Yuri Pines

The springs and autumns period is a strange time in Chinese history.

Coming after the decline of the Zhou and before the famous Warring States period, this period of chinese history features a large number of small states with no powerful hegemon no strong sense of the mandate of heaven rules of chivalry that wouldn't seem out of place in medieval europe and roles passed down through lineage and not awarded on the basis of merit Historian Yuri Pines calls this period China's aristocratic age in his book titled, appropriately, China's Aristocratic Age, Politics and Power in the Springs and Alms Period.

Yuri is the Michael W. Lipson Chair in Chinese Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He is the author of The Everlasting Empire, The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy.

I think we need to understand why China opted for its own model, not in order to castigate it and not in order to praise it, but just to understand it.

And I think that historians' task is not to... provide political scientists with ready answers to all the questions of how to live, but just to explain why some experiments in the past failed and what were the conclusions of a certain civilization from the failure of these experiments.

So I think with that, that's a great place to end our conversation with Yuri Pines, author of China's Aristocratic Age, Politics and Power in the Springs and Autumns Period.

Yuri, I actually have two final questions for you, which are, where can people find your work? Not just this book, but all of your work.

This period of Chinese history features a large number of small states with no powerful hegemon, no strong sense of the mandate of heaven, rules of chivalry that wouldn't seem out of place in medieval Europe and roles passed down through lineage and not awarded on the basis of merit.

Historian Yuri Pines calls this period China's aristocratic age in his book titled, appropriately, China's Aristocratic Age, Politics and Power in the Springs and Alms Period.

Yuri is the Michael W. Lipson Chair in Chinese Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He is the author of The Everlasting Empire, The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy.

I think we need to understand why China opted for its own model, not in order to castigate it and not in order to praise it, but just to understand it.

And I think that historians' task is not to... provide political scientists with ready answers to all the questions of how to live, but just to explain why some experiments in the past failed and what were the conclusions of a certain civilization from the failure of these experiments.

So I think with that, that's a great place to end our conversation with Yuri Pines, author of China's Aristocratic Age, Politics and Power in the Springs and Autumns Period.

Yuri, I actually have two final questions for you, which are, where can people find your work? Not just this book, but all of your work.

The springs and autumns period is a strange time in Chinese history, coming after the decline of the Zhou and before the famous Warring States period.

this period of chinese history features a large number of small states with no powerful hegemon no strong sense of the mandate of heaven rules of chivalry that wouldn't seem out of place in medieval europe and roles passed down through lineage and not awarded on the basis of merit Historian Yuri Pines calls this period China's aristocratic age in his book titled, appropriately, China's Aristocratic Age, Politics and Power in the Springs and Alms Period.

Yuri is the Michael W. Lipson Chair in Chinese Studies at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He is the author of The Everlasting Empire, The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy.

The Book of Lord Shang, Apologetics of State Power in Early China, Zhou History Unearthed, The Bamboo Manuscripts in Yan, and Early Chinese Historiography, and other books.

Yuri, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Maybe we can start by kind of setting where this book sits in China's very long history.

You know, this book is about the quote unquote springs and autumns period.