#3 - Xia 1: The Xia, China's First Dynasty

The History of China

Chris Stewart

History

4.6 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2013

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week we move into the beginnings of China’s dynastic period where rulers began favoring birthright over merit – and the consequences will be almost immediately apparent. Beginning with the triumphant reign of the heroic Yu the Great, the Xia’s semi-accidental trip into dynastic succession will swiftly spiral downward, eventually leaving a usurping general in power, and the House of Xia all but exterminated after decades in exile. Rebooted as of 09/06/2016 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	You're listening to an airwave media podcast.
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0:26.0	That's a lot to love for just 99 pounds RRP, the new Galaxy Bud Zefee by now at Samsung.com.
0:33.7	Hello and welcome to the history of China.
0:44.0	Episode 3, The Shah, China's first dynasty.
0:55.0	Last week we concluded China's prehistoric origins mythos, known as the Three Sovereigns
0:59.3	and Five Emperors Period, finishing out with Yu the Great's mastery over the flooding rivers of China and subsequent
1:05.2	promotion to imperial error.
1:07.8	Today we step into the first supposed dynastic period of China, the Shia. Now prior to now I have said that we are stepping out of mythology
1:16.0	and into history with the Shah dynasty, but having said that I'm going to need to
1:20.2	immediately walk it right back and say no no we're not quite out of the woods yet.
1:25.3	As we'll be going over today the Shah dynasty is still largely a fictionalized accounting of a
1:29.9	pre-literate society and there's a big question mark hanging over it about
1:33.7	whether we should take it as mythos or history. So before we launch into the story
1:38.6	itself then we ought to take a bit of a longer look at what we mean when we
1:42.4	talk about the Shah both in terms of pure
1:44.7	historiographical evidence, but also in terms of what it means in a cultural sense.
1:49.7	Historian Kwang Chichang writes in the Cambridge history of ancient China, quote,
1:54.3	Was there indeed a Shah dynasty at the head of Chinese history?
	...

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