The Great Unity (da yitong 大一統) Ideal: The Key to China's Imperial Longevity?
One of the most notable features of imperial China is the exceptional durability of the imperial political system. Having been formed in the aftermath of Qin 秦 unification (221 BCE), this system lasted intact for 2132 years, until the abdication of the child emperor Puyi 溥儀 on February 12, 1912. For sure, the empire was not indestructible —to the contrary, it underwent manifold crises, including longer or shorter periods of political disintegration. Yet, remarkably, the unified empire was repeatedly resurrected at the very least in “China proper” (roughly comparable to the territory under the control of the founding Qin dynasty). Such repeated resurrections of a huge territorial entity spanning more than twenty centuries are not attested to elsewhere in world history.
In my talk I want to argue that the key to understanding the reasons for the imperial resurrections lies within the realm of ideology and the dominant political culture. The idea that peace and stability in “All-under-Heaven” is attainable only in a unitary state ruled by a single omnipotent monarch was formed in the centuries preceding the Qin unification, at the apex of political fragmentation of the Warring States period (Zhanguo 戰國, 453-221 BCE). Having become the common desideratum of the competing “Hundred Schools of Thought,” the ideal of “Great Unity” remained fundamental to Chinese political culture for millennia to come. By denying legitimacy to any but unifying regimes, this ideal facilitated common quest for reunification during the periods of fragmentation. The notion that “Stability is in Unity” became China’s foremost self-fulfilling prophecy.
Yuri Pines is Michael W. Lipson Professor of Asian Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Guest Professor at Nankai University, Tianjin, China, and visiting professor at Beijing Normal University, China. His studies focus on early Chinese political thought, traditional Chinese political culture, origins of Chinese historiography, and sociopolitical history of pre-imperial China, particularly the state and empire of Qin. His major publications include The Everlasting Empire: Traditional Chinese Political Culture and Its Enduring Legacy (Princeton University Press, 2012); Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era (University of Hawaii Press, 2009); Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722-453 B.C.E. (University of Hawaii Press, 2002). He co-authored (with Gideon Shelach and Yitzhak Shichor) 3-volumes All-under-Heaven: Imperial China (in Hebrew, Open University Press, 2011, 2013); co-edited together with Lothar von Falkenhausen, Gideon Shelach and Robin D.S. Yates the Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin revisited (University of California Press, 2014), and co-edited with Paul R. Goldin and Martin Kern the Ideology of Power and Power of Ideology in Early China (Brill, forthcoming 2015). In addition, he has several other edited and co-edited publications, and over 90 articles in scholarly journals and collected volumes.