The Rise of the State in China

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2023

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Chinese history is defined, more than anything else, by the importance of the state: its origins, its development, and the precise lineage leading back from the present deep into prehistory. But rather than a straightforward story of progress over time, the origins of the state in China are shrouded in mystery, in multiple developmental pathways, stops, starts, and new beginnings.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Prime members, you can listen to Tides of History, add free on Amazon Music.
0:04.0	Download the app today. The floodwaters covered what had once been the open space at the heart of the village.
0:20.0	The clusters of houses, rectangular mud wall dwellings, partially sunk down into the soil, were barely visible above the surface.
0:28.0	Snarls of debris turned and shirned as the water's current dragged them along in swirls and eddies.
0:34.4	Tangled tree branches, chunks of thatch roofing, and the drowned bodies of pigs, dogs, and people
0:39.7	floated aimlessly.
0:41.8	The survivors looked down at their inundated home from the safety of the
0:44.7	hillside. Even that familiar landmark no longer looked as it had. The mudslide had taken
0:50.4	off a chunk of the slope, leaving behind bare, soddened dirt in place of the scrubby vegetation.
0:55.6	They were lucky, the village headman said, to have gotten away at all.
0:59.4	Others, and he pointed down at the remnants of their houses and the bodies floating among them,
1:03.6	hadn't been so fortunate. They could rebuild their dwellings,
1:06.8	sew their fields with millet, acquire new pigs from neighboring communities,
1:10.3	and make their lives once more just as they had.
1:13.0	Some nodded in agreement, others wept at their losses.
1:17.0	But a few grumbled and disagree.
1:19.0	The ancestral spirits were obviously angry.
1:22.0	Maybe the sacrifices hadn't been performed correctly or maybe
1:24.8	some important spirit had been forgotten and had intervened to visit this devastation upon them.
1:29.2	The headman, sensing a rebellion, shouted them down.
1:36.7	No, he said, he had properly performed all the rituals on behalf of their lineage, using the correct formulas and ceramic vessels for making offerings.
1:40.5	Besides, this flooding hadn't affected their village alone.
	...

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