1.
Goryeo
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Goryeo, also spelled as Koryŏ, was a Korean dynasty established in 918 by King Taejo. This kingdom later gave name to the modern exonym Korea and it united the Later Three Kingdoms in 936 and ruled most of the Korean Peninsula until it was removed by the founder of the Joseon in 1392. Goryeo expanded Koreas borders to present-day Wonsan in the northeast, the Yalu River, two of this periods most notable products are celadon pottery and the Tripitaka Koreana—the Buddhist canon carved onto more than 80,000 woodblocks and stored at Haeinsa. The people of Goryeo also created the first metal type that was capable of printing actual books, in 1234, the oldest surviving metal movable type book. A son of a lord, Wang Geon, joined Taebong as a general. Taebong fell when Wang Geon revolted and killed Gung Ye in 918, Silla was overpowered by Goryeo and Later Baekje and surrendered to Goryeo in 935. By the late 13th century, after nearly 30 years of warfare with the Mongols of the Yuan dynasty, Goryeo lost much of its power, the name Goryeo is derived from Goguryeo of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, which the Goryeo state regarded as its predecessor. Goguryeo changed its name to Goryeo during the reign of Jangsu in the 5th century, the English name Korea derives from Goryeo. Silla, which had accomplished an incomplete unification of the Three Kingdoms of Korea in 668, weakened, the country entered a period of civil war and rebellion, led by Gung Ye, Gi Hwon, Yang Gil, and Gyeon Hwon. Gung Ye established the state of Later Goguryeo, renamed Taebong, together with the declining Later Silla, they are known as the Later Three Kingdoms. Wang Geon, who became the Taejo of Goryeo, joined Later Goguryeo as a general but later overthrew Gung Ye. Goryeo regarded itself as the successor of Goguryeo, Wang Geon, the founder of Goryeo, was a descendant of Goguryeo, and traced his ancestry to a noble Goguryeo clan. For three years after, Later Baekje dominated the Later Three Kingdoms, but after a defeat at Andong in 930, the Later Three Kingdoms era ended when Goryeo annexed Silla in 935 and defeated Later Baekje in 936. King Taejo moved the capital to his hometown of Kaesǒng, Taejo married a daughter of the Silla royal family and allowed most of their nobility to keep their lands. Even though he ruled the nation for only seven years before his son took the throne upon his death. The terminology used in the court of Goryeo was that of an empire, the capital, Gaegyeong was called Hwangdo Imperial Capital and the palace was referred to as Imperial Palace. The nation also utilized a system of multiple capitals, Gaegyeong as the main capital, the mere use of this system and the nomenclature or use of the character 京 implied that Goryeo functioned internally as an empire. Other terms, such as Your Imperial Majesty, Empress Imperial Crown Prince, Empress Dowager, however, Goryeo, when enshrining its rulers, did not use the title Emperor
2.
Joseon
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The Kingdom of Joseon was a Korean kingdom founded by Yi Seonggye that lasted for approximately five centuries, from July 1392 to October 1897. It was officially renamed the Korean Empire in October 1897 and it was founded following the aftermath of the overthrow of Goryeo in what is today the city of Kaesong. Early on, Korea was retitled and the capital was relocated to modern-day Seoul, the kingdoms northernmost borders were expanded to the natural boundaries at the Yalu and Tumen Rivers through the subjugation of the Jurchens. Joseon was the last dynasty of Korea and its longest-ruling Confucian dynasty, during its reign, Joseon encouraged the entrenchment of Chinese Confucian ideals and doctrines in Korean society. Neo-Confucianism was installed as the new state ideology. Buddhism was accordingly discouraged and occasionally faced persecutions by the dynasty, Joseon consolidated its effective rule over the territory of current Korea and saw the height of classical Korean culture, trade, science, literature, and technology. After the end of invasions from Manchuria, Joseon experienced a nearly 200-year period of peace, by the late 14th century, the nearly 500-year-old Goryeo established in 918 was tottering, its foundations collapsing from years of war and de facto occupation from the disintegrating Mongol Empire. Following the emergence of the Ming dynasty, the court in Goryeo split into two conflicting factions, the group led by General Yi and the camp led by General Choe. Goryeo claimed to be the successor of the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo, as such, Yi was chosen to lead the attack, however, he revolted and swept back to Gaegyeong and initiated a coup détat, overthrowing King U in favor of his son, Chang of Goryeo. He later killed King U and his son after a failed restoration, in 1392, Yi eliminated Jeong Mong-ju, highly respected leader of a group loyal to Goryeo dynasty, and dethroned King Gongyang, exiling him to Wonju, and before he ascended the throne. The Goryeo Dynasty had come to an end after almost 500 years of rule. After much deliberation, the Taejo Emperor declared the name of the new dynasty to be Joseon, after the ancient Korean state of Gojoseon and he also moved the capital to Hanyang from Kaesong. When the new dynasty was promulgated and officially brought into existence, with Taejos support, Jeong Dojeon kept limiting the royal familys power by prohibiting political involvement of princes and attempting to abolish their private armies. Both sides were aware of each others great animosity and were getting ready to strike first. This incident became known as the First Strife of Princes, one of King Jeongjongs first acts as monarch was to revert the capital to Kaesong, where he is believed to have been considerably more comfortable, away from the toxic power strife. Yet Yi Bangwon retained real power and was soon in conflict with his older brother. Yi Banggan, who yearned for power. In 1400, the tensions between Yi Bangwons faction and Yi Banggans camp escalated into a conflict that came to be known as the Second Strife of Princes
3.
Vietnam
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Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. With an estimated 92.7 million inhabitants as of 2016, it is the worlds 14th-most-populous country, and its capital city has been Hanoi since the reunification of North and South Vietnam in 1976, with Ho Chi Minh City as a historical city as well. The northern part of Vietnam was part of Imperial China for over a millennium, an independent Vietnamese state was formed in 939, following a Vietnamese victory in the Battle of Bạch Đằng River. Following a Japanese occupation in the 1940s, the Vietnamese fought French rule in the First Indochina War, thereafter, Vietnam was divided politically into two rival states, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam. Conflict between the two sides intensified in what is known as the Vietnam War, the war ended with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975. Vietnam was then unified under a communist government but remained impoverished, in 1986, the government initiated a series of economic and political reforms which began Vietnams path towards integration into the world economy. By 2000, it had established relations with all nations. Since 2000, Vietnams economic growth rate has been among the highest in the world and its successful economic reforms resulted in its joining the World Trade Organization in 2007. It is also a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, Vietnam remains one of the worlds four remaining one-party socialist states officially espousing communism. The name Việt Nam is a variation of Nam Việt, a name that can be traced back to the Triệu Dynasty of the 2nd century BC. The word Việt originated as a form of Bách Việt. The form Vietnam is first recorded in the 16th-century oracular poem Sấm Trạng Trình, the name has also been found on 12 steles carved in the 16th and 17th centuries, including one at Bao Lam Pagoda in Haiphong that dates to 1558. Then, as recorded, rewarded Yuenan/Vietnam as their nations name, to also show that they are below the region of Baiyue/Bach Viet. Between 1804 and 1813, the name was used officially by Emperor Gia Long and it was revived in the early 20th century by Phan Bội Châus History of the Loss of Vietnam, and later by the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. The country was usually called Annam until 1945, when both the government in Huế and the Viet Minh government in Hanoi adopted Việt Nam. Archaeological excavations have revealed the existence of humans in what is now Vietnam as early as the Paleolithic age, Homo erectus fossils dating to around 500,000 BC have been found in caves in Lạng Sơn and Nghệ An provinces in northern Vietnam. The oldest Homo sapiens fossils from mainland Southeast Asia are of Middle Pleistocene provenance, teeth attributed to Homo sapiens from the Late Pleistocene have also been found at Dong Can, and from the Early Holocene at Mai Da Dieu, Lang Gao and Lang Cuom. The Hồng Bàng dynasty of the Hùng kings is considered the first Vietnamese state, in 257 BC, the last Hùng king was defeated by Thục Phán, who consolidated the Lạc Việt and Âu Việt tribes to form the Âu Lạc, proclaiming himself An Dương Vương
4.
Chinese characters
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Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese, and sometimes also in English, they are called hànzì. They have been adapted to write a number of languages including, Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja. Collectively, they are known as CJK characters, in English, they are sometimes called Han characters. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world, Chinese characters number in the tens of thousands, though most of them are minor graphic variants encountered only in historical texts. Studies in China have shown that literacy in written Chinese requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters. In Japan,2,136 are taught through secondary school, the characters used in Japan are distinct from those used in China in many respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, in South Korea, when Chinese characters are used they are of the traditional variant and are almost identical to those used in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Old Chinese, most words were monosyllabic and there was a correspondence between characters and words. Rather, a character almost always corresponds to a syllable that is also a morpheme. However, there are a few exceptions to this correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes. Modern Chinese has many homophones, thus the same syllable may be represented by many characters. A single character may also have a range of meanings, or sometimes quite distinct meanings, cognates in the several varieties of Chinese are generally written with the same character. They typically have similar meanings, but often quite different pronunciations and these foreign adaptations of Chinese pronunciation are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations, and have been useful in the reconstruction of Middle Chinese. When the script was first used in the late 2nd millennium BC, words of Old Chinese were generally monosyllabic, increasing numbers of polysyllabic words have entered the language from the Western Zhou period to the present day. The process has accelerated over the centuries as phonetic change has increased the number of homophones and it has been estimated that over two thirds of the 3,000 most common words in modern Standard Chinese are polysyllables, the vast majority of those being disyllables. The most common process has been to form compounds of existing words, words have also been created by adding affixes, reduplication and borrowing from other languages. Polysyllabic words are written with one character per syllable
5.
Imperial Ancestral Temple
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The temple, which resembles the Forbidden Citys ground plan, is a cluster of buildings in three large courtyards separated by walls. It contains seats and beds for the tablets of emperors and empresses, as well as incense burners, on the occasion of large-scale ceremonies for worship of ancestors, the emperors would come here to participate. Flanking the courtyard in front of hall are two long, narrow buildings. These were worship halls for various princes and courtiers, the Western Wing housed the memorial tablets of meritorious courtiers, while the Eastern Wing enshrined various princes of the Ming or Qing dynasty. Behind the Hall for Worship of Ancestors are two main halls. The first was built in 1420 and used to store imperial ancestral tablets and this park was extended based on the Imperial Ancestral Hall site, and the park is located east of Tiananmen, while the Zhongshan Park lies to the west. These two parks along with Beihai Park and Jingshan and several parks have a deep historic tie with the Forbidden City. Imperial City Shejitan Jongmyo, Seoul Ise Grand Shrine Thế Miếu, Huế Triệu Tổ miếu, Huế Official site Encyclopædia Britannica China. org
6.
Ming dynasty
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The Ming dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China – then known as the Empire of the Great Ming – for 276 years following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming, described by some as one of the greatest eras of orderly government, although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng, regimes loyal to the Ming throne – collectively called the Southern Ming – survived until 1683. He rewarded his supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. One, Zheng He, led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia, the rise of new emperors and new factions diminished such extravagances, the capture of the Zhengtong Emperor during the 1449 Tumu Crisis ended them completely. The imperial navy was allowed to fall into disrepair while forced labor constructed the Liaodong palisade, haijin laws intended to protect the coasts from Japanese pirates instead turned many into smugglers and pirates themselves. The growth of Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch trade created new demand for Chinese products and produced an influx of Japanese. This abundance of specie remonetized the Ming economy, whose money had suffered repeated hyperinflation and was no longer trusted. While traditional Confucians opposed such a prominent role for commerce and the newly rich it created, combined with crop failure, floods, and epidemic, the dynasty collapsed before the rebel leader Li Zicheng, who was defeated by the Manchu-led Eight Banner armies who founded the Qing dynasty. The Mongol-led Yuan dynasty ruled before the establishment of the Ming dynasty, consequently, agriculture and the economy were in shambles, and rebellion broke out among the hundreds of thousands of peasants called upon to work on repairing the dykes of the Yellow River. A number of Han Chinese groups revolted, including the Red Turbans in 1351, the Red Turbans were affiliated with the White Lotus, a Buddhist secret society. Zhu Yuanzhang was a peasant and Buddhist monk who joined the Red Turbans in 1352. In 1356, Zhus rebel force captured the city of Nanjing, with the Yuan dynasty crumbling, competing rebel groups began fighting for control of the country and thus the right to establish a new dynasty. In 1363, Zhu Yuanzhang eliminated his archrival and leader of the rebel Han faction, Chen Youliang, in the Battle of Lake Poyang, arguably the largest naval battle in history. Known for its ambitious use of ships, Zhus force of 200,000 Ming sailors were able to defeat a Han rebel force over triple their size, claimed to be 650. The victory destroyed the last opposing rebel faction, leaving Zhu Yuanzhang in uncontested control of the bountiful Yangtze River Valley, Zhu Yuanzhang took Hongwu, or Vastly Martial, as his era name. Hongwu made an effort to rebuild state infrastructure. He built a 48 km long wall around Nanjing, as well as new palaces, Hongwu organized a military system known as the weisuo, which was similar to the fubing system of the Tang dynasty. With a growing suspicion of his ministers and subjects, Hongwu established the Jinyiwei, some 100,000 people were executed in a series of purges during his rule
7.
Qing dynasty
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It was preceded by the Ming dynasty and succeeded by the Republic of China. The Qing multi-cultural empire lasted almost three centuries and formed the base for the modern Chinese state. The dynasty was founded by the Jurchen Aisin Gioro clan in Manchuria, in the late sixteenth century, Nurhaci, originally a Ming vassal, began organizing Banners, military-social units that included Jurchen, Han Chinese, and Mongol elements. Nurhaci formed the Jurchen clans into an entity, which he renamed as the Manchus. By 1636, his son Hong Taiji began driving Ming forces out of Liaodong and declared a new dynasty, in 1644, peasant rebels led by Li Zicheng conquered the Ming capital, Beijing. The Ten Great Campaigns of the Qianlong Emperor from the 1750s to the 1790s extended Qing control into Central Asia, the early rulers maintained their Manchu ways, and while their title was Emperor, they used khan to the Mongols and they were patrons of Tibetan Buddhism. They governed using Confucian styles and institutions of government and retained the imperial examinations to recruit Han Chinese to work under or in parallel with Manchus. They also adapted the ideals of the system in dealing with neighboring territories. The Qianlong reign saw the apogee and initial decline in prosperity. The population rose to some 400 million, but taxes and government revenues were fixed at a low rate, corruption set in, rebels tested government legitimacy, and ruling elites did not change their mindsets in the face of changes in the world system. Following the Opium War, European powers imposed unequal treaties, free trade, the Taiping Rebellion and the Dungan Revolt in Central Asia led to the deaths of some 20 million people, most of them due to famines caused by war. In spite of disasters, in the Tongzhi Restoration of the 1860s, Han Chinese elites rallied to the defense of the Confucian order. The initial gains in the Self-Strengthening Movement were destroyed in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895, in which the Qing lost its influence over Korea, New Armies were organized, but the ambitious Hundred Days Reform of 1898 was turned back by Empress Dowager Cixi, a conservative leader. Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries competed with reformist monarchists such as Kang Youwei, after the deaths of Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor in 1908, the hardline Manchu court alienated reformers and local elites alike. The Wuchang Uprising on October 11,1911, led to the Xinhai Revolution, General Yuan Shikai negotiated the abdication of Puyi, the last emperor, on February 12,1912. Nurhaci declared himself the Bright Khan of the Later Jin state in both of the 12–13th century Jurchen Jin dynasty and of his Aisin Gioro clan. His son Hong Taiji renamed the dynasty Great Qing in 1636, there are competing explanations on the meaning of Qīng. The character Qīng is composed of water and azure, both associated with the water element and this association would justify the Qing conquest as defeat of fire by water
8.
Korean Empire
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The Korean Empire was proclaimed in October 1897, after the Donghak Peasant Revolution of 1894 to 1895 and Gabo Reforms that swept the country from 1894 to 1896. It lasted until the annexation of Korea by Japan in August 1910, Emperor Gojong oversaw the partial modernization of the military, economy, land system, education system, and various industries. Korea in the Joseon Dynasty had been a client kingdom of China in the Qing Dynasty. Towards the end of the 19th century, influence over Korea was increasingly an area of conflict between the Qing and Japan, with its newfound preeminence over the waning and weak Qing dynasty, Japan had delegates negotiate the Treaty of Shimonoseki with the Qing dynasty. Through signing the treaty, a designed to prevent the southern expansion of Russia, Japan wrested control over the Liaodong Peninsula from Qing. Queen Min, the consort of King Gojong, also recognized this change, Queen Min began to emerge as a key figure in higher-level Korean counteraction against Japanese influence. With the assassination of his wife Queen Min, King Gojong, during the time from Queen Mins death to the kings return from Russian protection, Korea underwent another major upheaval both at home and abroad. By 1894, new laws passed by progressives and reformers in the royal cabinet forced through long-desired reforms aimed at revamping Koreas antiquated society and these laws were called the Gabo Reform, referring to the year in which they began. Meanwhile, the new reforms aimed at modernizing Korean society soon attracted controversy from within and this led to the uprising of the Eulmi temporary armies aimed at avenging the assassination of Queen Min. In 1897, King Gojong, yielding to rising pressure from overseas and the demands of the Independence Association-led public opinion, returned to Gyŏngungung. Gojong became the Gwangmu Emperor, the first imperial head of state and this marked the complete end of the old world order and traditional amicable dependency system in the Far East. The significance of the declaration of an Empire, in the Korean understanding of the situation was to declare Koreas independence from others, historically, the usage of Emperor was reserved only for the Chinese Emperor, the Son of Heaven. Korean dynasties had acknowledged themselves as vassals of the Chinese, and had refrained from declaring their equality with China. When Japan experienced the Meiji Restoration, the Emperor of Japan was declared the source of sovereignty in the Japanese government, upon receiving news of the Meiji restoration from Japan, the Korean government refused to acknowledge the change. Not only did it challenge the primacy of the Chinese emperor as the suzerains of Korea but Japans address also addressed Korea as an equal, the change in title for Korea to empire only became possible after the Sino-Japanese war. A group of Korean officials and intellectuals felt great necessity of the reform of the country. More and more intellectuals were informed of the Western civilization and became conscious of the powerful nations of Europe. Later, the progressives within the group initiated The Gabo Reform in 1894, American missionaries, who had close relationships with the Korean royal court, also helped the propagation of Western culture
9.
Human
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Modern humans are the only extant members of Hominina tribe, a branch of the tribe Hominini belonging to the family of great apes. Several of these hominins used fire, occupied much of Eurasia and they began to exhibit evidence of behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago. In several waves of migration, anatomically modern humans ventured out of Africa, the spread of humans and their large and increasing population has had a profound impact on large areas of the environment and millions of native species worldwide. Humans are uniquely adept at utilizing systems of communication for self-expression and the exchange of ideas. Humans create complex structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families. Social interactions between humans have established a wide variety of values, social norms, and rituals. These human societies subsequently expanded in size, establishing various forms of government, religion, today the global human population is estimated by the United Nations to be near 7.5 billion. In common usage, the word generally refers to the only extant species of the genus Homo—anatomically and behaviorally modern Homo sapiens. In scientific terms, the meanings of hominid and hominin have changed during the recent decades with advances in the discovery, there is also a distinction between anatomically modern humans and Archaic Homo sapiens, the earliest fossil members of the species. The English adjective human is a Middle English loanword from Old French humain, ultimately from Latin hūmānus, the words use as a noun dates to the 16th century. The native English term man can refer to the species generally, the species binomial Homo sapiens was coined by Carl Linnaeus in his 18th century work Systema Naturae. The generic name Homo is a learned 18th century derivation from Latin homō man, the species-name sapiens means wise or sapient. Note that the Latin word homo refers to humans of either gender, the genus Homo evolved and diverged from other hominins in Africa, after the human clade split from the chimpanzee lineage of the hominids branch of the primates. The closest living relatives of humans are chimpanzees and gorillas, with the sequencing of both the human and chimpanzee genome, current estimates of similarity between human and chimpanzee DNA sequences range between 95% and 99%. The gibbons and orangutans were the first groups to split from the leading to the humans. The splitting date between human and chimpanzee lineages is placed around 4–8 million years ago during the late Miocene epoch, during this split, chromosome 2 was formed from two other chromosomes, leaving humans with only 23 pairs of chromosomes, compared to 24 for the other apes. There is little evidence for the divergence of the gorilla, chimpanzee. Each of these species has been argued to be an ancestor of later hominins
