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

Paul (HARVARD UNIVERSITY) Cohen

ISBN 10: 0231106505 / ISBN 13: 9780231106504

Published by Columbia University Press Jan 1997, 1997

About this Item

Neuware - Cohen pares the overlays of historical accounts of the Boxers down to their constituent parts as myth and lived experience. The book is eminently readable, ideally suited both to the general reader and to the college teacher seeking to deepen students'understanding of the currents in modern Chinese history. -- Jonathan Spence, Yale University.

Seller Inventory # 9780231106504

Bibliographic Details

• Title: History in Three Keys : The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth
• Publisher: Columbia University Press Jan 1997
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231106505
• ISBN 13: 9780231106504
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 229W x 152H x 0D millimeters 229 millimeters width by 152 millimeters height by 0 millimeters depth

About this title

Synopsis

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 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).