Chinese Dynasty Essay

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Dynasties
Throughout the years, the People's Republic of China underwent a numerous amount of heartache to get the where it is now - a Republican country. A dynasty is a succession of rulers from the same family or line. The very first Chinese dynasty was the Xia dynasty (2100 BCE) and concluded with the Qing dynasty (1912), which then led to a Republic Period and eventually the People's Republic of China. There were over 13 dynasties in china however, I will only talk about the pivotal dynasties, the dynasties, I believe, that made China what it is today - Xia dynasty (2100-1600 BCE), Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BCE), Qin dynasty (221-206 BCE), Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE) and the Qing dynasty (1644-1912).
The Xia Dynasty is dated back to 2070 BCE to 1600 BCE and is one of the very earliest dynasties mentioned in legends and historical chronicles such as Records of the Grand Historian and Bamboo Annuals. The founder of this dynasty was Yu, a man who was credited with having engineered the draining of the waters of the great flood. Yu allegedly made the ruler ship hereditary in his family and therefore founding the first imperial dynasty of China.
The Zhou Dynasty (1050-256 BCE) conquered and succeeded the Shang Dynasty to which later generations seeked to reclaim and preserve the idealized peace of the early Zhou period. This early Zhou period was known as "Spring and Autumn" (722-481 BC) and saw relative stability and the growth of trade, towns and a middle class of merchants and artisans. However, this stability and increase in income to the princes caused Zhou's decline as it gave the local princes to do three things: firstly, it allowed the princes to build canals. This increased trade, thus giving the princes more tolls and ta...

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...sciplined and incompetent. The West and Japan were encroaching for trade interests. The explosion of the Taiping Rebellion and other insurgencies, together with the infringement by foreign powers, significantly undermined the Qing court. By 1900, China was forced to grant long-term territorial leases to foreign powers. External pressures and internal rebellion finally brought about dynastic collapse in 1911, when the revolution led by Sun Yatsen established the Republic of China.
To conclude, I find the Chinese Dynasty particularly interesting as these dynasties are what created China, and are very important in Chinese history. Of course there are many more Chinese Dynasties such as the: Tang dynasty (618-906 CE), Song dynasty (960-1279), Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) and Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) which all led to the People's Republic of China which came about in 1949.

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