Most casual history youtubers I watch can’t go 20 minutes without making sinophobic “jokes”. Anyone have better recommendations for learning pre-modern chinese history, everything from culture, monarchs, etc. of China that doesn’t include liberal ideology or racism? Thanks!
The only proper documentary series on ancient Chinese history can only be “If History is a Bunch of Meow” which has English subtitles and depicts the dynastic story of Imperial China, except if the emperors were instead animated cats. It’s currently covered up to the 10th century.
For a more serious narrative, Professor Ken Hammond of New Mexico State University, a comrade from PSL’s Albuquerque chapter who just recently published his superb book “China’s Revolution and the Quest for a Socialist Future,” did a “The Great Courses” lecture series on Chinese history back in the 2000s titled “From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History.” They’re available as an audiobook from Audible and also on sites like AudiobookBay.
I just started the Quest for a Socialist Future and it’s really good so far.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
if you want general history, there’s a relatively comprehensive docu-series produced by CCTV6 from 2013 called 中国通史 General History of China (100 episodes). However it’s in Mandarin Chinese, so not very podcast-able if you don’t understand Mandarin, but there are english subs available (on a quick search, and a brief glance they look decent) and IMO the artifacts and depictions are worth the watch. If anything it might be a good launching point if you wanted to look into more specific topics, for example, philosophy which is often intertwined with religion and civics in Chinese history, or historic literature.
EDIT: found an english dub on youtube ^^ just search “general history of china eng dub”
No, there’s an English dub of it: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSyuJLM8uqBYm_VaFMZPkk9E3UUxtaR0E
For Youtube videos:
Here’s a series of English lectures on China. The professor is currently a member of PSL: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-zm2mrr9onY5hrGya2DhgBn_-xUk51p3
Here’s a 100 episode series on Chinese history from CCTV: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSyuJLM8uqBYm_VaFMZPkk9E3UUxtaR0E
Some of the Wikipedia articles of a particular dynasty are super long. Just look at the ones for the Song dynasty:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_dynasty
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Song_dynasty
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_the_Song_dynasty
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_the_Song_dynasty
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Song_dynasty
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_Song_dynasty
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_technology_of_the_Song_dynasty
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_the_Song_dynasty
