#  Nicolas Tackett - October 5, 2020 

 





 

 **The Mechanics of Cultural Change in China in a Period of Disunity**

 Situated at the epicenter of the “Tang-Song Transition,” the tenth-century interregnum between the Tang and Song dynasties was a period of rapid change. This talk will focus on the dramatic evolution of Chinese political culture, as reflected in new political ideals, new ideas of Chinese space, and a new elite sense of identity. What underlying mechanisms account for these developments? Datasets and examples taken from an on-going book project suggest that cultural change was spurred by the particularities of the tenth century as a period of disunity. Although Chinese civilization has evolved continuously throughout its long history, change during periods of disunity was driven by distinct causative factors, which included political instability, inter-regime competition, elite migrations, not to mention the process of reunification itself.

 Nicolas Tackett (B.S., Stanford University; Ph.D., Columbia University) is Professor of History at U.C. Berkeley. He is the author of two books. *The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy* (2014) examines how a network of powerful families survived at the pinnacle of political power for centuries only to disappear into oblivion suddenly and completely at the turn of the 10th c. *The Origins of the Chinese Nation* (2017) argues that a national consciousness emerged in China in the eleventh century (i.e., much earlier than typically assumed), and explores how this new consciousness was a product of the diplomatic environment of 11th-c. Northeast Asia.