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Author: Joanna Waley-Cohen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2000-04-17
Total Pages: 331
ISBN-13: 0393320510
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A surprising survey of cosmopolitan China, a civilization actively engaged with other cultures and societies.
Author: Odd Arne Westad
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2012-08-28
Total Pages: 536
ISBN-13: 0465029361
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →As the twenty-first century dawns, China stands at a crossroads. The largest and most populous country on earth and currently the world's second biggest economy, China has recently reclaimed its historic place at the center of global affairs after decades of internal chaos and disastrous foreign relations. But even as China tentatively reengages with the outside world, the contradictions of its development risks pushing it back into an era of insularity and instability -- a regression that, as China's recent history shows, would have serious implications for all other nations. In Restless Empire, award-winning historian Odd Arne Westad traces China's complex foreign affairs over the past 250 years, identifying the forces that will determine the country's path in the decades to come. Since the height of the Qing Empire in the eighteenth century, China's interactions -- and confrontations -- with foreign powers have caused its worldview to fluctuate wildly between extremes of dominance and subjugation, emulation and defiance. From the invasion of Burma in the 1760s to the Boxer Rebellion in the early 20th century to the 2001 standoff over a downed U.S. spy plane, many of these encounters have left Chinese with a lingering sense of humiliation and resentment, and inflamed their notions of justice, hierarchy, and Chinese centrality in world affairs. Recently, China's rising influence on the world stage has shown what the country stands to gain from international cooperation and openness. But as Westad shows, the nation's success will ultimately hinge on its ability to engage with potential international partners while simultaneously safeguarding its own strength and stability. An in-depth study by one of our most respected authorities on international relations and contemporary East Asian history, Restless Empire is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the recent past and probable future of this dynamic and complex nation.
Author: Peter C Perdue
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2009-06-30
Total Pages: 748
ISBN-13: 0674042026
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →From about 1600 to 1800, the Qing empire of China expanded to unprecedented size. Through astute diplomacy, economic investment, and a series of ambitious military campaigns into the heart of Central Eurasia, the Manchu rulers defeated the Zunghar Mongols, and brought all of modern Xinjiang and Mongolia under their control, while gaining dominant influence in Tibet. The China we know is a product of these vast conquests. Peter C. Perdue chronicles this little-known story of China's expansion into the northwestern frontier. Unlike previous Chinese dynasties, the Qing achieved lasting domination over the eastern half of the Eurasian continent. Rulers used forcible repression when faced with resistance, but also aimed to win over subject peoples by peaceful means. They invested heavily in the economic and administrative development of the frontier, promoted trade networks, and adapted ceremonies to the distinct regional cultures. Perdue thus illuminates how China came to rule Central Eurasia and how it justifies that control, what holds the Chinese nation together, and how its relations with the Islamic world and Mongolia developed. He offers valuable comparisons to other colonial empires and discusses the legacy left by China's frontier expansion. The Beijing government today faces unrest on its frontiers from peoples who reject its autocratic rule. At the same time, China has launched an ambitious development program in its interior that in many ways echoes the old Qing policies. China Marches West is a tour de force that will fundamentally alter the way we understand Central Eurasia.
Author: Arthur Waldron
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1990-07-27
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 131626453X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This is the first full scholarly study of the Great Wall of China to appear in any language, and it challenges many deeply held ideas about Chinese history. Drawing both on primary sources and on the latest archaeology, the book first demonstrates that the standard account of the Great Wall is untrue and misleading and then presents a convincing new account. It begins by tracing the various walls and systems of frontier defences that existed in early Chinese history, and shows how the greatest of these achieved a mythical symbolic stature which long survived the Wall itself. A striking concluding chapter traces how the true history of the Wall was lost in the early twentieth century as it was gradually transformed into a Chinese national symbol explained through historical myth. The book is an important contribution to the history of China's defensive policy, and her ideological attitudes, and will be of interest both to students of Chinese history and of international relations in the pre-modern world.
Author: Hans van de Ven
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2021-07-26
Total Pages: 464
ISBN-13: 9004482946
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Our understanding of Chinese warfare has suffered from misconstrued contrasts between Chinese and Western ways in warfare. This is one of the arguments convincingly set forth in this important volume on an important subject. It also discusses the essentialising interpretations of Chinese culture focussing on the avoidance of warfare and the civil ethic of its officials. Based on original sources, and dealing with the subject from the earliest dynasty up to modernity, it uniquely combines chapters on strategy and tactics. Both scope and approach make it a must for historians of China. And, with a view to its conclusions on the place of China in the context of global military history, it also provides essential reading for historians of (comparative) warfare in general. The book’s primary goal – to provide a fuller interpretation of the role of the military in Chinese history – has been achieved with ease.
Author: Joanna Waley-Cohen
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Published: 2014-02-27
Total Pages: 176
ISBN-13: 9781780766683
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Was the primary focus of the Qing dynasty really civil rather than military matters? In this ground-breaking book, Joanna Waley-Cohen overturns conventional wisdom to put warfare at the heart of seventeenth and eighteenth century China. She argues that the civil and the military were understood as mutually complementary forces. Emperors underpinned military expansion with a wide-ranging cultural campaign intended to bring military success, and the martial values associated with it, into the mainstream of cultural life. The Culture of War in China is a striking revisionist history that brings new insight into the roots of Chinese nationalism and the modern militarized state.
Author: Rosita Dellios
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-12-13
Total Pages: 173
ISBN-13: 0739168347
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The “rise of China” has become a ubiquitous and often menacing term in global politics. China’s Quest for Global Order: From Peaceful Rise to Harmonious World, by Rosita Dellios, PhD, and R. James Ferguson, PhD, examines how China’s leadership has responded to this depiction and the strategic approaches that have been developed to ameliorate threat perceptions. Rather than simply reassuring others that its “rise” is peaceful, China has taken proactive steps to reduce possible conflicts. Beijing seeks to shape the emerging global governance order as both non-threatening to itself and productive in transnational problem-solving. Borrowing from its own Confucian heritage to promote a harmonious world policy, China’s contribution to world order is likely to be more robust than the “responsible stakeholder” epithet upon which the West has pinned its collective hopes. The book interprets China’s quest for global order from Chinese perspectives, old and new, and provides the relevant philosophical and historical background to engage the reader in the ensuing debates. The authors also contextualize Chinese concepts with those from contemporary international relations, strategic studies and systems thinking. Their resultant contributions to existing analyses include the notion of “Confucian geopolitics” and the interplay between strategic theatres of cooperation and protection.
Author: Xin Fan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2021-02-25
Total Pages: 267
ISBN-13: 1108905307
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Nationalism is pervasive in China today. Yet nationalism is not entrenched in China's intellectual tradition. Over the course of the twentieth century, the combined forces of cultural, social, and political transformations nourished its development, but resistance to it has persisted. Xin Fan examines the ways in which historians working on the world beyond China from within China have attempted to construct narratives that challenge nationalist readings of the Chinese past and the influence that these historians have had on the formation of Chinese identity. He traces the ways in which generations of historians, from the late Qing through the Republican period, through the Mao period to the relative moment of 'opening' in the 1980s, have attempted to break cross-cultural boundaries in writing an alternative to the national narrative.
Author: Patricia Buckley Ebrey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2022-08-11
Total Pages: 645
ISBN-13: 1009175580
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →The Cambridge Illustrated History of China is an illuminating account of the full sweep of Chinese civilisation – from prehistoric times to the intellectual ferment of the Warring States Period, through the rise and fall of the imperial dynasties, to the modern communist state. Written by a leading scholar and lavishly illustrated, its narrative draws together everything from the influence of key intellectual figures, to political innovations, art and material culture, family and religious life, not to mention wars and modern conflicts. This third revised edition includes new archaeological discoveries and gives fuller treatment of environmental history and Chinese interaction with the wider world, placing China in global context. The Qing dynasty is now covered in two chapters, while the final chapter brings the story into the twenty-first century, covering the transformation of China into one of the world's leading economies and the challenges it faces. Lively and highly visual, this book will be appreciated by anyone interested in Chinese history.
Author: Martin Jacques
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2009-11-12
Total Pages: 631
ISBN-13: 1101151455
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Greatly revised and expanded, with a new afterword, this update to Martin Jacques’s global bestseller is an essential guide to understanding a world increasingly shaped by Chinese power Soon, China will rule the world. But in doing so, it will not become more Western. Since the first publication of When China Rules the World, the landscape of world power has shifted dramatically. In the three years since the first edition was published, When China Rules the World has proved to be a remarkably prescient book, transforming the nature of the debate on China. Now, in this greatly expanded and fully updated edition, boasting nearly 300 pages of new material, and backed up by the latest statistical data, Martin Jacques renews his assault on conventional thinking about China’s ascendancy, showing how its impact will be as much political and cultural as economic, changing the world as we know it. First published in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim - and controversy - When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order has sold a quarter of a million copies, been translated into eleven languages, nominated for two major literary awards, and is the subject of an immensely popular TED talk.
