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SUMMARY:Witchcraft and the Rise of the First Confucian Empire - Dr Liang C
 ai\, Assistant Professor\, University of Arkansas\; Visiting Fellow at Wol
 fson College
DTSTART:20130220T130000Z
DTEND:20130220T140000Z
UID:TALK42738@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Graham Allen
DESCRIPTION:In my book on this subject I offer a new reading of the emerge
 nce of the first Confucian empire\, based on my rediscovery of the rich st
 atistical data stored in the tabular charts that Sima Qian\, the founding 
 father of Chinese historiography\, included in his famous Shiji (Records o
 f the Grand Historian)\, as well as in the voluminous number of fascinatin
 g stories of the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE–8 CE) that survive from th
 e period. My book shows that\, despite the standard paradigm that has attr
 ibuted the political rise of the Confucians to Emperor Wu (141–87 BCE)\,
  only six of the seventy-seven high officials under his rule were regarded
  by their contemporaries as Confucians. Not only were they a powerless min
 ority in the political realm\, but during the first 120 years of the Weste
 rn Han dynasty the learning community that studied and revered the Confuci
 an classics suffered fragmentation. In his effort to negotiate and rectify
  this reality\, Sima Qian created a coherent ideological community on pape
 r that ignited the Confucians’ collective consciousness and eventually c
 ontributed to their solidarity. I argue that it was a witchcraft scandal i
 n 91–87 BCE\, long been ignored by scholars\, that permitted China to be
 come a Confucian empire. This four-five year witch hunt created a power va
 cuum in the central court\, providing the Confucians with the opportunity 
 to seize high positions\, evolve into a new elite class\, and realize thei
 r political dream\, a dream that Confucius himself had envisioned hundreds
  of years earlier.
LOCATION:Combination Room\, Wolfson College
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