Yuri Pines, "China's Aristocratic Age: Politics and Power in the Springs-and-Autumns Period" (Princeton UP, 2026)
The Springs-and-Autumns period is a strange period 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…
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