A History Teacher Reacts | "History of China (Part 1)" by Suibhne

hey youtube welcome back to another history teacher reacts video with mr. Terry as I continued my quest for historical knowledge here on the Internet okay today what we are going to watch is the video that won last week's patrons pick poll so once a week I put up a poll with about three or so videos and the patrons select which one is going to get on the channel for that week and this is the one that had one out this is history of China by Sweeney and I'm excited to check this out I love Chinese history I feel like I'm always learning more and more and more every time I study there's just so much out there to know especially in Western culture it's it's so easy to be brought up in a culture that focuses on Western history and which is kind of a shame for the fact that Eastern history and sufficiently with with China in this case is incredibly fascinating and you can always learn a lot and every time I think you learn you become more and more impressed with the history and with seeing how important it is and there's just there's always a lot of amazing things to learn I mean I never stop learning with this alright so it looks like this isn't multiple parts so we'll go ahead and start with part one today if you would like to join in with more polls in the future as with this video just a few minutes ago I posted a new poll you can go ahead and jump in I link to my patreon account will be down below all tiers of pledge levels get to vote in the poll starting at $1 a month so it's a great way to support the channel and I really really appreciate it all right let's go ahead and get started the history of China part one this episode is made possible by audible good audible.com slash Sweeney oh texts Sweeney - 500 500 to get started with a free audiobook and a 30-day free trial nu WA and foo she usually depicted as half human half dragon spirit creatures created humans out of clay as companions the human settled in the Yellow River and were ruled by the five good emperors with illogical figures who were peaceful and benevolent but tragedy struck when the river flooded devastating the land you Yellow River right in China is one of the the four great river valley civilizations with the Egyptians on the Nile the Mesopotamian cultures on the Tigris Euphrates the Indus Valley Civilisation on the Indus and then China develops on the Yellow River and to kind of compare and contrast those the the Yellow River and the Tigris and Euphrates are prone to violent floods that's why it's why you also see a lot of flood myths great flood myths that come in those regions and then just to compare to contrast it the Indus and Nile rivers actually have far more predictable flooding so you don't see those as much in those areas and they saw the flooding and their cultures as basically a blessing right because it was predictable it was a little bit more gentle and they could use it and get ready for for getting ready for agriculture and things like that but in places like China or Mesopotamia they're like cursing their gods pretty much um when these floods happen because they again they can be so violent so just thought I'd throw there throw that in there in a ancient contrast compare and contrast there who the engineers spend 13 long years of the flooded devastating the land you the engineers spent 13 long years building canals and locks to control the waters burning his place as the lands King he founded the Shah dynasty China's first ruling family and a structure of government that would remain unchanged for millennia um let's see let's see if he gets to it but there's a lot of people I know that have questioned if the Shah actually existed and that these stories were kind of brought up later I just thought I was interesting I don't know if there really is a consensus on that because I have heard kind of story about them but then also that they may not have existed so where the sources are gonna come from that so interesting little thought there all right looks like he's got a cool intro let's check it out again what's the jalousies these animators just you know a lot of stuff seems simplistic I just I think we'll leave it to the experts cool in the words of John Green an open letter to the Shah dynasty dear Shah dynasty why you gotta be so fictional okay yeah the shot dynasty is largely considered mythological at this point but maybe intertwined with some real events considering heavily related Chinese scholars wrote about them usually a lot of myth you know a lot of myths don't just come out of nowhere you know I mean even like like Greek mythology for example like these these stories of gods and demigods and things like that a lot of historians that that are not ruling out that people people existed maybe not as the deities they once were but great kings or warriors or something like that and then what happens is especially before the history was being recorded it gets passed down orally and if especially if it's someone that did some kind of heroic deed or something what often happens through the generations is as a story get story gets told it gets conflated and then it becomes a little bit more the story becomes a little bit bigger and bigger and bigger till it's almost like impossible or it can't be done by like a regular person the only mean let's only like I like kind of kilise or something or even like Zeus might have been like a great king did these great deeds and then over time it's like it's like that game you play as a kid telephone right I ever played that where you start with a message and you whisper it to somebody and they whisper it and you keep going and then the the game at the ends the person says what it is that they had heard and what always happens is the story is totally different or the phrase or whatever is totally different than when it started now did that happen just because it can get a little bit harder and harder you know little words and stuff slowly over time start meaning something else does somebody intentionally change the story that's what we don't know but that's why he's saying yeah I mean a lot of this stuff might be intertwined with actual history to the point where it's hard to even recognize you know when it comes out the other end speaking of writing the Chinese were really really good at it they developed their own famous pictograph based system concurrently without any outside influence but they looked a lot more like this than this in any case humans settled in the yellow yeah they Chinese right a looked a lot more like this than this yeah I'm glad he's saying that it probably started almost a more hieroglyphic in a way where it's like yeah it's picture writing and then you know the difficult part about picture writing and there's a reason why we don't really use it anymore because you have to if you're gonna if you can do picture writing basically means is you have these characters represent something right and you can't you you basically would have to have a different character for every possible thing you would want to write right it makes sense because you don't want them to two plus if it looked the same I mean it can be similar but you'd have to have to have that it's not an efficient system that's why most alphabets eventually evolve into or most writing systems end up involving into evolving two alphabets where it's based off of sounds and basically do is you just need a character for basically every sound that can be made in a language and then that could be consolidate so you can combine them into something where a symbol doesn't this sort of have to mean a whole word right you can have a the alphabet it represent a sound so yeah they think you know like like Japanese Chinese some of these characters that started with that what they don't necessarily becoming a real full alphabet but what they do is become easier to make too and try to limit how many strokes and things like that you have to do now you can see with these they definitely become complicated but they can potentially represent a lot of different things so they evolve over time become more simplified less looking like specific objects or things and more just into a character so a lot of writing out here in the East that's kind of how it developed and again why it looks so different than say Western writing in any case human settled in the Yellow River Valley forming numerous cultures which is collectively called the Yellow River civilization the myth of you the engineer likely began with this early civilizations attempts to control the flooding of the river these settlers are what we now call the heart although they didn't refer to themselves as that for at least a few centuries it was yeah there's the famous Han Dynasty which kind of brings in a ancient classical Golden Age but I'm going back to the whole idea of the geography it's there and I hope they've already kind of got you to understand a little bit about how also how they view these natural occurring events like flooding and can often tie it to like deity worship right so like in Egypt for example the the floods they believe are caused by there's a supernatural thing right that's how they how they explain it and since the flooding the floods were a good thing they kind of tribute that to maybe a better nature of the gods the gods are kinder and that sort of thing and it's why I like for example in Egypt they view the afterlife and a lot of within the relationship with the gods is far more friendly and favorable and sometimes you want to be as opposed to like Mesopotamian religion where since you had these natural disasters and they were really bad like the flooding member of the Mesopotamia is bad they saw the gods as capricious and jealous and they're always like cursing people and all that so their religion that like in Mesopotamian culture I can Samaria for example the afterlife was seen as like a scary dark a grim place and you're saying how you can tie geography to that and think how much work you would have to end like Mesopotamia or in the Yellow River because it's still the best river you know out in that region how much work you'd have to put into it to to be able to maintain it because those floods you got to be ready for them they're gonna come here may not be able to predict em but you better be able to harness them and make him hopefully a little bit less destructive if you can surrounded by numerous other people's to this south north and west the first Chinese state to be supported by historical evidence is the Shang the story goes that the Shang were one of the member states of the dynasty and rose up to overthrow the last Shah Emperor under their leader King Tong Tong defeated the forces of the Shah during a storm at the Battle of Ming tau the storm was seen as a sign that the spirits were blessing his overthrow of the dynasty in 1046 BC the Shang will overthrown by the Chou which is - longest lasting dynasty it is speculated that the name for China in the Mandarin language comes from this period the Zhao ruled the kingdom under a quasi feudal system meaning that power was given to regional warlords all of whom pledged fealty to the king it's this is a very common thing especially in the ancient world of how you can govern something very very large is basically feudal II like it's hard to have a centralized government where one specific government can rule over a massive nations what you get is more indirect rulership whether it's with Lords or governors or things like that and you see that again very common however you're gonna see in China to become more centralized a centralized bureaucracy which really became a model for a lot of other states one other thing I wanted to add about Chinese geography is you know if you look at a map of the major civilizations of the early ancient period right like the four river valley civilizations China is so far removed from them that there's not nearly as much interaction okay so like for example you got clear over here in the east and China is protected by a bunch of borders that separates borders and dis natural borders and distance from the other major civilizations so like in China's case here you have the Gobi Desert up north and then you have the Himalayas the largest mountain range in the world to its south it was very very cut off from a lot of that that also developed Chinese unit China's uniqueness from the other major civilizations of the world as opposed to like Mesopotamia for example which is at the crossroads of a bunch of different civilizations so they were very well connected and they changed a lot China is gonna be one of the least changing of the ancient civilizations a lot of that due to that proximity and when you do have larger civilizations like the Jo or the Shang before them you almost get this this idea that they kind of believe that that they're kind of the only real civilization out in the world and since they are far more advanced than maybe some of the fringe ones there's kind of this this complex of like cultural superiority which comes again from kind of that distance because the people they do interact with to them might seem less maybe even in the Chinese eyes is civilized in a way and they're gonna be far more advanced than these other fringe societies which gave them a uniqueness and a pride I think in that uniqueness that you're gonna see throughout Chinese history forever and of course even today this means that the Kings power depends on keeping the lords happy which King you did not he exiled his wife whom he had married for political reasons and the state she came from rose up in Revolt they deposed the king and installed his son ping to the throne but merely as a figurehead with no real authority as regional warlords began crowning themselves Kings over their own states chroniclers refer to this time as the period of spring and autumn it doesn't translate well into English soon a rivalry would emerge among these states for control of all China begin this is I'll go back a few seconds this is what happens with feudalism feudalism is where your loyalty is more tied to a local ruler that can't protect and can kind of help you or whatever give you military protection give you land give you that sort of thing your loyalty is more tied to a local lord powerful person then to a centralized government potentially far away and this usually happens again when you don't have a central government that can rule over huge territories which again is again very common and the problem with with feudalism way or if you are even are and attempting a centralized bureaucracy if you have power spread out to different individuals across the land there's always going to be that threat of revolt right because these warlords are the ones there are just lords in general they have a lot of power because they have the loyalty of the people there because they help them survive they give them food they give them protection they give them a life and their loyalty is going to be to them so let's say you're one of these Lords in one of these different regions provinces whatever you want to call it if they have issues with maybe the Lord or it's re the the king or Emperor above them they have the ability to raise armies and have loyalty and if you see if you see that the potentially that the position of Emperor could be one that would a lot of people might want you may get a lot of people competing and then the warring States Period as it's coming out here you definitely have that so you have kind of China's breaking up it's kind of who wants to do it and and they're gonna talk about this more but this is a common story with a feudal society inning the warring States Period and a collapse of any centralized control warring became so fierce in fact that the local kings began building compacted earth fortifications on their mutual borders to deter invasions from rivals walls in China fighting ended in 221 BC when the Qin finally defeated the rest and unified China once more the Qin Dynasty didn't last very long but they did have absolute authority this is this is important to it the Qin Dynasty because they're kind of the first Chinese their Emperor of China Chuang D the the emperor of China is basically the first person to unite basically what you would consider all of China why he's after why he's usually considered the first emperor of China so ending the warring States Period and basically these centuries of warfare was an incredible feat as nobody had ever done this before and China often gets said it gets it's it's it's a name actually more directly from the chin chin in a way and showing these a huge part of that so we'll let them will let Sweeney here continue with this though agriculture and herding were regulated and everyone paid their taxes are more sent it did have a weird fear of books for some reason well the teachings of Confucius it came very popular okay so yeah the there's a philosophy also competing philosophies also developing your legalism and Taoism legalism basically the standpoint that people are naturally aren't gonna do the right things so you need a powerful ruler to basically enforce rules and that rule breakers should be met pretty pretty harshly that's how you keep order otherwise society is going to collapse where Taoism actually sees over governance as more unnatural and things like that so he would definitely be I'm like the legal side of things so if you xuan d was against a lot of the philosophy that might come into question about his authority and there may be the the authority over his idea that that governance and and strict government strict punishments for her harsh law breaking was a key element so basically he was known for burning books of philosophy especially because many of them might be against kind of his style of rule and maybe his legitimacy so he was known as yeah book burner that burned a lot of those different competing anything that might be competing against him there like he said the the Qin Dynasty isn't gonna last very long but it definitely did put China in a motion and put a lot of standards that China will be built upon and his brand of philosophy began having huge impacts on Chinese society in response to the growing power of the zhong knew the ancestors of the mongols emperor qin shi huang began joining parts of the warring States walls at strategic weak points in the border this would be the first foundations of China's Great Wall the walls continued to be expanded upon using hundreds and thousands of slave laborers and soldiers overs contrary to popular belief the Huns never attacked China Westerners mistakenly confuses young new with the Huns who had also originated from Central Asia yeah the Huns will definitely invade west towards Europe and set off a domino effect leading to Germanic tribes invading into Rome but yeah so yeah what he did the Great Wall of China was a linking of multiple walls like you like he's saying here multiple walls kind of putting those things together and although we kind of know you know that people know that the the walls never completely protected China I mean people will find their way over through or in all kinds of different ways so you know so I let people say maybe the Great Wall of China is greater purpose may have been more for a sign of authority in a way like if you're outside the walls you see this you like man this is a great and powerful Empire and more specifically great and powerful maybe Emperor or walls member Alice's are the purpose of keeping people in one thing we know about the the joining of these walls and kind of the fortifications with under Shuang D was how brutal it was a huge percentage of China's peasant population was basically forced to work on the wall and basically deathly conditions where a lot of people died of exhaustion and kind of an interesting thing is that some people may not know is the dead we're off to buried with the wall there is I don't know I forget how many like 100 200 thousand or something I thought I had heard potentially dead bodies throughout the foundations of the wall if you have a different number on that then please please could tell you that was just one I kind of was thinking over the top of my head but yeah it's incredible giving it's also named by some is the long graveyard so kind of creepy that way might be different next time ever if you ever get to visit the Great Wall of China successive centuries to protect hundreds and thousands of slave laborers and soldiers of a successive centuries to protect the empire from various other nomadic Raiders Qin Shihuang became deranged and senile in his old age became obsessed with finding a cure for death to allow him to attain immortality he traveled far and wide and spent a small fortune on alchemy medicines and potions one of which killed him mercury accession of the Emperor caused a crisis when the note they thought his chemists and him thought that mercury that you know substance mercury could potentially hold the key to everlasting life so he was basically taking mercury tablets thinking they were going to give him long life what actually did was they killed him it destroyed his brain he became far more violent and just senile basically and it's kind of it's it's ironic and kids always get a kick out of this when I'm teaching them is Chuang D basically died trying to become immortal right and often of times we've back in China too close to Mesopotamia where we talk about epic of gilgamesh which there's kind of a moral that story too which is similar which is no matter how powerful you are okay powerful famous rich no one can cheat death no one can cheat death Chuang Dee learned that opal is attempted to crown his son and control him as a puppet causing the country to erupted into a civil war between rivals I think a lot of people mourn when Han state was victorious which began the rule of the Han Dynasty famous for inventing paper which is apparently what people used to write things on apparently a lot of people say Han so the Han pick up in a way because the it it kind of gets chaotic after the Qin died then the Han come in and really set a classical stand a lot of people say this is the beginning like the classical Golden Age and this is when you really start to see major major foundations for the China of the future and present as with the Han during the unification war the rulers of the U state fled to the south in exile where they set up their own kingdoms the non-new and the menu stretching all the way to modern vietnam the han began a period of aggressive foreign policy under emperor wu conquering both the u kingdoms in the south and going to war with the young new confederation in the north annexing vast amounts of the ethnic Turkish harem basin this extremely rapid expansion into Central Asia gave China its first contacts with the numerous nomadic tribes of the inner steps attracting many merchants to the lucrative corridor between east and west it was the beginning of the Silk Road and this becomes so important for China because again China is so more far technologically advanced than these people and now you have this the intermediary between its central asia and then what's going to be like persia and eventually europe this is creating that network I mean the Silk Road is gonna be such a massive thing and we'll leave that to to another topic but one thing I think China figures out too is they have a lot of products that are exclusive to them and superior to other products and the rest of the world wants it and China is going to take the Silk Road very very seriously because it's gonna make them a fortune with the stuff that they make especially for silk right which was maybe the most profitable of all of the exports coming out of China it's also why they guarded the secret of silk making so so seriously for centuries it was during the Han that China experienced its Golden Age great strides were made in developing art culture and science that would come to shape almost everything we know about oriental culture today a new religion making its way down the Silk Roads again taking its own shape in the southwest it is known to us as Buddhism Buddhism yeah it starts in India but interestingly doesn't get as popular in India mostly because the foothold those so strong with Hinduism but traveled along with merchants into the into into China now it also when Buddhism really became popular too was when when these dynasties would fall and there be a lot of chaos a lot of people kind of turned to Buddhism because of its promising to end suffering and and some kind of hope for a next life you know that sort of thing where made a lot of the more traditional religions didn't have that kind of focus so you see that tie in as China's hardest times for regular people there's also the times when specifically Buddhism became the most popular in the United I know Steve was briefly interrupted by a a usurper named Wang man who seized power from the Han in an attempt to establish his own dynasty and he would have been successful were it not for his reforms to distribute land equally among the populace he lost his territories in the west and was deposed by a mob after only 13 years of rule I guess nobody told him it was way too early for China's communist revolution the Han eventually defeated the Zhong Yu after generations of fighting and expanded their trade with the West they eventually split into three rival kingdoms in 222 and briefly reunited under the Jin dynasty in 280 but the northern section rebelled against their rule by this so called five barbarians which the southerners called the sixteen kingdoms definitely get the the the pattern here unite break unite break right repeat for millennia but both the South and the north were unstable and changed grueling families too many times to name thus we came to power as successors to the joust eight and unified China again in 589 or the Guk Turks rose to power in the central steps always you know the the Chinese have had an on-again off-again relationship with these nomads what the nomads need are up here so they don't up in this kind of region of northern asia north central asia agriculture is very difficult they don't have a lot of the major rivers and the climate and just agricultural setting that you need which required them oftentimes to do trade with sedentary societies like China like China has mass agriculture so they could trade food with them and a lot of times that was it was it was great it was it was fine it was peaceful that they would do that now these nomadic peoples could offer animals because they're the ones that you know like raise horses or trade goods from other areas so there's a mutual relationship there but especially to if there were like famines or something like that some kind of struggle by the nomadic tribes that's when you saw them going much harder into China and it becomes more violent so the Chinese always had this interesting relationship of sometimes it's good and then sometimes it was terrible with whatever group is up here in the northern step that's just part of the big part of Chinese history too is that relationship love-hate relationship with the northerners the Tang succeeded the Sui and expanded the Empire they subjugated the goat tooks in the north conquered the Koreans and go to your big con solidified their iron hold in Southwest Asia so yeah this is the most that China will conquer they're expanding way further because classical China has always been between kind of between the rivers here right and not as much into the step or definitely into into Korea there so you're seeing now a military expansion but we always find with these kind of militarily expansionist states is they also became very they become very expensive to maintain and and not just me or sorry to maintain but then also to hold the things that they conquered that is always very difficult and where China's also had issues with that is holding on to these plates so there's one thing to conquer a place but it's another place to keep hold of it Tang China spread its influence over all the rest of Asia in China's second Golden Age they were famous for introducing land reforms called the few Bing system which is again a flirtatious experiment with communism I can see where this is going the reform rice is coming in from down south and Vietnam that was the most important agricultural introduction to China and it really expanded at this time rice farming so it came from Southeast Asia made its way up to China which is great it's a lot of China is mountainous and you can farm rice you can do like they show in here the terraced farming so you can Terrace it out and manipulate your land to grow rice usually easily and this also leads to a pot bin this time under the Tang a massive Tang and then the song afterwards a huge population explosion a lot of that due to the introduction of rice which was a high calorie per acre crop and far more substantial bombs were albeit successful in the economic boom allowed for the budget of a standing army if you're thinking to yourself that all this prosperity is too good to be true then you'd be right 9:06 china collapsed again due to the power of regional warlords the song managed to control a southern part of China but the North remained ruled by Chinese influence nomads the Jurchens a fringe tribe in modern-day Manchuria rebelled against their Nomad rulers and soon conquered all the way down to northern China they proclaimed the Jin dynasty and vied for power with the song in the south but as both kingdoms contended with each other a new powerful Confederacy was brewing in the Mongolian steppes Ginga Mongols were initially iron band of nomadic herdsmen they had distant links to the Zhong Yu of the past and made their harm on the Eurasian steppe the culture was deeply steeped in tradition and a religion that tied them to their land I think well actually give me a second see if he's mix but this was also changed with one man named Imogen okay to Mongol religion the Mongols of course have become famous for religious tolerance in their conquered Empire and a question often is why because a lot of empires don't do that they want to impose their religion and if you caught that what he said is their religion is tied to their land you have to be a part of their land a part of their people for the religion to even apply to you so like proselytizing is not an option it's not even a thing that can be done in mongol religion so there was no need to spread the religion because you can't actually become their religion like that so that was a big reason why you see religious tolerance for them because there's not really an option there they have no ability or desire to impose a religion because it's incompatible with with others there Tim Majin we know he is right or who is going to become the religion that tied them to their land but this was also changed with one man named Imogen who history remembers as Genghis Khan a man who would reform the Mongols from within and unite them into a powerful Confederacy bound by blood and honor and create a legal framework and exceptional social mobility the Mongols under Genghis and his descendants founded the largest land Empire in history and would have impacts on nearly every part of Asia and even Europe the story is told brilliantly in Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the making of the modern world weatherford even narrated the book himself which is available at today's sponsor audible audible has an unmatched selection of audio audio products perfect for long walks exercising commuting to work or plane journeys and Airport layovers my personal prayer Michael Bolton for history fans this is one of the best ways to learn about something new your voice wondered about or build on those gaps from your favorite topics and time periods just click to audible an ND device download your book and start listening it's that easy or listen to audible is offering a free 30-day trial where you can get Weatherford's book or anything else at no charge with seamless sync between your Amazon Kindle or Kindle app by simply heading to audible.com slash Sweeney or texting sui BH ne2 500 500 which will also support the creation of more episodes thank you to audible for supporting the channel this is where we leave China today tune in next time for the next chapter one that would bring both the song and the djinn to their knees when we cover the Mongols and subscribe to never miss out in a new video if you like this series and want to help but grow please consider supporting at patreon there are great rewards such as HD artwork from the videos early previews and merchandise become a patron today using the link in the description and please support them if you are only able to sub or pledge to one channel on patreon make it make it theirs they're the original content creators they do such an amazing job I'll try to add things and give a perspective if I can but they're there the true the true goats out there right all right well I love this it's a great kind of just summarized thing I mean how you do right how do you do Chinese history justice I mean just of this part in 10 minutes but it's great entertaining love wood Sweeney's doing here awesome definitely looking forward to part two so hopeful is able to add a few other things I just I love learning about China I love talking about China I'm always learning new impressive things and stories and lessons and all that and we're about to begin what I think one of the most interesting parts of Chinese history which is the Mongol occupation which is going to definitely change China not for the present but for the future and I will all wait we'll wait to part two to go ahead and get into that so I really enjoyed this I hope you do too please um in the description we'll have a link to the original video make sure you head over there and subscribe to Sweeney give them a like give them give them a thumbs up give them a shout out so that we can make sure that content creators get there get there do get their credit because we need we could never have enough of them and can never not show enough support with that all right just uh on the way out here this video was chosen by patron pledgers for my channel here so if you'd like to get involved in that and be able to vote on weekly polls and just to support the channel that way link is down below and you can do that and be part of again our our polls are a couple other just plugs if you have not joined our discord community make sure you do that there's a link to that down below with a bunch of great history minded fans we could talk we talk about every possible about history topic out there so come on in join us it's great way to communicate with other people and maybe our act with me a little bit more all right and with that I think we'll go ahead and end it look out for a part two video I definitely want to look into that but until then we'll see you next time bye

Channel: Mr. Terry History

Views: 30,364

Rating: 4.9397202 out of 5

Keywords: react, history, china

Id: MA_Jl8B9Bhk

Length: 35min 39sec (2139 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 15 2019