In accounts of Chinese history, the Western Zhou period has been lionized as a golden age of ritual, when kings created the ceremonies that underlay the traditions of imperial governance. In this book, Paul Nicholas Vogt rediscovers their roots in the vagaries of Western Zhou royal geopolitics through an investigation of inscriptions on bronze vessels, the best contemporary source for this period. He shows how the kings of the Western Zhou adapted ritual to create and retain power, while introducing changes that affected later remembrances of Zhou royal ritual and that shaped the tradition of statecraft throughout Chinese history. Using ritual and social theory to explain Western Zhou history, Vogt traces how the traditions of pre-modern China were born, how a ruling dynasty establishes and holds on to power, how religion and politics can support and restrain each other, and how ancient peoples made, used, and assigned meaning to art and artifacts.

The book shows how the kings of the Western Zhou period used ritual to create and hold onto their power.

About the Author
Paul Nicholas Vogt is Assistant Professor of Early Chinese History at Indiana University, Bloomington.


Book Information
ISBN 9781316517611
Author Paul Nicholas Vogt
Format Hardback
Page Count 350
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 850g
Dimensions(mm) 259mm * 181mm * 19mm