TTC - From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History

TTC - From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History
36 lectures of 30 minutes - 244Mb - MP3
Taught by Kenneth Hammond

For most of its 5000 year existence, China has been the largest, most populous, wealthiest, and mightiest nation on Earth. And for us as Westerners, it is essential to understand where China has been in order to anticipate its future.

This course answers this need by delivering a comprehensive political and historical overview of one of the most fascinating and complex countries in world history.

A Civilization so Advanced …

    * China had a theory of social contract, the "Mandate of Heaven," in place by 1500 B.C.E., 3,000 years before Western philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.
    * It had seen the rule of three classical dynasties before 200 B.C.E.
    * It developed agriculture and writing independently of outside influence.
    * In Confucius and Laozi—among others—it had philosophers of the Axial Age as influential as were Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle in ancient Greece.
    * While the Roman Empire was at its zenith, China’s Han dynasty ruled over an empire superior in almost every measurable way, including technological advancement.

Course Lecture Titles
1.    Geography and Archaeology
2.    The First Dynasties
3.    The Zhou Conquest
4.    Fragmentation and Social Change
5.    Confucianism and Daoism
6.    The Hundred Schools
7.    The Early Han Dynasty
8.    Later Han and the Three Kingdoms
9.    Buddhism
10.    Northern and Southern Dynasties
11.    Sui Reunification and the Rise of the Tang
12.    The Early Tang Dynasty
13.    Han Yu and the Late Tang
14.    Five Dynasties and the Song Founding
15.    Intellectual Ferment in the 11th Century
16.    Art and the Way
17.    Conquest States in the North
18.    Economy and Society in Southern Song
19.    Zhu Xi and Neo-Confucianism
20.    The Rise of the Mongols
21.    The Yuan Dynasty
22.    The Rise of the Ming
23.    The Ming Golden Age
24.    Gridlock and Crisis
25.    The Rise of the Manchus
26.    Kangxi to Qianlong
27.    The Coming of the West
28.    Threats from Within and Without
29.    The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom
30.    Efforts at Reform
31.    The Fall of the Empire
32.    The New Culture Movement and May 4th
33.    The Chinese Communists, 1921–1937
34.    War and Revolution
35.    China Under Mao
36.    China and the World in a New Century