Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature and Institutions
2 total works
Scholars have long recognised that Chinese politics changed fundamentally in 1925, when the radical nationalism of the May Thirtieth Movement took political centre stage. This book explains the connection between the beginning of the Nationalist revolution and the introduction of modern World War I style warfare to China. Its focus is the key year 1924, which saw a regional dispute about the status of Shanghai escalate into a massive civil war. Drawing on a wide range of newly-available archival sources, this book shows how the war of 1924 opened the way for radical nationalism, deeply affecting the Chinese economy, society, politics, and foreign relations. Like the author's well-received first book, The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth, this volume moves easily and persuasively from specifics of strategy and politics to the large and abiding issues of Chinese history and culture.
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.