By John King Fairbank, Merle Goldman
John King Fairbank used to be the West's doyen on China, and this ebook is the entire and ultimate expression of his lifelong engagement with this mammoth historic civilization. It continues to be a masterwork with out parallel. the prestigious historian Merle Goldman brings the publication modern, protecting reforms within the post-Mao interval during the early years of the twenty-first century, together with the management of Hu Jintao. She additionally offers an epilogue discussing the adjustments in modern China that may form the kingdom within the years yet to come.
From Library Journal
No American pupil of China used to be greater recognized to the general public and academia alike than Fairbank. This historical past of China, accomplished days ahead of his demise in 1991, is a becoming ultimate paintings. In overlaying the breadth of the country's background, from the earliest archaeological documents to the current, the writer is sometimes brief on information, yet lay readers and undergraduate scholars will relish the perceptive research and clarification all through, resulting in a greater figuring out of this advanced state, its humans, and its value on this planet. moreover, Fairbank's command of contemporary examine, besides an exceptional bibliography, will entice the scholarly viewers. hugely steered.
About the Authors
John King Fairbank used to be Francis Lee Higginson Professor of historical past and Director of the East Asian study middle at Harvard University.
Merle Goldman is Professor of background, Emerita, at Boston college and affiliate of the loo okay. Fairbank middle for East Asian study, Harvard collage.
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Additional resources for China: A New History (2nd Enlarged Edition)
Example text
Status within the family was codified in the famous “three bonds” emphasized by the Confucian philosophers: the bond of loyalty on the part of subject to ruler (minister to prince), of filial obedience on the part of son to father (children to parents), and of chastity on the part of wives but not of husbands. To an egalitarian Westerner the most striking thing about this doctrine is that two of the three relationships were within the family, and all were between superior and subordinate. The relationship of mother and son, which in Western life often allows matriarchal domination, was not stressed in theory, though it was naturally important in fact.
Heaven nourishes and destroys” is an ancient saying. On the broad stretches of the plain the patient Chinese farmers were at the mercy of the weather, dependent upon Heaven’s gift of sun and rain. They were forced to accept natural calamity in the form of drought, flood, pestilence, and famine. This is in striking contrast to the lot of Europeans, who lived in a land of variegated topography. People in the West, either on the Mediterranean or on the European continent, were never far from a water supply and could usually supplement agriculture by hunting or fishing, provided they exercised initiative.
A core area is naturally more powerful in human affairs, while a periphery becomes adjusted to its subordinate or marginal role. For example, deforestation, cultivation, and soil erosion in a periphery will tend to send useful alluvium down into a core, heightening their difference in fertility. The precise limits and interrelationships of these analytically defined macroregions will be refined and improved upon. They are useful to historians because they reflect economic reality more accurately than the political provinces.