Reviews and Essays

Studies of Modern Chinese History:
Reviews and Historiographical Essays

The reviews and essays collected here were written by Ph.D. students in the East Asian history program at the University of California, San Diego from 2000 to 2006. Their writings seek not only to shed light on the books from the point of view of present day standards, but, perhaps more importantly, to appreciate the extraordinary contributions made by earlier generations of scholars who labored under a variety of difficult circumstances, some of which were political (Cold War imperatives), and some of which were professional (no research access to the People's Republic). For this reason, the first fifty books reviewed were selected from among the "classics" published between 1951 and 1974.

Paul G. Pickowicz
University of California, San Diego

Book Reviews

Reviews appear in chronological order of the book's publication date.

Annalee Jacoby and Theodore H. White.  Thunder out of China.  New York: William Sloane Associates, 1946.

Derk Bodde.  Peking Diary: A Year of Revolution. New York: Henry Schuman, 1950.

Harold R. Isaacs. The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951 [1938].

Benjamin Schwartz. Chinese Communism and the Rise of Mao, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951

John K. Fairbank. Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842-1854. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1953.

Joseph R. Levenson. Liang Ch'i-ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953.

Ssu-yu Teng and John K. Fairbank. China's Response to the West, a Documentary Survey 1839-1923. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954.

Hu Sheng. Imperialism and Chinese Politics. Foreign Languages Press, 1955.

Adele and Allyn Rickett.  Prisoners of Liberation.  New York: Cameron Associates, 1957.

Mary Clabaugh Wright. The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism: The T'ung-Chih Restoration, 1862-1874. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1957.

Albert Feuerwerker. China's Early Industrialization: Sheng Hsuan-huai (1844-1916) and Mandarin Enterprise. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958.

Joseph R. Levenson. Confucian China and its Modern Fate: The Problem of Intellectual Continuity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958.

Arthur Waley. The Opium War through Chinese Eyes. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958.

Ho Ping-ti. Studies on the Population of China, 1368-1953. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1959.

C. K. Yang. The Chinese Family in the Communist Revolution. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1959.

C. K. Yang. A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition. Cambridge: M. I. T. Press, 1959. 

Chow Tse-tung. The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960.

Allen S. Whiting.  China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision to Enter the Korean War.  New York: MacMillan, 1960.

Robert Jay Lifton. Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of "Brainwashing" in China. W.W. Norton and Company, 1961.

Chalmers A. Johnson. Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China 1937-1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962.

A. Doak Barnett.  China on the Eve of Communist Takeover.  New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1963.

Paul A. Cohen. China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860-1870. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963.

Masataka Banno. China and the West, 1858-1861: The Origins of the Tsungli Yamen. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964.

A. Doak Barnett.  Communist China:  The Early Years, 1949-55.  New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964.

Chang Hsin-pao. Commissioner Lin and the Opium War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964.

Benjamin Schwartz. In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964.

William Hinton. Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966.

John Israel. Student Nationalism in China 1927-1937. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966.

Stuart Schram. Mao Tse-tung. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966.

James E. Sheridan. Chinese Warlord: The Career of Feng Yu-hsiang. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966.

Frederic Wakeman, Jr. Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.

Lloyd Eastman. Throne and Mandarins: China's Search For A Policy During The Sino-French Controversy, 1880-1885. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Maurice Meisner. Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Lyman P.Van Slyke. Enemies and Friends: The United Front in Chinese Communist History. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967.

Ralph C. Croizier. Traditional Medicine in Modern China: Science, Nationalism and the Tensions of Cultural Change. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968.

Albert Feuerwerker, ed. History in Communist China. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1968.

Tsi-an Hsia. The Gate of Darkness: Studies on the Leftist Literary Movement in China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968.

Harold Schiffrin. Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.

Franz Schurmann. Ideology and Organization in Communist China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968.

Benjamin I. Schwartz. Communism and China: Ideology in Flux. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968.

Mary Clabaugh Wright, ed. China in Revolution: The First Phase 1900-1913. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968.

Dwight Perkins. Agricultural Development in China, 1368-1968. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969.

Stuart R. Schram. The Political Thought of Mao Tse-tung. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969.

Jonathan Spence. To Change China: Western Advisors in China, 1620-1960. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969.

James C. Thomson. While China Faced West: American Reformers in Nationalist China, 1928-1937. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969.

Ezra F. Vogel. Canton under Communism: Programs and Politics in a Provincial Capital, 1949-1968. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969.

Charlotte Furth. Ting Wen-chiang: Science and China's New Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.

Jerome B. Grieder. Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese Revolution, 1917-1937. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.

Philip A. Kuhn. Rebellion and Its Enemies in Late Imperial China: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796-1864. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.

Ramon H. Myers. The Chinese Peasant Economy: Agricultural Development in Hopei and Shantung, 1890-1949. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.

Mary Rankin. Early Chinese Revolutionaries: Radical Intellectuals in Shanghai and Chekiang, 1902-1911. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971.

John E. Schrecker, Imperialism and Chinese Nationalism: Germany in Shantung, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971.

Mark Selden. The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971.

Jean Chesneaux ed. Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China 1840-1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972.

Hung-mao Tien. Government and Politics in Kuomintang China, 1927-1937. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972.

Leo Ou-fan Lee. The Romantic Generation of Modern Chinese Writers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973.

Paul A. Cohen. Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang T'o and Reform in Late Ching China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.

Lloyd E. Eastman. The Abortive Revolution: China under Nationalist Rule, 1927-1937. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.

Roderick MacFarquhar. The Origins of the Cultural Revolution: Contradictions Among the People 1956-1957. New York: Columbia University Press, 1974.

Don C. Price. Russia and the Roots of the Chinese Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.

Stuart Schram, ed. Chairman Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters: 1956-1971. New York: Pantheon Books, 1974.

Frederic Wakeman, Jr.  The Fall of Imperial China.  New York: The Free Press, 1975.

Charlotte Furth, ed. The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976.

Gavan McCormack.  Chang Tso-lin in Northeast China, 1911-1928: China, Japan, and the Manchurian Idea.  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977.

G.W. Skinner, ed. The City in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977.

Ba Jin. Cold Nights. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978.

Thomas P. Bernstein. Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages: The Transfer of Youth from Urban to Rural China. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978.

Suzanne Pepper. Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945-1949. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.

Elizabeth J. Perry. Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China, 1845-1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980.

Vivienne Shue. Peasant China in Transition: The Dynamics of Development Toward Socialism, 1949-1956. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.

Donald S. Sutton. Provincial Militarism and the Chinese Republic: The Yunnan Army, 1905-25. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1980.

Perry Link. Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Early Twentieth Century Chinese Cities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981.

Maurice Meisner. Marxism, Maoism, and Utopianism: Eight Essays. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.

Kay Ann Johnson.  Women, the Family and Peasant Revolution in China.  Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Roderick MacFarquhar. The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, 2: The Great Leap Forward, 1958-1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.

Lloyd E. Eastman. Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937-1949. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984.

Luke S. K. Kwong.  A Mosaic of the Hundred Days: Personalities, Politics, and Ideas of 1898.  Council on East Asian Studies, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Richard Madsen.  Morality and Power in a Chinese Village.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Philip C.C. Huang.  The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China.  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985.

Emily Honig. Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986.

Leo Ou-fan Lee. Voices from the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

Carl Riskin. China's Political Economy: The Quest for Development Since 1949. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Prasenjit Duara. Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988.

Marie-Claire Bergere. The Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie, 1911-1937. Trans. Janet Lloyd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Roderick MacFarquhar, Timothy Cheek, and Eugene Wu, eds. The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao: from the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.

William T. Rowe. Hankow: Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, 1796-1895. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989.

David Strand. Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

Pamela Crossley. Orphan Warriors: Three Manchu Generations and the End of the Qing World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.

Philip A. Kuhn. Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Parks M. Coble.  Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism, 1931-1937.  Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University Press, 1991.

Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Mark Sheldon, with Kay Ann Johnson. Chinese Village, Socialist State. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.

James M. Polachek. The Inner Opium War. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1992.

Elizabeth J. Perry. Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Julia F. Andrews. Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Ci Jiwei. The Dialectic of the Chinese Revolution: From Utopianism to Hedonism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Chen Xiaomei. Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China. New York: Oxford, 1995.

Frank Dikötter. Sex, Culture, and Modernity in China: Medical Science and the Construction of Sexual Identities in the Early Republican Period. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995.

R. Keith Schoppa. Blood Road: The Mystery of Shen Dingyi in Revolutionary China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Dali L. Yang. Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society, and Institutional Change Since the Great Leap Famine. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Jonathan D. Spence. God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.

Paul A. Cohen. History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Gail Hershatter. Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth Century Shanghai. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Jonathan N. Lipman. Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1997.

Susan Mann.  Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century.  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997.

James A. Millward. Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759-1864.  Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998.

Leo Ou-fan Lee. Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Melissa Macauley. Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Neil J. Diamant. Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949-1968. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Joseph W. Esherick, ed. Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, 1900-1950. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2000.

Kenneth Pomeranz. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000.

Bradly W. Reed. Talons and Teeth: County Clerks and Runners in the Qing Dynasty. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Matthew H. Sommer. Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Chen Jian.  Mao’s China and the Cold War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

Mark C. Elliot.  The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China.  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Ginger Cheng-chi Hsü.  A Bushel of Pearls: Painting for Sale in Eighteenth Century Yangchow. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

William T. Rowe.  Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China.  Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Judith Shapiro.  Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China.  Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Rebecca Karl.  Staging the World : Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.  Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.

Philip A. Kuhn. Origins of the Modern Chinese State. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.

Xiao Hong.  The Field of Life and Death & Tales of Hulan River.  Howard Goldblatt, Trans.  Boston, MA:  Cheng & Tsui Company, 2002.

Andrew D. Morris.  Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China.  Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

Jung Chang and Jon Halliday. Mao: The Unknown Story. London: Jonathan Cape, 2005.

Historiographical Essays

Miriam Gross: The Invention of Modernity:  Chinese Historians Help Tradition Fight Back!

Miriam Gross: Postulating Peasants and Upholding Urbanites: A Reassessment of China’s Rural-Urban Divide

Miriam Gross: Finding Oneself in a Time of Change: New Notions of Selfhood in the Republican Period

Brent Haas: Bleeding the “Red” out of Mao and the (Ivory) White Terror: Popular and Academic Responses to Mao: The Unknown Story

Chris Hess: The Theme of Pragmatism vs. Ideology in Chinese Intellectual History

Dahpon D. Ho: A Warlord by Any Other Name? Writing Chiang Kai-shek in the Historiography of Republican China

Gerry Iguchi: Who Cared About Whether Mao was a Marxist or Not? Liberal Historiography and Chairman Mao

Jeremy Murray: Biography of Place: Local Studies and the Nation-State in Chinese Historiography

Jeremy Murray: China in the International Spotlight: Some Problems in the Analysis of PRC Narratives by Foreign Scholars

Sigrid Schmalzer: The Tragedy of Modern China: Fatalism and Missed Opportunities in the Historiography of Modern China, 1951-1974

Rachel Scollon: Psychology, the Mind, and the Social Organism: the China Field, 1953-1974

E. Elena Songster: China Scholars' Response to Vietnam

Zhou Guanghui: In Search of A New China: State, Society and the Fate of Modern China

 

Late Qing Dynasty

Jeremy Brown: Sex, Status, and the Cult of the Early Modern: New American Works on China’s Eighteenth Century

 

Miriam Gross: A Scholarly Continuum: The Impact of Subject, Space, and Time on Qing Dynasty History Narratives

 

Brent Haas: Coastal China or Inland Empire? Toward a Balance in Qing Frontier Studies

 

Jiangsui He: From Royalist to Localist: Shifting Scholarship on Local Gentry of Late Qing

 

Dahpon D. Ho: Where Do They Not Govern? Women Writers, Yamen Staff, and Litigation Masters in New Qing Historiography

 

Ellen Huang: Beyond State and Society: In Whom Does China Trust?

 

Xiaowei Zheng: Sinicization vs. Manchuness: The Success of Manchu Rule

 

 

China’s Early 1950s

Jeremy Brown: Terrible Honeymoon: Struggling with the Problem of Terror in Early 1950s China

 

Miriam Gross: Shaped by Paradigm: The Effect of Disciplinary Lenses on Analysis of Early 1950s China

 

Brent Haas: The Politics of Permission: Sources and Interpretations in Scholarship on the Early Years of the PRC

 

Jiangsui He: Tradition, Modernity, and Communism: Two Studies on Chinese Peasant-State Relations During 1949-1952

 

Dahpon D. Ho: Myths and Missed Opportunities: The Possibilities of Sino-American Accommodation in Scholarship on Early 1950s China

 

Ellen Huang: The Reality of Ideology: Rethinking the Early Years of PRC Rule

 

Ji Hee Jung: State and Society in Early Socialist Transition

 

Xiaowei Zheng: Revolution and Tradition: The State-Society Relationship in Chinese Industries, 1949-1952

 

 

Research In Progress

Christian A. Hess: Unlikely Spaces of Liberal Hope: Yan Jingyue and the Model Prison in Republican China

 

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