文档介绍：Ancient China and Its Enemies
It has been an article of faith among historians of ancient China that Chinese culture
represented the highest level of civilization in the greater Asia region from the first
millennium . throughout the pre-imperial period. This Sinocentric image – which
contrasts the high culture of Shang and Chou China with the lower, “barbarian”
peoples living off the grasslands along the northern frontier – is embedded in early
Chinese historical records and has been perpetuated over the years by Chinese and
Western historians. In prehensive history of the northern frontier of China
from 900 to 100 ., Nicola Di Cosmo investigates the origins of this simplistic image,
and in the process shatters it.
This book presents a far plex picture of early China and its relations with
the “barbarians” to the North, documenting how early Chinese perceived and inter-
acted with anized, advanced, and politically unified (and threatening)
groupings of people just outside their domain. Di Cosmo explores the growing ten-
sions between these two worlds as they became progressively more polarized, with the
eventual creation of the nomadic, Hsiung-nu empire in the north and Chinese empire
in the south.
This book is part of a new wave of revisionist scholarship made possible by recent,
important archaeological findings in China, Mongolia, and Central Asia that can now
pared against the historical record. It is the first study investigating the antag-
onism between early China and its neighbors bines both Chinese historical
texts and archaeological data. Di Cosmo reconciles new, archaeological evidence – of
early non-Chinese to the north and west of China who lived in munities,
had developed bronze technology, and used written language – with mon
notion of undifferentiated tribes living beyond the pale of Chinese civilization. He ana-
lyzes the patterns of interaction along China’s northern frontiers (from trading, often
on an equal basis, to