The Imperial Capitals Of Chian: A Dynastic History Of The Celestial Empire, by Arthur Cotterell

When one examines the history of a civilization that has lasted as long as China has, one of the aspects of the empires that have existed over that span of history that one wants to examine is that of the capital of the regime and what it says about a nation. Throughout history, various cities in various empires have served as emblematic of the empire as a whole. Athens tells a story of ancient Greece (though Sparta, Thebes, or Corinth, among many other cities, would also do so). Rome is synonymous with its empire, though Ravenna was also a capital late in the empire’s history. Istanbul stands on earlier Constantinople, pride of the Byzantime Empire. Bagdad, Cairo, Paris, London, Berlin, Prague, Washington DC, St. Petersburg and Moscow, Dehli, Tehran (and Persepolis and Isfahan), Ayutthaya (and Bangkok) and many more cities are synonymous with certain times and places in history when they were the center of glorious and important regimes. Yet when we look at cities, what does the structure of a city say about the cosmological designs and intents of that city. Like, say, Brasilia or Washington DC, Chinese capitals tended to be designed affairs and were not allowed to develop organically, and that says something about Chinese civilization. What does it say?

This book is an average-sized work at almost 300 pages of reading material. After a short introduction, the author divides his work into four parts. The first part, containing one chapter, discusses the ancient origins of the Chinese capital, by talking about the early origins in Shang and Zhou times, of the cosmology of the Chinese capital, an ideal that was never quite reached (I, 1). This is followed by a discussion of the early Chinese imperial period from the Qin to the beginning of the Sui (II), which include three chapters that look at the first imperial capitals of Qin Xianyang and Former Han Chang’an (currently Xi’an) (2), Later Han Luoyang (3), and the capitals of a divided China in Nanjing, Pingcheng, and Luoyang (4). This is followed by fie chapters that look at the Middle Imperial period from the beginning of the Sui to the end of the Mongol Empire, that roughly corresponds to the Middle Ages (III). These chapters discuss the Chang’an of reunified Sui and Tang China (5), the diminished Chang’an of the Late Tang period after the destruction of the An Lushan rebellion (6), the almost paradisical nature of largely undefended Northern Song Kaifeng (7), whose lack of defenses would spell its doom, the somewhat less than ideal nature of the “temporary” capital of the Southern Song Empire in Hangzhou (8), and the Beijing of the Mongol conquest (9). The last part of the book contains two chapters of the Late Chinese empire of the Ming and Qing (Manchu) dynasties (IV), looking at Ming Nanjing and Beijing (10), and the glories of Qing Beijing (11), some of which were destroyed in the wars towards the end of that regime. The book then ends with chronologies of the imperial dynasties and the emperors and their reigns, as well as notes and references and an index.

When we look at the imperial capitals of China, there are aspects that the author brings out over and over again. He talks about the underlying geomancy involved in choosing a site that offered a central passageway, suitable places for palaces, temples, fortresses, and markets that reflected the proper siting according to traditional principles, and as close as popular to a regular and balanced shape that would provide for ceremonial perfection, though this perfection was never quite achieved. While cities were meant to be places where eunuchs and bureaucrats who passed the (sometimes corrupt) candidate exam which is mentioned so often in these pages (and which included standardized subjects and even a healthy side-business in the plagiarism and study of essay topics) and elites could be at home, they were also places where business interests encouraged moral and political corruption, where gangsters and prostitutes sought to carve out domination of spaces for their own purposes, and where power and fortunes were gained and lost all under the eye of a not quite all-seeing imperial government that sought to control the space but had to fight it out, sometimes unsuccessfully, between landlords, pimps, urban hoodlums, peasant revolutionaries, and foreign armies. The end result is complicated and also very enjoyable to read about, it must be admitted.