From Death and Disorder to Great Peace: Historical Memory and Political Ideology under the Sui
Journal
臺灣大學歷史學系碩士論文
Date Issued
2011
Date
2011
Author(s)
Fu, Yang
Abstract
Although lasted for only 38 years, the Sui Dynasty (581-618) was of seminal significance: it brought the approximately 300-year separation between the north and the south to an end, and had great impact on its successor, the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Yet a majority of scholars, either treat the Sui as the prolongation of the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420-589) or merely see it as the predecessor of the Tang, tend to neglect that the Sui Dynasty itself was a valuable research object. This situation is even more distressing when it comes to what and how intellectual elements had performed during the process of Sui’s building of newly re-unified empire. This thesis, therefore, attempts to utilize the concepts of “historical memory” and “political ideology” to depict as well as to analyze political thought and intellectual activities under the framework of the change from early medieval China’s “Death and Disorder” to Sui’s “Great Peace.”
In the context of my study, I borrow the term “Death and Disorder” from both The Odes and the linguistic usages of early medieval Chinese people to denote the historical memory of early medieval China. Furthermore, I argue that this historical memory can be seen as a cultural mentality. Thus, half of my thesis is devoted to the reconstruction of the historical memory/cultural mentality and the aspects related to it in early medieval China. On the basis of the reunification of China, the Sui constructed and propagated the “Great Peace” political ideology. On the one hand, the construction of this ideology was stimulated by real political situation; on the other, the building of “Great Peace” ideology was associated with the process of discarding and reinterpreting the “death and disorder” mentality. Therefore, another focus of my thesis is to analyze the interplay of historical memory/cultural mentality and political ideology as well as to demonstrate the main feature of the ideology under the Sui.
Chapter I reconstructs the “death and disorder” mentality in early medieval China. I suggest that based on the historical memory of the great division and of the succeeding political turmoil, a cultural mentality which can be reasonably termed as “death and disorder” mentality emerged in early medieval China. Under the influence of this mentality, contemporaries, the ruling groups in particular, tended to view their living world as unstable and precarious, and regarded the fall of the Western Jin Dynasty (265-316) and turbulence that followed as the inception of the “death and disorder” situation.
Chapter II depicts the political culture that was to a great extent shaped by the “death and disorder” mentality. I argue that the characteristic of the political culture of early medieval China was that the transfers of imperial power were relatively common, and therefore the loyalty of officials toward certain regime was hard to sustain. Utilizing his political discourses to show that being an emperor who immersed in such political culture, Sui Wendi was sensitive to his situation, and desperately sought ways to eliminate all menace.
In chapter III, I demonstrate the imperative intellectual issues which concerned the advent of and the consolidation of the Sui’s newly unified empire. I point out that the anticipation of the unification of China among northern people had paved the way for the making of the Sui’s “Great Peace” political ideology. At the same time, the Sui had adopted a variety of means to delegitimize the regime of Chen as well as Southern Dynasties. Based on above factors, the Sui constructed its “Great Peace” ideology. This ideology produced the discourse which emphasized a sharp comparison between the “death and disorder” in the past and the “Great Peace” under the Sui, and urged contemporaries to act in accordance with its political persuasion.
In chapter IV, I enunciate the interaction between historical memory, political ideology, and cultural tradition. The dominant cultural traditions under the Sui were Confucianism and Buddhism. First, I elucidate the fortune of Confucianism during early medieval China, and illustrate how Confucianism met its short prosperity under the Sui Dynasty by conforming to the “Great Peace” ideology. Second, I illuminate the history of Buddhism through the perspective of the relationship between Buddhism and the “death and disorder.” Finally, I illustrate how Buddhism under the Sui recognized the “Great Peace” political ideology, and further show how this recognition in turn motivated the emperors of the Sui to patronize the development of Buddhism.
In dealing with the historical memory of early medieval China, an intellectual atmosphere from late 6th to early 7th century, and the formation of Sui ideology, this thesis can shed new light on the history of the Sui Dynasty, the political as well as cultural traditions from the Han to the Tang Dynasty, and the intellectual history of medieval China.
Subjects
The Sui Dynasty
Historical memory
Ideology
Intellectual history
History of political thought
“Death and Disorder
”“Great Peace”
SDGs
Type
thesis
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