Earthy Glories of Ancient China | Hacker News Reader

Earthy Glories of Ancient China

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13 pointswormold4 comments

"the Chinese at least have a better claim than most people of being heirs to a unified culture"

That is, if you can count Chinese as one people in the first place. How can one consider that loosely mass of over one billion people, with variegated groups of cultures and (not long ago) mutually-unintelligible languages, to have a common single heritage, without a politically forced inclusive approach?

That's Baruma's point: though such claims are propagandistic and false (and he says that nobody three millennia ago would have called themselves "Chinese" to make it clear), there is at least a long-running thread, which is visible in the exhibition.

Also, per your "common single heritage, without a politically forced inclusive approach" -- this is true of a country like, say, France, which is a deliberate, forced creation of Louis XIII and Napolean. China is hardly alone in this regard!

"France, is a deliberate, forced creation of Louis XIII and Napolean"

I disagree. On political, administrative, cultural and on many other levels, all that territory had pretty much a monolithic evolution. Starting from the first bits of recorded history, the territory of modern France was mostly inhabited by Gallic tribes, which shared a common language and common customs. Then Caesar came and conquered all the territory of modern France, i.e. it shifted as a whole from the rule of free Gauls to that of Rome. OK, maybe Attila with his Huns might have attacked only parts of modern France in his struggle with Roman Empire, but he didn't left behind a lasting state to cause divergent evolution for different parts of territory/population. Then Franks came and occupied, again, all of that territory, and from then on Kingdom of France followed and lasted, except for relatively short periods, as a coherent political entity that evolved over time into modern France. France happened (and I strongly believe that it would have lasted even) without figures like Louis XIII or Napoleon. Now compare this historical evolution of France with what China has.

O oais, nos ancêtres les gaulles. The consolidation of the surrounding kingdoms (Burgundy, Savoie, Aquitaine etc) was hardly preordained, and why should, say, Savoy be French and Piedmont not (much less Corsica!)? The consolidation of two of the three Frankish kingdoms was official state policy pursued by a combination of sword and institutions (e.g. l'Academie Française and the promulgation of a single French language with its concomitant suppression of regional languages and their relegation to dialectical status).

Disclaimer: I have a degree in French history. Apologies for typos but the spell corrector on this computer aggressively defaults to English.

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