From the Opium War to the May Fourth Movement: Volume 2 - Softcover

Sheng, Hu

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0835121615 ISBN 13: 9780835121613

Publisher: China Books & Periodicals

Synopsis

From the Opium War to the May Fourth Movement, a major work by Hu Sheng, is the fruit of years of research on modern Chinese history.

The book is written in five parts, with 27 chapters in all, and carries a preface. The author analyzes modern Chinese history in terms of three waves of revolution. In Part I, he writes about the Opium War and the Taiping Peasant Revolution, the first wave of revolution; in Part II, about the formation of a semicolonial and semifeudal regime, which was ultimately to lead to a new wave of revolution; in Part III, about the Reform Movement of 1898 and the Yi He Tuan (Boxer) Movement, which was the second wave of revolution; in Part IV, about the Bourgeois Revolution of 1911, the third wave of revolution; and in Part V, about the transition toward the New-Democratic Revolution that led China out of darkness.

Using primary sources, this book analyzes the key events in modern Chinese history, and reflects the Chinese people's struggle against foreign aggressors and their own feudal rulers as they fought for national independence, democracy and freedom from 1840 to 1919.

Following his earlier work Imperialism and Chinese Politics, this book is yet another contribution by Hu Sheng to the study of modem Chinese history.

About this title

From the Publisher

This book discusses one of the basic questions of modern Chinese political and revolutionary history - the political relationship between the imperialist powers, particularly the American imperialists, and semicolonial China. Based on extensive historical research of the period between the Opium War (1840-42) and the First Revolutionary Civil War (1924-27), it analyzes how the imperialists sought and created political leverage in China, how the reactionary Chinese rulers and the Chinese people reacted differently in the face of these foreign pressures, and how the illusions of reformist factions hindered the Chinese people's revolutionary cause.

This book not only describes the imperialist powers' political invasions of China, but also reflects the Chinese people's fight against these invasions to win national independence, democracy and freedom.

About the Author

The author of this book, Hu Sheng, is a renowned historian of China. He is also the president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Born in January 1918, he ended his regular school education in 1935 after completing one year at university. He went on to become a selftaught writer and historian. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1938. Many of his essays on culture and ideology are collected in the two books Reason and Freedom (1946), and Commentary Under the Jujube Tree (1961). His book Imperialism and Chinese Politics, first published in 1947 and reprinted many times since 1949, has been translated into English and Indonesian and published by the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing.

Edition details

• Publisher: China Books & Periodicals
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0835121615
• ISBN 13: 9780835121613
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 702