図書

単行書

text

World and global history : research and teaching : a Cliohworld reader. 2011, p. 59-67

China's View of the World

Edizioni Plus-Pisa University Press

英語

text

2011

Seija Jalagin, Susanna Tavera, and Andrew Dilley ed., World and global history : research and teaching : a Cliohworld reader (Cliohworld readers, 7), Pisa: Edizioni Plus-Pisa University Press, 2011.

In examining China's view of the world, the idea of tianxia plays a key role. This idea generally refers to the world as a whole. It is important to understand what the idea specifically signified. The word tianxia has been used in two different ways. Firstly it can represent the whole globe. In this all-embracing usage, tianxia stretches out beyond China, and the one who rules it is the lord of the world. Alternatively, it is confined to China. Consequently, its extension is limited to the area which actually stood under the rule of the Chinese dynasties. Most Chinese historical sources, in particular those since the time of the late Former Han (202 BCE- 8 CE) and the early Later Han (25 CE- 220 CE), use the word in the latter meaning. In pre-modern China, tianxia often signified the state. Meanwhile, non-Han countries and peoples around China were seen as not belonging to tianxia and the in- habitants were called "barbarians". The Chinese differentiated this area depending on the distance from China: (1) the "neighbouring regions': to which the Chinese rule extended, and (2) the "remote regions", which stood completely outside Chinese influence. At times, in particular when the territory of the dynasty expanded dramatically, as under the Han, the Tang or the Qing, tianxia was taken to include the "neighbouring regions". Still, the idea oftianxia was related to the sovereignty of the emperor. It delimited the area that he effectively governed by means of the central administration as well as the census registration and the map in the provinces and counties. There were two views about what relation tianxia had with the vast surrounding area including the "neighbouring" and the "remote regions". One regarded the dynasty's capital in which the emperor resided as center of the whole world. The other, which equally existed through the ages, saw it in the Kunlun Mountains to the West ofChina and positioned tianxia to their southeast. The former perspective is often seen as typifying Chinese perspectives on the world, but it is interesting to note that there was also a competing relativistic paradigm.

88470

China's View of the World

Arakawa, Masaharu

Edizioni Plus-Pisa University Press

英語

2011

World and global history : research and teaching : a Cliohworld reader

59

67

https://hdl.handle.net/11094/88470