Volume 15 of The Cambridge History of China is the second of two volumes dealing with the People's Republic of China since its birth in 1949. The harbingers of the Cultural Revolution were analyzed in Volume 14. Volume 15 traces a course of events still only partially understood by most Chinese. It begins by analyzing the development of Mao's thought since the Communist seizure of power, in an effort to understand why he launched the movement. The contributors grapple with the conflict of evidence between what was said favorably about the Cultural Revolution at the time and the often...

Tun-huang Popular Narratives presents authoritative translations of four vernacular Chinese stories, taken from fragmentary texts usually referred to as pien-wen or 'transformation texts'. Dating from the late T'ang (618 907) and Five Dynasties (907 959) periods, the texts were discovered early last century in a cave at Tun-huang, in Chinese Central Asia. However, written down in an early colloquial language by semi-literate individuals and posing formidable philological problems, the texts have not been studied critically before. Nevertheless they represent the only surviving primary...

This book is a study of the poetry of Huang Zunxian, one of the most famous authors of late nineteenth-century China. The first part consists of a detailed biography outlining Huang's literary and political career. This is followed by a critical discussion of Huang's poetry, including such topics as his theory of literature, his traditional verse, his highly original poetry on foreign lands, his political satire, and his scientific verse. The book concludes with a generous sampling of his poetry in translation.

This book describes how the Chinese government, between about 620 and 850, developed an official organization designed to select, process, and edit material for inclusion in official historical works eventually to be incorporated in an official history of the dynasty. The first part gives a detailed account of the establishment of the official apparatus designed to produce a record of the T'ang dynasty, which would remain standard for more than a millennium, with some analysis of the individuals who served in these offices. The second part gives all available detail about the various works...

Scholars have long recognised that Chinese politics changed fundamentally in 1925, when the radical nationalism of the May Thirtieth Movement took political centre stage. This book explains the connection between the beginning of the Nationalist revolution and the introduction of modern World War I style warfare to China. Its focus is the key year 1924, which saw a regional dispute about the status of Shanghai escalate into a massive civil war. Drawing on a wide range of newly-available archival sources, this book shows how the war of 1924 opened the way for radical nationalism, deeply...

Many have accepted that the Arrow War (1856-60) was caused by an insult to the British flag belonging to the pirate boat Arrow. Dr. Wong argues that Britain's reliance on the opium trade with China played a far greater role in pushing the diplomatic conflict into war. The war was not a simple diplomatic squabble: it involved vital economic interests in British India, which had to be protected at all costs. Dr. Wong offers penetrating insights into theories of imperialism and how they might be reassessed.

The contribution of the overseas Chinese, particularly from Southeast Asia (Nanyang), to China's early modernization constitutes an important and neglected chapter in Chinese history. During the same years which saw the emergence of the Reform and Revolutionary movements, the ruling Manchu government also turned to the overseas Chinese for needed capital and expertise. Exposed to Western values and often successful in capitalist ventures, leading overseas entrepreneurs were in a special position to introduce new concepts into China. Dr Michael R. Godley's study traces the rise of overseas...

This book explains the general intellectual climate of the early Ch'ing period, and the political and cultural characteristics of the Ch'ing regime at the time. Professor Huang brings to life the book's central characters, Li Fu and the three great emperors he served: K'ang-hsi, Yung-cheng, and Chien-lung. Although the author's main concern is to explain the contributions of Li Fu to the Lu-Wang school of Confucianism, he also gives a clear, succinct account of the Lu-Wang and Ch'eng-Chu schools from the twelfth century to the eighteenth.

A thorough analysis of Chang's contribution to the reinvigoration of Confucian thought in eleventh-century China.

The Opium Wars ushered in an era of intensive Western imperialism in China, at a time when the Ch'ing dynasty was already in decline, forcing a small number of Chinese officials to come to the realisation that China must protect itself by adopting the same military technology that had brought it national humiliation. Shen Pao-chen was one such official. Abandoning the comfort of his successful career, Shen devoted his life to building China's first modern naval dockyard and academy. His successes and failures shed new light on the story of China's efforts at modernization - a story that has...