Details

<p>Notes on Contributors x</p> <p>Acknowledgments xv</p> <p>1 Introduction 1<br /><i>Michael Szonyi</i></p> <p><b>Part I States of the Field 9</b></p> <p>2 How Do We Know What We Know about Chinese History? 11<br /><i>Endymion Wilkinson</i></p> <p>3 Chinese History in China: The State of the Field (1980s–2010s) 28<br /><i>May?]bo Ching</i></p> <p>4 Chinese History in Japan: The State of the Field 44<br /><i>Shiba Yoshinobu</i></p> <p>5 Chinese History in Europe: The State of the Field 53<br /><i>Harriet Zurndorfer</i></p> <p>6 Chinese History in the Era of the China Dream 64<br /><i>Geremie R. Barmé and Michael Szonyi</i></p> <p>7 Chinese History in World History 71<br /><i>Gregory Blue</i></p> <p><b>Part II Chronologies 87</b></p> <p>8 Early China in Eurasian History 89<br /><i>Michael Puett</i></p> <p>9 Was Medieval China Medieval? (Post?]Han to Mid?]Tang) 106<br /><i>Charles Holcombe</i></p> <p>10 A Tang–Song Turning Point 118<br /><i>Nicolas Tackett</i></p> <p>11 Periods of Non-Han Rule 129<br /><i>Michal Biran</i></p> <p>12 Song to Qing: Late Imperial or Early Modern? 143<br /><i>R. Kent Guy</i></p> <p>13 Nineteenth?]Century China: The Evolution of American Historical Approaches 154<br /><i>Paul A. Cohen</i></p> <p>14 Republican History 168<br /><i>Janet Y. Chen</i></p> <p>15 Rethinking the History of Maoist China 179<br /><i>S.A. Smith</i></p> <p>16 The Reform Era as History 191<br /><i>Timothy Cheek</i></p> <p><b>Part III Themes and Approaches 205</b></p> <p>17 Women, Gender, the Family, and Sexuality 207<br /><i>Weijing Lu</i></p> <p>18 History of Premodern Chinese Literature 221<br /><i>Graham Sanders</i></p> <p>19 Modern Chinese Literature 235<br /><i>David Der?]wei Wang</i></p> <p>20 The Environmental History of China: Past, Present, and Future 252<br /><i>Peter C. Perdue</i></p> <p>21 Science, Technology, and Medicine 265<br /><i>Carla Nappi</i></p> <p>22 Legal History 277<br /><i>William P. Alford and Eric T. Schluessel</i></p> <p>23 Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Identity in the Study of Modern China 290<br /><i>Thomas S. Mullaney</i></p> <p>24 The Religious Core of Local Social Organization 304<br /><i>Barend J. ter Haar</i></p> <p>25 Beyond the Great Divergence: Current Scholarship on the Economic History of Premodern China 315<br /><i>Richard von Glahn</i></p> <p>26 Taiwan: Margin, Center, Node 327<br /><i>Shelley Rigger</i></p> <p>27 Chinese Migrations 343<br /><i>Henry S.N. Yu</i></p> <p>28 China in the World: Beyond the Tribute System 360<br /><i>John E. Wills, Jr.</i></p> <p>Glossary of Selected Terms 372</p> <p>References 378</p> <p>Index 437</p>

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

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. <i>A</i> <i>Companion to Chinese History </i>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, <i>A Companion to Chinese History</i> offers illuminating insights into the formidable history of one of the most important and least understood regions of the world.

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