This book considers the Tang response to the collapse of the Uighur steppe empire in 840 C.E. and the large number of refugees who fled to China's northern frontier. It examines the workings of late Tang bureaucracy through translations of some seventy relevant Chinese documents.
This book considers the Tang response to the collapse of the Uighur steppe empire in 840 C.E. and the large number of refugees who fled to China's northern frontier. It examines the workings of late Tang bureaucracy through translations of some seventy relevant Chinese documents.
Why did capitalism and colonialism arise in Europe and not elsewhere? Why were parliamentarian and democratic forms of government founded there? What factors led to Europe’s unique position in shaping the world? Thoroughly researched and persuasively argued, Why Europe? tackles these classic questions with illuminating results. Michael Mitterauer traces the roots of Europe’s singularity to the medieval era, specifically to developments in agriculture. While most historians have located the beginning of Europe’s special path in the rise of state power in the modern era, Mitterauer establishes its origins in rye and oats. These new crops played a decisive role in remaking the European family, he contends, spurring the rise of individualism and softening the constraints of patriarchy. Mitterauer reaches these conclusions by comparing Europe with other cultures, especially China and the Islamic world, while surveying the most important characteristics of European society as they took shape from the decline of the Roman empire to the invention of the printing press. Along the way, Why Europe? offers up a dazzling series of novel hypotheses to explain the unique evolution of European culture.
Updated to include the historic 2022 presidential election, this deeply informed and accessible book traces the history of Colombia thematically over the past two centuries. LaRosa and Mejía move beyond the common perception of a failed state to explore the rich heritage and dynamism that have characterized Colombia past and present.
This book convincingly reassesses the role of political institutions in the introduction of Buddhism under the Tibetan Empire (c. 620-842), showing how relationships formed in the Imperial period underlie many of the unique characteristics of traditional Tibetan Buddhism. Taking original sources as a point of departure, the author persuasively argues that later sources hitherto used for the history of early Tibetan Buddhism in fact project later ideas backward, thus distorting our view of its enculturation. Following the pattern of Buddhism’s spread elsewhere in Asia, the early Tibetan imperial court realized how useful normative Buddhist concepts were. This work clearly shows that, while some beliefs and practices per se changed after the Tibetan Empire, the model of socio-political-religious leadership developed in that earlier period survived its demise and still constitutes a significant element in contemporary Tibetan Buddhist religious culture.
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