hi I'm John Green this is crash course world history and today we're going to talk about China which these days is discussed almost constantly on television and in newspapers wait are they still a thing so we used to put information on thinly sliced trees and then you would pay someone to take these thinly sliced trees and throw them onto your front lawn and that's how we received information no one thought this was weird by the way right but anyway you hear a lot about how China's going to overtake the US and bury us under a pile of inexpensive Electronics but I don't want to address those fears today instead I want to talk about how the way you tell a story shapes the story China was really the first modern state by which I mean it had a centralized government and a core of bureaucrats who could execute the wishes of that government and it lasted in pretty much the same form from 150 BCE until 1911 CE which is technically known as a long ass time the Chinese were also among the first people to write history in fact one of the confusion Classics is called the Shu Jing or classic of History this is great for us because we can now see the things the Chinese recorded as they were happening but it's also problematic because of the way the story is told so even me from the past with this 5 minutes of world history knows that Chinese history is conveniently divided into periods called dynasties Mr Green I didn't even say anything that doesn't seem very fair what makes a dynasty a dynasty is that it's ruled by a king or as the Chinese know him an emperor who comes from a continuous ruling family as long as that family produces Emperors and they are always dudes no they aren't first off there were several Emperor stagers who wielded tremendous power throughout Chinese history and there was one very important full-fledged Empress Empress woo Who ruled China for more than 20 years and founded her own freaking Dynasty and those Emperors keep ruling the dynasty gets to be a dynasty so the dynasty can end for two reasons either they run out of dudes which never happened thanks to the hard work of many many concubines or the emperor is overthrown after a rebellion or a war this is more or less what happened to all the dynasties which makes it easy for me to go over to camera 2 and describe them in a single run-on sentence hi there camera 2 aside the Sha Dynasty which was sadly fictional the first Chinese dynasty was the Shang who were overthrown by the xia which disintegrated into Political chaos called the Waring States period in which states wared over periods oh no wait it was a period in which states wared which ended when the chin Emperor was able to extend his power over most of the herto for Waring States but the chin were replaced by the Han which was the dynasty that really set the pattern for most of China's history and lasted for almost 400 years after which China fell again into Political chaos which only means there was no d y that ruled over all of China and out of this chaos Rose theu who were followed quickly by the Tang who in turn were replaced after a short period of no Dynasty by the song who saw a huge growth in China's Commerce that was still not enough to prevent them from being conquered by The onean Who were both unpopular and unusual because they were Mongols which sparked rebellions resulting in the rise of the Ming which was the dynasty that built the Great Wall and made amazing vasas but didn't save them from falling to the manw who founded a dynasty that was called the Ching which was the last Dynasty because in 1911 there was a rebellion like the ones in say America France or Russia and the whole dynastic system which at that point had lasted for a long ass time came to an end and breathe so that's what happened but what's interesting as far as Capital H history is concerned is why it happened and especially why the people who were writing history at the time said it happened which leads us to the Mandate of Heaven so the concept of the Mandate of Heaven dates from the Joe Dynasty and current historians think that they invented it to get rid of the Shang before the showe China didn't even have a concept of heaven or tion but they did have a high God called shundi but the Joe believed in tion and they were eager to portray the idea of Heaven as Eternal so they ascribed the concept of the Mandate of Heaven back to a time even before the Shang explaining that the Shang were able to conquer the Sha only because the Sha Kings had lost the Mandate of Heaven this of course would have been impossible partly because the Shia Kings had no concept of heaven and partly because as previously noted they didn't exist but let's just leave that aside the shujing is pretty specific about what caused the Shia Kings to lose the Mandate by the way explaining the attack on Shia may be traced to the orgies in mingau sadly the shujing is woefully short on details of these orgies but orgies are the kind of behavior that is not expected of a ruler and therefore Heaven saw fit to come in remove the Mandate and allow the Shang to take power but then the Shang lost the Mandate why well the last Shang Emperor is reported to have roasted and eaten his opponents which you know bit of a deal breaker as far as the Mandate of Heaven is concerned of course that might not actually have happened but it would explain why Heaven would allow the Joe to come to power so basically the fact that one Dynasty Falls and is replaced by another in a cycle that lasts for 3,000 years is explained in the eyes of early Chinese historians by divine intervention based on whether the ruler behaves in a proper upright manner it's after the fact analysis that has the virtue of being completely impossible to disprove as well as offering a tidy explanation for some very messy political history and even more importantly it reinforces a vision of moral behavior that is a Cornerstone of Confucianism which I will get to momentarily but first let's see an an example of the Mandate of Heaven in action so the Chin Dynasty only lasted 38 years but it's one of the most important dynasties in Chinese history so important in fact that it gave the place its name chin H can I just tell you guys that we literally just spent 20 minutes on that shot we shot it like 40 times St Stan you are in love with puns the accomplishment of the chin was to reunify China under a single Emperor for the first time in 500 years ending the Waring States period as you can imagine the making of that particular omelet required the cracking of quite a few eggs and the great chin Emperor chin shangi and his descendants developed a reputation for brutality that was justified but it was also exaggerated for effect so that the successor Dynasty the Han would look more legitimate in the eyes of heaven so when recounting the fall of the chin historians focused on how a bunch of murderous Unix turn the chin Emperors into puppets not literal puppets although that would have been awesome and these crazy Unix like tricked Emperors into committing suicide when they started thinking for themselves eles Etc so the Mandate of Heaven turned away from these suicidal puppet Emperors which set up a nice contrast with the early Han Emperors such as when who came to power in 180 BCE and ruled benevolently avoiding extravagance in personal behavior and ruling largely according to Confucian principles under when there were no more harsh punishments for criticizing the government executions declined and most importantly for the Confucian Scholars who were writing the history the government stopped burning books thus according to the ancient Chinese version of History emperor when by behaving as the wise Confucian maintains the Mandate of Heaven so who is this confucious I won't shut up about let's go to the thought bubble confucious was a minor official who lived during the war in States period and developed a philosophical and political system he hoped would lead to a more stable State and Society he spent a great deal of his time trying to convince one of the powerful Kings to embrace his system but while none ever did confucious got the last laugh because his recipe for creating a functioning Society was ultimately adopted and became the basis for Chinese government education and well most things so confucious was conservative he argued that the key to Bringing about a strong and peaceful state was to look to the past and the model of the sage Emperors by following their example of upright moral Behavior the Chinese emperor could bring order to China confucius's idea of morally upright Behavior boils down to a person's knowing his or her place in a series of hierarchical relationships and acting accordingly everyone lives his life or her life but like most ancient philosophical traditions women were marginalized in relationship to other people and is either a superior or an inferior there are five key relationships but the most important is the one between Father and Son and one of the keys to understanding confucious is filial piety a son treating his father with reverential respect the father is supposed to earn this Respect by caring for the son and educating him but this doesn't mean that a son has the right to disrespect a neglectful father ideally though both the father and the son will act accordingly the son will respect the father and the father will act respectably ultimately the goal of both father and son is to be a superior man chunzi in Chinese if all men strive to be chunzi the society as a whole will run smoothly this idea applies especially to the Emperor who is like the father to the whole country it's time for the open letter all right God that's good but first let's see what's in the secret compartment today oh an iPhone St this doesn't factor into Chinese history until much later an open letter to the Sha Dynasty dear Shaw Dynasty why you got to be so fictional you contain all of the most awesome Emperors including my favorite emperor of all time you the engineer there are so many the greats and the Terribles among royalty and so few the engineers we need more Kings like you the engineer Peter the mortgage broker Danica the script supervisor Stan the video editing and producer guy those should be our Kings I freaking love you you the engineer and the fact that you're not real it breaks my heart in a way that could only be fixed by you the engineer circularity actually reminds me of the Mandate of Heaven best wishes John Green but back to the chunzi so how do you know how to behave well first you have to look to historical antecedence particularly the sage Emperors the study of history as well as poetry and paintings in order to understand and appreciate beauty is IND ensable for a chunzi the other important aspects of chanz are contained in the confusion ideas of Ren and Lee Ren and Lee are both incredibly complex Concepts that are difficult to translate but we're going to do our best Ren is usually translated as propriety it means understanding and practicing proper behavior in every possible situation which of course depends on who you're interacting with hence the importance of the five relationships Lee is usually translated as ritual and refers to rituals associated with Chinese religion most of which involve the veneration of ancestors which brings us back in a very roundabout way to the fundamental problem of how early Chinese historians wrote their history traditional Chinese historians were all trained in the confusion Classics which emphasized the idea that good Emperors behaved like good confucians wouldbe historians had to know these classics by heart and they'd imbibed their lessons Chief among which was the idea that in order to maintain the Mandate of Heaven you had to behave properly and not engage in orgies or eat your enemies or eat your enemies while engaging in orgies in this history the political fortunes of a dynasty ultimately rest on one man and his actions whether he behaves properly the Mandate of Heaven is remarkably flexible as an explanation of historical causation it explains why as dynasties fell there were often terrible storms and floods and peasant uprisings if the emperor had been behaving properly none of that stuff would have happened now a more modern historian might point out that the negative effects of terrible storms and floods which include peasant uprisings sometimes lead to changes in leadership but that would take the moral aspect out of hist history and it would also diminish the importance of Confucian Scholars because the scholars can tell you that one of the best ways to learn how to be a good Emperor and thereby maintain the Mandate of Heaven is to read the Confucian Classics which were written by scholars in short the complicated circularity of Chinese history is mirrored by the complicated circularity of the relationship between those who write it and those who make it which is something to think about no matter what history you're learning even if it's from Crash Course next week we'll be talking about Alexander the grape really stand for an entire episode that that seems excessive to me they're just like less sour graier lemon heads oh Alexander the Great that makes more sense until then thanks for watching crash course is produced and directed by Stan Muller our script supervisor is Danica Johnson our Graphics team is thought bubble and the show is written by my high school history teacher rul Meyer and myself last week's phrase of the week was right here in River City if you want to guess this week's phrase of the week or suggest future ones you may do so in comments where you can also ask questions about today's video that will be answered by our team of historians thanks for watching and as we say in my hometown don't forget to be awesome