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A Concise History of China |
List Price: $17.95
Your Price: $12.21 |
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Reviews |
Description:
This compact and accessible book successfully condenses four millennia of Chinese history into 300 pages. J.A.G. Roberts of Huddersfield University leads the reader through the chronological framework, adding sufficient detail and anecdote to provide color and texture. His writing is clear and punchy: every sentence counts. The index is thoughtful, the book's 10 maps helpful. Though the emphasis is on political history, economic and social developments are also described; for example, the introduction of a strain of rice from central Vietnam that allowed a significant expansion in population under the Song. The first half of the book takes the story to the beginning of the 19th century; the second half analyzes the modern period in more detail (this is probably a useful division for most readers, though a Chinese historian would have laid more equal emphasis on each dynastic period). The author has incorporated the latest scholarship, such as changing views on the status of women during the Song--their freedoms were not as restricted as was once thought. He uses newly translated Manchu sources to show that Qing successes owed as much to the dynasty's non-Han characteristics as to sinicization--a reversal of conventional wisdom--and approaches the dynamics of China's response to the West from a more Chinese viewpoint than is usual. A Concise History of China is an up-to-date and extremely useful introduction to a highly complex subject. --John Stevenson
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