A Companion to Chinese History

With a history as lengthy and complex as China s, it should come as no surprise that the scholarly effort to understand its historical experience has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. A Companion to Chinese History is a comprehensive overview of the latest intellectual developments in the study of China s history from antiquity to the present day. Offering cutting–edge scholarship by top historians from both China and around the globe, essays provide readers with an understanding of the current state of the field of Chinese history, including exciting recent developments, and promising future directions. Initial readings present an overview of Chinese historiography while covering such topics as China s changing position in global and world history, the role of history in contemporary Chinese politics, and the current state of the field from European, Chinese, and Japanese perspectives. The full chronology of China s history is covered next with individual essays often challenging more conventional approaches to the periodization of Chinese history. Thematic approaches to Chinese history are then addressed, with essays touching on such diverse topics as sexuality and gender, literature, environmental history, science and technology, intellectual history, Taiwan, religion, economic and urban history, and many more. Timely and important, A Companion to Chinese History offers illuminating insights into the formidable history of one of the most important and least understood regions of the world. 

Notes on Contributors

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction
Michael Szonyi

Section I: States of the Field

2. How Do We Know What We Know About Chinese History?
Endymion Wilkinson

3. Chinese History in China: The State of the Field (1980s–2010s)
May–bo Ching

4. Chinese History in Japan: The State of the Field
Shiba Yoshinobu

5. Chinese History in Europe: The State of the Field
Harriet Zurndorfer

6. Chinese History in the Era of the China Dream
Geremie R Barmé and Michael Szonyi

7. Chinese History in World History
Gregory Blue

Section II Chronology

8. Early China in Eurasian History
Michael Puett

9. Was Medieval China Medieval? (Post–Han to Mid–Tang)
Charles Holcombe

10. A Tang–Song Turning Point
Nicolas Tacket

11. Periods of Non–Chinese (or Non–Han) Rule
Michal Biran

12. Song to Qing: Late Imperial or Early Modern?
R. Kent Guy

13. Nineteenth–Century China: The Evolution of American Historical Approaches
Paul A. Cohen

14. Republican History
Janet Y. Chen

15. Rethinking the History of Maoist China
S.A. Smith

16. The Reform Era as History
Timothy Cheek

Section III Themes and Approaches

17. Women, Gender, the Family and Sexuality
Weijing Lu

18. History of Premodern Chinese Literature
Graham Sanders

19. Modern Chinese Literature
David Der–wei Wang

20. The Environmental History of China: Past, Present, and Future
Peter C. Perdue

21. Science, Technology, and Medicine
Carla Nappi

22. Legal History
William P. Alford and Eric T. Schluessel

23. Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity in the Study of Modern China
Thomas S. Mullaney

24. The Religious Core of Local Social Organization
Barend ter Haar

25. Beyond the Great Divergence: Current Scholarship on the Economic History of Premodern China
Richard von Glahn

26. Taiwan: Margin, Center, Node
Shelley Rigger

27. Chinese Migrations
Henry S.N. Yu

28. China in the World: Beyond the Tribute System
John E. Wills, Jr.

Glossary

Index

Michael Szonyi is Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and Professor of Chinese History at Harvard University. He is the author of Practicing Kinship: Lineage and Descent in Late Imperial China (2002), Cold War Island: Quemoy on the Front Line (2008; Chinese edition 2016), and the forthcoming Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China: Soldiers and their families in the Ming dynasty