makes sense as you look at the European experiences. Not one state has ever taken all Europe. Not even the Romans. It'd take incredible reforms and determinations and luck of winning wars for a long hundreds of years to happen. But it has never and likely will never given the size of population these days.
The period before the 'first' emperor serves the back story of many rebellions in China since. That period lasted over 500 years and such fragmented China happened a few times after his time.
The next dynasty was founded by a commoner with no loyal blood connection at all. Not even a proper education, this founding emperor of Han Dynasty also changed and left one of the main ethos in Chinese mind.
That is, anyone could become the emperor of China. No blue blood and no divinity involvement. This means a lot of Chinese at any time believes that they could too found a new dynasty.
That is also why China has more years of fragmentation of civil wars these last 2,200 years than peaceful unified periods.
That is, it is the NORM for China to be fighting internally. It's THE Chinese FATE.
"Xia" is semi-mythical, meaning it is historical and indeed existed, but not entirely in a way the traditional historiographical account puts it, kind of like Jesus' account in the Bible. And Chinese actually give a lot of credit to the empirical evidences of it. Yu Dynasty is actually the first (founded by the son of Huangdi), but mainstream Chinese consensus already determined that to be entirely mythical, because civilization proper began with the Xia/Erlitou.
It is quite safe to say Qin Shi Huang is indeed the first to unify all of China, as the territorial concept of "China" had already matured as far back to the time of the legends. The Yanhuang people of the Longshan culture/Huaxia society was eyeing on the whole of Yangtse river area in addition to the Yellow river as part of their domain. And during the Xia-Shang-Zhou dynasty they were already eyeing the entire mainland as part of its dominion. It was just not until the Qin were they able to exert control over the areas that they were claiming.
China is currently in a divided/fragmentation period. Only this time the unique thing and one that is the first ever in history is, there is a faction that seeks to exit Chinese history due to influence from information and psychological war by external forces. Every other time in history have Chinese considered themselves to be Chinese and always seek to restore/reunite it in one competing way or another.
After Qin Shi Huang Di unified all 7 states into 1 big empire one thing he did first is to wipe off all 6 other noble families until no one's left and erased all their traces to ensure no noble families stage a rebellion against him.
He did all of this is to ensure no other warring states period like before gripping China for so many centuries happen again in the future.
Next step is to form a unified system of governance, legal system, currency, formalized fashion and clothing, and writing system to be standardized across his new unified empire.
It seems legit at first but it failed miserably and crumbles down and disinterested quickly right after his death.
This time the one that stage a rebellion is not from other noble families in exile or rival noble families from neighboring kingdoms because he already wiped them off, instead it was from angry peasants.
But the new dynasty risen by commoners adopted all unified standardized system Qin Shi Huang Di has created and this unified system survived to this very day, but adding more to it with Rule of Law to introduce the concept of justice to all level of society China had never experienced before.
This seems to worked very well as the Han dynasty instead of lasting only 15 years they did last for over 4 century and still remained the longest lasting dynasty in China's history.
Probably it was because of Qin Shi Huang Di's unified system no matter how many dynasties comes and goes and different political systems changes from one to another China remained exist to this day.
Xia, so far, has no discernible written language, which is why the western scholars and experts dispute its existence. However, the keyword is "discernible". By the time of the beginning of Shang Dynasty, there was already mature written words with structure. This would also mean that there has to be something that eventually evolved into what the Shang used.
really interesting story devoted to ancient China. Thank you so much
the panda at the end is awesome.
I adore the panda that dances at the end. My curiosity is piqued by the idea of a 40,000-strong army in a battle remark; I wonder how historians get at these estimates.
As an example, according to Gaugemala's wiki page, the Persian army was 250k strong in modern times, which is far lower than the much larger ancient source account. Curious about the aspects that impact modern evaluations of historical battles. These include the length of the war, its proximity to logistic facilitators like rivers, the battle's decisiveness in guaranteeing victory, its proximity to cities or densely populated areas, mass graves or burial sites, and conscription practices.
Nice Video SandRhoman, Ik itll be great!
Wow, this video packed 10,000 years of history into 23 minutes! 🤯 I learned so much about the early foundations of China's rise to power. Particularly interesting was the development of bronze casting.
I was waiting for movie like that so much! Thank you
Thank you for the video, if I have to nitpick, the Zhou is pronounce “Joe” not “shoe”, in fact there is another dynasty in the three kingdom period called “Shu”
Why is the romanization of chinese writing so fucked?
@@jorge69696blame Mao Zedong
Jin she weng < Chin shur hwang (Qin Shi Huang)
@@jorge69696maybe becoz the Chinese romanization is meant for Chinese to understand and not non-Chinese speakers?
Yeah, I wasn't sure if he was using Wade-Giles or what, but the pronunciations were quite different than I'm familiar with.
This is not what I expected from this channel but I'm glad it happened! So will you continued into the imperial periods in the next videos? If so, I will be looking forward for the ones about the Great Tang and the Great Song.
The Song could really use a video. They have a rather unfair reputation for being militarily weak despite taking the Mongols 40ish years to conquer (and before that they forced the Jin into a stalemate for around a century.) This view is ofc not mainstream in scholarship anymore, but it's still pervasive in pop culture understanding of their military.
@@limonbatteryThe Song at the start was stronger than any other regime but then the first emperor retired most of the best generals for fear that they might turn on him.
Even then the Song would have destroyed or maybe even conquered the Liao if it truly put in the resources.
@@limonbatteryThe Southern Song at the start was almost able to defeat and would have conquered the Jurchen Jin too.
@@limonbattery The Song started as a general who usurped the dynasty he served under and the warlord era that preceded the Song.
A major reason why the Song couldn’t expand as well as the Tang or the Ming is because they lost the best horse pastures to the Khitan Liaos.
Another major reason is that China still haven’t figured out how to curtail powerful generals at the time. It took until the Ming that they were able to rotate generals and separate them from the troops to avoid a power base.
These videos are always great. Always excited for new ones!
I hope you end up covering the later period of Chinese history they are very interesting
There's more to this than a 20min video can ever cover. Sanxingdui was not even mentioned in this video.
Sanxingdui is not considered part of China proper at the time. It was a separate civilization and culture. I think the video is only talking about how Han Chinese united China and became an imperial power.
If we're including Sanxingdui, may as well include Dian, Yelang, Âu Lạc, and all the other Baiyue kingdoms of the south.
@@conho4898 Sanxingdui is in Sichuan, that's no where close to the Au Lac or Baiyue. Are you confusing Sichuan with Guangdong & Guangxi?
@@DucaTech no I'm just grouping them as non-Han states. I'm not saying they're close together.
@@conho4898 "Han Chinese" did not exist at that period. They consisted and were made up of many different ancient groups of people including the Baiyue (many different tribes).
Before that, the Chinese kingdoms/states/empires in the central plain of China considered and regarded themself as "Hua Xia" people which also consisted and were made up of many ancient tribes.
@@The_Art_of_AI_888 "Han Chinese" didn't exist, but Han Chinese languages did exist. When I said non-Han, I meant non-Sinitic speaking nations.
I am so hyped for this video! I love the history of China, especially the unification wars!
Btw, for those that are passionate about this period, there is a creat manga about the warring states era, called Kingdom
Beautifully produced
Great to see you dive into Chinese history! You love to see it. If you plan to do more on that part of history, consider taken 20min to check the basic pronunciation rules of Pinyin, the transliteration of the chinese characters. You can ignore tones for this audience, but for example “Zhou” is more close to the english name Joe than the word shoe. The cherry on the top would be to not use simplified chinese characters, since these weren’t introduced until the 20th century or so. Anyway, love your work!
Hey, thanks for the comment. This is well out or comfort zone / field of expertise, so we're actually pretty happy that - besides a few comments regarding wrong architectural depictions - the only substantial criticism seems to be that much of the pronunciation is wrong. We will work on it next time!
@@SandRhomanHistoryit’s a great attitude you guys have keep up the great work!
And I do agree pronunciation is important, of course nobody expects you to pronounce words like a native speaker, but it can get really confusing if Chinese words are pronounced completely wrong.
It would be as if I made a video on George Washington but pronounced his name as geh-ore-geh Was-hinge-ton. Even if you’re a native English speaker you might have to do a double take to process what is being said.
+1 for Panda in the very end!!!! Made my day!
The Panda in the end doing the Toothless meme is the icing on this most scrumptious cake!
So much research for a simple 20 minute video. Keep up the good work
I wasn't expecting a video on China, but I welcome it glady as it's not a topic I'm well versed on
I'm completely engrossed in this ancient history documentary-so much to learn and discover!
Always learn something, thank you!
Love the topic and the beautiful editing ❤
The pronounciation is terrible.
Funnily enough he doesn't mention the new discoveries in Sichuan and Inner Mongolia, especially the impressive stone complex at Shimao.
@@meilinchan7314 can you tell me more about new doscoveries please?
@@meilinchan7314 can you write something more about those discoveries please?
Great job
14:50 - why is there a Qing soldier
14:55 Why Manchu archer time travel to Zhou's quadriga?
Great vid! Also I thank the old school Chinese kung fu movies for making our childhood interesting
What do you do to research the art you use? What do your artists use as references?
Its great to see you branching out. Really great video
Kudos for tackling the thorny question of whether the Zhou and Shang shared a common origin.
Awesome video
Great work !
In re: all the pronunciation comments: Pinyin is not intuitive. Suffice it to say, you need prior knowledge of the system to pronounce it. (Just use Google Translate, when I tried it, it was accurate). But don’t worry about tones or retroflexing initials. Deciding what phonological features to preserve or alter might merit a dissertation. Thanks for the excellent history
Bronze age china was a Marvel of culture and craftsmanship
I love this new content, sandrhoman. This is just what I wanted!!
Where do you take your drawings from?
We pay artists to create them. The charaters / chariots / soldiers are pretty much all commissioned pieces. the backgrounds are mostly liscenced from various platforms.
Thank you so much for your amazing video
Nice video, thank you! But didn't Qin Shi Huangti's soldiers still use bronze weapons like bronze swords instead of steel?
Some probably still did and bronze still had cultural significance such as being used to make certain items. But by then iron was already used widely during the Warring States period. I guess you can categorize the early Zhou dynasty still mainly using bronze and chariots. Plus I would think iron was much more accessible and cheaper to use to equip massive armies that were common during the late warring states period.
They used bronze primarily as there was significantly more experience working with bronze and bronze weapons being easier to mass produce since it can be cast. Iron is far more abundant and does not need trade routes to sources of tin and copper, which makes it more accessible in most situations. However, if one has access to both tin and copper in large quantities, it makes sense to fit out a mass peasant army numbering in the tens if not hundreds of thousands with bronze weapons due to ease of production compared to iron, which may be cheaper on a smaller scale.
Bronze would have been absurdly expensive for ancient China considering the major bronze making areas were in Mediterranean. You need Tin to make Bronze, and Tin is rarer than Uranium. Mediterranean people were able to make armies equipped with bronze weapons because they brought large quantities of Tin from the "Tin islands" of Ancient Britain.
As the video already mentions, only Nobles could afford Bronze weapons. Could be the reason why Ancient China had better iron manufacturing
@@elusiveshadow5848 You didn't have the Shang bronzes in mind probably when you wrote that. China is the richest in bronze vessels in the world dated to the Bronze Age. Any museum on East Asiatic Art will show you plenty of the "Shang dynasty bronzes" with their intricate dragon decorations. Are you assuming all that came from the Mediterranean, or what are you basing your allegation on?
Actually I verified the thing and they did (still) use exclusively bronze weapons in China at the time of the terracotta army, in about 200 BC, and of not a very high quality apparently.
wow! great video!
incredible video. people get furious over a minor pronunciation mistake... man, can't we just appreciate that this content is based on several scholarly sources. it's well made too. they clearly put a lot of effort into it. but no, Chinese people have to come and complain over and over again.
lol you compaining about other people complaining.
Impressive. Most Impressive and brilliant, indeed comprehensive presentation 👏. I approve 👍🙏🇦🇺🇬🇷😊
same commitment to excellence, thank my friend/s!
Hope you make a video on the new model army to fjnslize your pike and shot armies series.
I keep hearing how the NMA is much better than the sweddish batallions during the English civil war
Обожаю историю Китая. Это как целая отдельная вселенная.
Can you make such a video about korea and Finland?
Great content, but a couple of notes on the pronunciation:
Qin : Chin (where name China originated)
Zhou : Jou (not quite the ‘j’ sound, but close. Anything Chinese that starts with ‘z’ can be pronounced with the ‘j’ sound)
A native English speaker will pronounce "jou" as "jew". 😂
Use "joe" instead.
@@felisasininus1784 You're right. I didn't think of that. Thanks!
20:20 Meanwhile in Europe: "Lord somesuchother and his 12 knights conquered a castle and became king."
Love the topic, one that I didn't know much about
According to our oral history and folk song, our ancestor escaped from the tyrant king, Qin Shihuangdi (221BC) as they were used as a forced labor in the construction of the Great Wall of China. Sinluang village was where once our ancestors lived, and Mahou Taubei ( Minhau in Chinese) was the cave mountain from which our forefathers began their migration. Rongmei Naga people of North East India believed Yunan Province in China to be their original place of origin. According to our oral history , frequent floods, raids from Barbarians and forced labor was the main reason for migration.
Requesting Battle of Avarayr
Perhaps one day we get deep dives to Spring and Autumn and then the Warring states periods on multi episode series.
There's quite a few pronunciation errors in this video, but there's also some incorrect use of ancient characters (for example, 战车 is in simplified when it should be in large seal script). A much worse error, however, is citing a textbook from 2006 claiming that the Zhou were a simple continuation of the Shang. This is definitely not true, at least in the current literature (possibly only from the Chinese side), as it's now known that the Shang were far more egalitarian and less hierarchical than the Zhou. The Zhou established patriarchal rule and inheritance, whereas the Shang were matrilineal. There's a bunch of other social and class changes the Zhou instituted and influence they absorbed from the "barbarians" they conquered, but that gets really into the weeds.
你怎么认为商是母系统治呢？这是不对的。远在商前，中国就脱离了母氏社会了。
Wow, when you read into Chinese history like this, and it makes you realize that China went through development through these centuries of warring to become an empire. And Now, China as we see it today, is a historically rich culture with many dynasties and teachings taught from the past. It learned about a form of democracy with the mandate of heaven, a form of freedom. They warred with professionalism and had beauracracy. Today, China with its historical experience, truly does have a chance of becoming a shining empire again.
They were 1/3 of the world GDP about 300-400yrs ago, before the british sacked them in the opium war. China will return to its former glory. Its GDP has quadrupled in the last 14 yrs. Quadruple!!
Does anyone know some of the background music used????
This is really cool
Thanks for making this video and shedding some light on pre-imperial China! I'm curious, at 10:23, it's implied that not all Shang soldiers were armed with bronze weapons. What other material would their weapons have been made of?
Also, some notes in case you plan on making more videos about Chinese warfare: the "ZH" consonant pair in modern Chinese pinyin is pronounced closest to the "J" sound in English, maybe "Dsch" if you prefer German, or "ДЖ" in Russian. So "Zhou" would be pronounced like the name "Joe", more or less. The "X" consonant is closest to "SH" in English, and the "Q" is closest to "CH" as in "chicken".
I was watching the anime Kingdom that’s set during the warring states period where Ei Sei is Qin Shi Huang
Another great video! Keep up the great content and can't wait for more videos on ancient china or ancient java or ancient Vietnam or even ancient India!!
AMAZING
1059BC - The conjunction occured around June according to the astrology natal chart. The conjunction also opposes the Lot of Fortune in the 7th house of open enemies. Therefore, it was interpreted as a sign of imminent warfare that's soon the come. Would have shared the natal chart i've created here but it doesn't allow any upload of pictures 😅
I wonder if one day you could cover the economics of the Dutch golden age beyond the VOC?
That was probably the most accurate criticism of the most recent mummy movie. That did no honor to
Great documentary short. But I have to tell you that “Zhou” is NOT pronounced “shoe” like tie your shoe, but rather “Joe” like cup of joe or the biblical name JOEseph.
The Shang people were very savage. Although they have advanced combat technology, they like to eat barbarians. The reason the Aryans could not defeat the Shang was because the Shang were more aggressive than they were, and among the excavated bones were eaten white men.
The ancestors of the Mongols were as short as those of southern China, while the north central Chinese were tall and strong. After the victory in the war, the Chinese took away the short women of the weaker tribes, resulting in the descendants becoming shorter and shorter, and the tall Chinese began to become rare.
The only good thing to come from the 2008 The Mummy was seeing that Terracotta Army come to life.
That was a crappy hollywood movie. Zhang Yimou's 'Hero' that takes place in the Qin period is much better.
Do a video about persia from Achaemenids to parthians and sassanids. or about their cataphract. they were like rohan of ancient world
Canaanites: The Middle East is an evil place. They will colonize North Africa, Sicily, Spain and Portugal
Try to imagine remaining in a chariot like that while moving at the full speed of the team of horses. Now, imagine trying to remain on the chariot while shooting an arrow , throwing a spear or swinging a dagger-axe.
An amazing feat to be certain.
people in chariots were nobles, and they have the whole of their lifetimes trying to practice that lol
@@noriakikakyoin6557 It only takes one rock big enough, and '...
I love how confident kings tend to be that comets are good omens for them. Like, how do you know it doesn't foretell the arrival of a new king?
Reminds me of Mulan because of the arts and the peaceful vibe and nature.
A very cool look into early chinese history and warfare. I had no idea chariots were so important, it seems like it would be much easier to use riders mounted on horses, rhinos, or really another other animal. By comparison a chariot needs a lot more work to make a single effective fighting unit as the wagon/harness needs to be built and 3 men trained in specialized roles. Infantry focused armies definitely seem easier to raise, train and maintain.
Ancient tank company
there was no stirrup yet, so riding a horse, especially for any extended period of time was difficult. plus war was ritualized at the time, there was no real need for calvary, conducting flank attacks and sneak attacks were considered cowardly and unbefitting of nobles. it was only later with the increasing threat from the nomads and warfare becoming "real" rather than a ritual, that china got rid of chariots and created cavary.
horses at the time were small, and had weak spines, not partially ridable until one of the dynasties stole some "heavenly horses" with an large army, from an "Greek" city state (left overs from alexanders conquests) in central asia
Sometimes those folktale are actually real history but since the tale pass down by one mouth to other mouth making the true event become even more vague. It just need to dig it deeper since there's always that one person who continue to pass down the tale that haven't change. Hopefully if they still alive
When you don't use the Wade-Giles (or Pinyin if you must) Romanization pronunciations of some of these names, you end up just saying the same thing for many of them because you are not a Chinese speaker and neither are most of your audience. You neither have the ability to convey the difference linguistically, nor does your audience have the ear for it. It's confusing, and it doesn't have to be that way. For example, Qin, Jin, and Xin being the main thing. Substitute those for Chin, Jin, and Shin (they may be different depending on who you ask).
感谢做了中国视频
Though I'd be nicer if you finished the thirty years war series haha
Hope you continue these, eager to see videos about the Han Dynasty and onward.
10:26 So what was the poor soldiers' equipment made of? Stone?
Its facinating how "China" after the period shown in this video, has been more or less the same state (I guess the Qin-empire was the first time the idea of a "unified China" came into existence?) Yes I know there were a few civil wars, warring states-periods and changes of dynasties. But its more like the same state that has gone through several iterations and built itself up gradually, rather than a series of different states and empires succeeding each other, like in other parts of the world. Its so consistent, like the same council of ministers kept China on the same course throughout several dynasties and emperors. Which I suppose is what happened, isn't it..
Got to wonder though, how much of this is actually true, and how much is fabricated history to give the later dynasties more legitimacy?
Also its interesting how the chinese state managed to keep itself together all this time. Rather than being replaced by a rival power when it fell, it got back on its feet under new management every time. Was this because all the other independent states around China was really just copying chinese state-building? So the "legacy" of the empire was so valuble that it was better to proclaim yourself "the next chinese empire" rather than replace it with something new?
Or was it more like a Persian situation, where you had the same bureaucracy-system and infrastructure, which was just taken over by various conquerors and emperors?
Before you learn Chinese and read some official history books written in Chinese, it is best not to assume that "Chinese historical poetry is homogeneous, continuous, and uninterrupted". The construction of institutions and the development of productivity are closely related.
The "ghost and god" ideology of the Shang Dynasty gave rise to a culture of human sacrifice, oracle bone inscriptions, and drinking. The highly developed bronze smelting technology left behind a large number of exquisite and huge bronze artifacts (try searching for "Houmu Wuding" and "Siyang Fangzun") and strengthened the country's military power, further concentrating power.
The Zhou Dynasty overthrew the Shang Dynasty and learned from it. It developed the "ritual education" and "patriarchal system", using etiquette to restrain the common people and clan to restrain the royal family. Based on these two systems, it implemented the "enfeoffment system" to expand its territory and eliminate enemies while ensuring the stability of the royal family. As a result, China's territory was greatly expanded. Due to underdeveloped productivity, the "well field system" is implemented economically, with limited intervention in agricultural production and direct taxation. Although this method of taxation is efficient, it can only be used for relatively small economic scales.
The Qin and Han dynasties ended the Zhou dynasty, and the people and rulers who experienced the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods were unwilling to bear this kind of rebellion anymore. Therefore, they must pursue further national unity, material and spiritual aspects. So the "emperor" system was born, with a more stable inheritance system called the "legitimate eldest son inheritance system", a selection system for talents recommended by local officials called the "censorial system", a refined government balance system called the "three officials and nine ministers system", a vast road network called the "galloping road", a "land reclamation system" led by the central army, and a "land private ownership", "salt and iron state-owned", and "unified coinage rights" based on developed economies. The university "Taixue" established in the capital established senior officials to serve as the president, with the "Confucian ideology" centered on cultivating physical and mental harmony and family governance of the world as the national ideology. The emperor regularly held scholar conferences to discuss the "White Tiger View". Meetings and so on.
However, the excessive emphasis on ideology in the Han Dynasty also led to the overthrow of the Han Dynasty by the most famous (not the most talented) Confucian scholar, Wang Mang, and the establishment of a "new" dynasty. However, his retro behavior (using old economic, diplomatic, and military systems) brought huge economic and humanitarian disasters, and the people who could not survive rebelled one after another. In the end, among the various rebels, another distant family member, Liu Xiu, rebuilt the country and still named it the "Han" dynasty to show his identity and legitimacy.
The failure of the "New" dynasty proved that China was not static, otherwise its retro policies would not have caused so much destruction that they spawned a large number of opponents to overthrow it. Of course, the "Han" dynasty established by Liu Xiu was vastly different from the previous "Han" dynasty that was replaced by the "New" dynasty.
As for where the difference lies, let those curious individuals who are truly interested in Chinese history discover it. Perhaps try starting by personally searching Wikipedia (a better suggestion is to use a machine to translate your own questions, then search on the Chinese "Baidu" encyclopedia, and then translate those Chinese back to read, with serious advice from a Chinese person)
thats because since the han dynasty it was ingrained into Chinese thought that if you wanted to be a ruler, your goal was the entirety of china. any who merely want to control a small state was seen as illegitimate by well...everyone, meaning you had no right to rule, meaning anyone can and should rise up and take your place. any invaders that conquered china still needed to rule the place, and since china already already has a established system, the invaders just used that and so china broke but always came back together.
Mandate of Heaven.
May you delve forth into the history of the Han dynasty and their epic, calamitous end that bloomed into the romanticized period of the Three Kingdoms!
As long as you are ready to uncover these military histories after learning the standard Mandarin pronunciations of significant terms coming up!
Numbers in warring states period should be taken with a grain of salt but remember, Zhou dynasty fielded nearly 100k men with yeoman and knights equivalent alone. With the liberation of peasantry, it's not farfetched to say that armies of major states could definitely field an army of around 100k on average.
The Europeans in the Middle Ages sent more than 600,000 soldiers and horses on the First Crusade
Živela velika kineska civilizacija!
🇷🇸❤🇨🇳
The dancing panda in the end😄😄