Process Paper
Our project began with a brainstorming of possible topics. As we looked through various cultures across history, boiled it down to the Hebrews and the Chinese. When we decided on Chinese, we initially wanted to conduct our project on all of China’s history, but shortened it to the dynastic period to focus in more on a topic. This proved effective as the dynastic history of China is a long one.
In terms of conducting research, we decided that we would need to discuss each dynasty relatively separately, as their cultures were generally unique. After we had separated our individual topics, we began to look at secondary sources for the general history of each dynasty beginning with the Shang. We also collected information on specific people from the dynasties who had made great impacts on Chinese history, such as Confucius and Kublai Khan.
When we were still conducting research, we had already decided that our project would be in the website format. This allowed us to easily work on it efficiently without necessarily having to be in the same place, as well as easy usage of imagery and multimedia, not to mention citing our sources. Our methodology for creating the website was simple in that we expected to have a page for generally every main dynasty, which in part we did, and put each of those pages into larger categories based on the specific era each belonged to i.e., Early China, The Spark of Imperialism, and Becoming a World Power. Once this was established, we easily developed each page according to our information and mixed in appropriate multimedia such as photography, paintings, etc. This, we feel, resulted in a balanced and professional looking website.
Our topic, China through the Dynasties, relates to the NHD topic Rights and Responsibilities because our website specifically focuses on the varying aspects of each dynasty in terms of the people who lived in them, referring to both the civilians and the emperor. Throughout the course of Chinese history during the dynastic period, the people of each dynasty worked accordingly to keep their empire. As government slowly developed, the people gained more and more rights, but sometimes the emperors inhibited those rights, much like the case of Qin Shi Huangdi, who burned books he disagreed with and had the scholars teaching and writing them executed. Much of the time, though, the empire thrived in peace when the emperor kept his people happy and protected and the people obeyed their emperor, like good Confucianism, which was their responsibility. By the time of the Qing dynasty, however, the Chinese public had been growing angry by their persecution at the hands of their rulers, namely the Manchus. This led to the rebellion of 1911 and a reform of the government into a republic that preceded the People’s Republic of China known today. But the impact of Chinese imperialism lasts even today. While the people in China today struggle, they can always remember the days of imperialism.
Word Count: 498
In terms of conducting research, we decided that we would need to discuss each dynasty relatively separately, as their cultures were generally unique. After we had separated our individual topics, we began to look at secondary sources for the general history of each dynasty beginning with the Shang. We also collected information on specific people from the dynasties who had made great impacts on Chinese history, such as Confucius and Kublai Khan.
When we were still conducting research, we had already decided that our project would be in the website format. This allowed us to easily work on it efficiently without necessarily having to be in the same place, as well as easy usage of imagery and multimedia, not to mention citing our sources. Our methodology for creating the website was simple in that we expected to have a page for generally every main dynasty, which in part we did, and put each of those pages into larger categories based on the specific era each belonged to i.e., Early China, The Spark of Imperialism, and Becoming a World Power. Once this was established, we easily developed each page according to our information and mixed in appropriate multimedia such as photography, paintings, etc. This, we feel, resulted in a balanced and professional looking website.
Our topic, China through the Dynasties, relates to the NHD topic Rights and Responsibilities because our website specifically focuses on the varying aspects of each dynasty in terms of the people who lived in them, referring to both the civilians and the emperor. Throughout the course of Chinese history during the dynastic period, the people of each dynasty worked accordingly to keep their empire. As government slowly developed, the people gained more and more rights, but sometimes the emperors inhibited those rights, much like the case of Qin Shi Huangdi, who burned books he disagreed with and had the scholars teaching and writing them executed. Much of the time, though, the empire thrived in peace when the emperor kept his people happy and protected and the people obeyed their emperor, like good Confucianism, which was their responsibility. By the time of the Qing dynasty, however, the Chinese public had been growing angry by their persecution at the hands of their rulers, namely the Manchus. This led to the rebellion of 1911 and a reform of the government into a republic that preceded the People’s Republic of China known today. But the impact of Chinese imperialism lasts even today. While the people in China today struggle, they can always remember the days of imperialism.
Word Count: 498