History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth - Softcover

Paul A. Cohen

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9780231106511: History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0231106513 ISBN 13: 9780231106511
Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1998

Synopsis

A comprehensive look at the Boxer Rebellion of 1898-1900, a bloody uprising in north China against native Christians and foreign missionaries.

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About the Author

Paul A. Cohen is Edith Stix Wasserman Professor of Asian Studies and History at Wellesley College and an associate at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University. His publications include the award-winning Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (Columbia).

From the Back Cover

Historical reconstruction is in constant tension with two other more pervasive and influential ways of "knowing" the past - experience and myth. In this long-awaited book, Paul Cohen uses the Boxer uprising of 1898-1900 - a major antiforeign explosion and watershed event in Chinese history - as a vehicle for the skillful illumination of these tensions. History in Three Keys juxtaposes the accounts of historians with those of participants and witnesses and sets these perspectives against the range of popular myths that were fashioned about the Boxers. The first part of the book tells the story of the Boxer uprising as reconstructed by historians. Part Two explores the thought, feelings, and behavior of the direct participants in the Boxer experience, individuals who, without a preconceived idea of the entire event, understood what was happening to them in a manner fundamentally different from historians. Finally, in Part Three, Cohen examines the myths surrounding the uprising in twentieth-century China - and, to a lesser extent, the West - as symbolic representations designed less to elucidate the Boxer past than to draw energy from it in the present.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Publisher
Columbia University Press
Publication date
1998
Language
English
ISBN 10 
0231106513
ISBN 13 
9780231106511
Binding
Paperback
Number of pages
428
Rating
  • 3.97 out of 5 stars
    328 ratings by Goodreads

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780231106504: History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0231106505 ISBN 13:  9780231106504
Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1998
Hardcover