Dynastic cycle
A model of recurring political change in which a ruling dynasty rises, consolidates authority, declines, and is replaced by another.
Mandate of Heaven: A Chinese political doctrine that made a ruler’s legitimacy conditional on just government and cosmic approval. It supplied a traditional explanation for why a dynasty could lose legitimacy and be replaced.
Sima Qian: A Han-dynasty historian who wrote the Records of the Grand Historian, a foundational work of Chinese historiography. His histories organized earlier reigns into narratives of dynastic rule, virtue, and failure.
Mandate of Heaven in the Ming dynasty: The political use of the Mandate of Heaven to explain Ming rule, crisis, and the dynasty’s end in 1644. Ming historians and later accounts connected rebellion and catastrophe to the loss of dynastic legitimacy.
Historical materialism: A theory that explains historical change through material conditions and conflicts between social classes. It emphasizes economic structures and class struggle rather than recurring dynastic legitimacy.
State capacity: A government’s ability to administer territory, enforce decisions, and raise revenue. Administrative strength helps a new dynasty consolidate rule, while declining capacity can accelerate its breakdown.
Records of the Grand Historian: A history of China from its legendary beginnings through the early Han, written by Sima Qian. Its accounts of rulers and states helped establish the historical tradition in which dynastic change was interpreted.
Fall of the Han dynasty: The collapse of central Han rule in China during the late second and early third centuries CE. It illustrates how court faction, regional militarization, and rebellion could converge in a dynastic breakdown.
Kondratiev wave: A proposed long-term cycle of expansion and contraction in capitalist economies. It is a cyclical model of economic change, not a theory of dynastic succession.
Political legitimacy: The accepted right of a person or institution to exercise political authority. The cycle turns partly on whether subjects and elites continue to accept a dynasty’s right to rule.
Zuo Zhuan: An ancient Chinese historical narrative covering events in the state of Lu from 722 to 468 BCE. It preserves early political narratives linking the conduct of rulers with the fortunes of their states.