Instead of applying Western concepts of historical analysis to China, [Schrecker] seeks to understand modern history, both of China and of the West, through Chinese historiographical categories. The reader will appreciate not only the Chinese historiographical tradition but also the way this tradition enriches one's understanding of world history. An ambitious, much needed study.
Akira Iriye, Harvard University, Past President, American Historical Association
John Schrecker has written a historical narrative certain to be of great value to students of politics and society. It is at once lively and engaging and theoretically sophisticated. By adopting a Chinese perspective and applying it not only to China itself but also to the interventions of the West, Schrecker opens the way for a new comparative history.
Michael Walzer The Institute for Advanced Study Princeton
Within the context of the past two hundred years of Chinese history, John E. Schrecker presents a systematic analysis of two interrelated issues. First, he proposes approaches to conceptualizing and evaluating Chinese history in the era of revolution, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, probing the character and success of that revolution. Second, he investigates how the revolution related to the long and often misunderstood past that preceded it, an especially complex topic because the West and Western ideas have played a crucial role in the Chinese revolutionary process. Schrecker deals with these issues through an extremely original and significant analysis that rests on traditional Chinese social theory, generally from the Confucian tradition, using such thought to understand both Chinese history and Western impacts on it. The volume represents a self-contained introduction to the social, political, and intellectual history of China that will be useful to those unacquainted with China while also offering new perspectives for the specialist.
Organized into two major sections that assess Chinese history before and after 1800, the book begins with a chapter that explores ancient China and the development of Chinese thought, focusing on Confucianism, the concept of datong, and the first junxian state. Subsequent chapters address the later junxian era, the opposition tradition, foreigners, and the West. The first three chapters of Part Two--The Revolution--zero in on rebellion and Western pressures; the fall of the Qing; including the revolution of 1911; disunity; the nationalists; and Communist victory. The final chapter centers on The People's Republic of China from its inception to the present and emphasizes the confusions that have plagued a nation deeply unsure about how to relate to its past. This readable volume will be useful to specialists as the source of a stimulating new approach and as a text in courses in Chinese, comparative and world history, and to the general reader as an excellent way of understanding this complex and crucially important society.
JOHN E. SCHRECKER is Professor of History and Chair of the East Asian Studies Program at Brandeis University. He is also a member of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University. Among other works, he is the author of Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism and the co-author of Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook. In addition to Chinese studies, his particular interest is intercultural and comparative history.
