Revolution and Its Past: Identities and Change in Modern Chinese History

Appropriate as a main text for courses in modern Chinese history, politics, society, and culture; also suitable as a supplementary text for courses in East Asian civilization, world history, and world civilization.

Unlike other texts on modern Chinese history, which tend to be either encyclopedic or too pedantic,Revolution and Its Past : Identities and Change in Modern Chinese History, 3/e,is comprehensive but concise, focused on the most recent scholarship, and written in a style thatengages students from beginning to end. The Third Edition uses the theme of identities--of the nation itself and of the Chinese people--to probe the vast changes that have swept over China from late imperial times to the early twenty-first century. In so doing, it explores the range of identities that China has chosen over time and those that outsiders have attributed to China and its people, showing how, as China rapidly modernizes, the issue of Chinese identity in the modern world looms large.

A study of the history of modern China from about 1780 to the present, Revolution and its Past explores the traditional identities of China under the "dragon," the symbol of traditional Chinese civilization, while examining the fundamental aspects and developments of the Chinese past. Though comprehensive in scope, it has the underlying theme of "identities." Identity is at the heart of history because actions of individuals and states depend largely on how they perceive themselves and how they are perceived by those with whom they interact.

In China's period of slow decline from the late eighteenth century into the early twentieth century and throughout its twentieth century revolution, one of the most important problems facing individual Chinese and China as a nation was choosing appropriate political, social, cultural, and economic identities as contexts and situations changed.

Above all, this is a story of people whose choices propelled modern Chinese history in the various directions it took. It is a dramatic tale, often bloody and violent, alternately soaring with hope and plunging into bleak despair, compelling our interest as the "heirs of the dragon" struggle to find their identity in the modern world.