10. China's Han Dynasty - The First Empire in Flames
Fall of Civilizations Podcast
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Suma Chien's History of China
Suma cien wrote his records mostly during the reign of the emperor woo. He presents a typically flattering account of that emperor, acting as a kind of official propaganda. But he was also a shrewd judge of human nature, and employed one interesting trick to allow some criticism of various official personalities to seep through. There's only one chapter of the records that has not survived to this day. It's impossible to know whether sumar chen never wrote this section out of fear of his ruler, or if the emperor read something in those pages that he didn't like and had the document destroyed.
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