Marriages of the ruling elite (Melvin P Thatcher, 1991) - Weekend Classics

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Bengali Podcast Start at 00:20:43


Hindi Podcast Start at 00:28:59


Simplified Chinese Podcast Start at 00:36:59





🎧 Welcome to Revise and Resubmit – and today’s ✨ Weekend Classics ✨.
Here, history doesn’t whisper politely.
It knocks. 📯
It sits you down.
It looks you in the eye… and says, “Listen.” 👀


Today, we step into 770 BC – silk robes brushing polished floors, power sealed not with ink, but with vows. 💍
This is the Spring and Autumn Period — a stage where princes and princesses weren’t just children of privilege... they were tokens in the grand game of states.


In "Marriages of the Ruling Elite in the Spring and Autumn Period", Dr. Melvin P. Thatcher leads us through 150 recorded unions — but his gaze lingers on the 126 that truly mattered: the political, the strategic, the elite.
Marriages between equals.
Marriages that braided thrones.
Marriages that cemented dominance… and sometimes, destroyed it. ⚔️


But here’s the twist.
This isn’t just a scholar writing about the distant past.
This is a man who has spent his life rescuing history from oblivion. 💾📖


Almost 80 and still presenting.
Collector of the largest body of Chinese genealogical records in the world — a treasure saved from fading under cultural and political change.
Organizer of door-to-door record gathering in Taiwan.
Digitizer of heritage for the diaspora.
A researcher who’s shown that humanists don’t just study history… they protect it. 🕯️


And so, when Dr. Thatcher writes about royal marriages — the alliances, the rules, the unyielding hierarchies — he brings the weight of someone who understands that history is more than dates… it’s identity.


💭 Which leaves us wondering:
If power in the Spring and Autumn Period flowed through marriage… what hidden channels carry it today? 🤔


🙏 Our thanks to Dr. Melvin P. Thatcher, editors Rubie S. Watson and Patricia Buckley Ebrey, and to The Regents of the University of California, publishers of this monumental chapter back in April 1991.


📢 Don’t forget — hit that subscribe button to Revise and Resubmit on Spotify, catch videos on our 📺 Weekend Researcher YouTube channel, and hear us anytime on Amazon Prime and Apple Podcasts.
History’s always waiting. You just have to press play. ▶️





Reference


Thatcher, M. P. (1991). Marriages of the ruling elite in the spring and autumn period. Marriage and inequality in Chinese society, 25-57. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/97...






Watson, Rubie, and Patricia Buckley Ebrey (eds), Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society (Oakland, CA, 1991; online edn, California Scholarship Online, 24 May 2012), https://doi.org/10.1525/california/97..., accessed 15 Aug. 2025.






Open Access Book Chapter link https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpresse...






Linkedin Notes by Professor Jason B Thatcher on his father   / jason-thatcher-0329764_academiclife-academ...  


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