yellow river valley was the original birthplace of the chinese civilization.
yellow river valley was the original birthplace of the chinese civilization.
where was the original birthplace of the chinese civilization?
yellow river valley
gobineau argued that chinese civilization had been created by a group of aryan conquerors from india who had brought under their heel the indigenous malay people living there. though gobineau had read virtually everything written in french about china, he believed that the origins of chinese civilization were in southern china where he posited that the aryans from india had first arrived rather than the yellow river valley which all chinese sources regard as the "cradle" of chinese civilization. gobineau argued that the aryans being a conquering elite had taken a "masculine rather than feminine" approach to establishing their rule. this in turn had led to a "peaceful despotism" well suited to the "malay disposition" based on servility to the state, the capacity "to grasp the advantages of a regular and co-ordinated state organization" and an obsession with an "exclusively material well-being".through gobineau argued that the chinese had been able to make some progress under the influence of their aryan elite, ultimately miscegenation led to this elite being assimilated into the "yellow" majority, and thus the chinese were not capable of making any further progress. for gobineau, the crucial moment occurred in 246 bc when qin shi huang, the "first emperor" unified all of the chinese states into one. he argued that qin had destroyed the "feudal" system created by the ancient aryan conquerors and replaced it with "imperial leveling" that ended the aryan elite; gobineau wrote "there was only this innovation, great nonetheless in itself, that this last trace of independence, of personal dignity as understood in the aryan manner had disappeared forever before the definitive invasions of the yellow type ["l'espèce jaune"]". as such, gobineau argued that the chinese were a static people incapable of change and that essentially that nothing significant had occurred in china since 246 bc and his time. furthermore, gobineau argued that the chinese were fundamentally a materialist people devoid of any sort of spirituality. the contrast between the chinese ideal of a "gentleman scholar" as the supreme example of what a chinese man should and the low social prestige of soldiers within china reflected what gobineau disparaging saw as the materialist ordination of the chinese. by contrast, he argued that aryans were first and foremost warriors, which, he approvingly explained, was why soldiers had such high social prestige in europe. gobineau wrote with contempt that because of their materialism, for the chinese happiness was to be found in having sufficient food to keep oneself alive and sufficient clothing to avoid public nudity. he did not believe in the freedom of the press as he believed that ordinary people needed to be monitored by the state, but he argued that freedom of the press was possible in china because the "exclusively utilitarian" nature of the chinese meant unlike in the west, there was no-one in china willing to fight and die for their ideas. gobineau wrote that as long the chinese population was well provided for, no chinese "would bother to confront police truncheons for the greater glory of a political abstraction".
arthur de gobineau
many historians interpret this sudden popularity of the yellow emperor as a reaction to the theories of french scholar albert terrien de lacouperie (1845–94), who in a book called "the western origin of the early chinese civilization, from 2300 b.c. to 200 a.d." (1892) had claimed that chinese civilization was founded around 2300 bce by babylonian immigrants. lacouperie's "sino-babylonianism" posited that huangdi was a mesopotamian tribal leader who had led a massive migration of his people into china around 2300 bce and founded what later became chinese civilization. european sinologists quickly rejected these theories, but in 1900 two japanese historians, shirakawa jirō and kokubu tanenori, omitted these criticisms and published a long summary that presented lacouperie's views as the most advanced western scholarship on china. chinese scholars were quickly attracted by "the historicization of chinese mythology" that the two japanese authors advocated.
yellow emperor