Practice question · Multiple choice
The Han kept the Qin's centralised administration while denouncing Qin cruelty. What does that combination reveal?
Hints
- List what the Han kept: commanderies, standardised law, the tax register. Then list what they changed.
- Ask whether the change was to the machine or to the story told about it.
Show the answer
A. That the machinery and its justification are separable
Why
Commanderies, standardised measures and a tax register all survived while the vocabulary of rule became one of virtue and reciprocal duty, later summarised as Confucian outside, Legalist inside. It is the founding case of an insight worth carrying: what a state does and how it explains itself vary independently.
Practise Ancient China: Qin and Han
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More questions on Ancient China: Qin and Han
- Complete the description of the Mandate of Heaven.
- Why did the Qin dynasty collapse after only about fifteen years?
- Which did the First Emperor standardize across his new empire?
- The Mandate of Heaven can be used to predict, in advance, when a dynasty will fall.
- Order the rise and reinvention of imperial China.
- Sort each trait: characteristic of the Qin or of the Han?