Crash Course Mandate of Heaven Response

               The video covers in all a totally of “2,000 years of Chinese history” and does so through means of over simplification. Our text book breaks things down chronologically and describes them in detail and the order that they happen. This video however starts with a broad idea and gives details in the order that they come up and in order to better explain the broader concept, as an example he makes many Confucius references before actually explaining who Confucius was.  The video begins and explain what a dynasty is and proceeds to explain them in chronological order: Shang, Zhou, Warring states period, Qin, Han, Three kingdoms period, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and finally Qing before the dynastic system was left behind in a revolution. The text book covers much more in depth into each dynasty while this video just gave brief examples of what each is known for. The video, then to explain this long chain of events, describes what the Mandate of heaven was. However the book begins by explaining the mandate of heaven so that the reader has prior knowledge of what and why the dynasties fell and rose as often in history as they did. The video then in explaining the mandate of heaven takes it a step farther than the text book to make the connection that Confucius views helped guide people in their belief in an Emperor’s possession of the mandate of heaven. However the largest and probably most important difference is the way in which the information is presented; while this video may not have “facts” that we haven’t already read in the text book it does help connect some of the dots and explain it in a more modern and relatable way.  It is a god resource to review the basics of Chinese history and to better understand it in a more conversational way as apposed to the formal text book passages.