Inventing China through History

Inventing China through History PDF Author: Q. Edward Wang
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791447321
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
A critical examination of the rise of national history in early-twentieth-century China.

The Invention of China

The Invention of China PDF Author: Bill Hayton
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300234821
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
"[A] smart take on modern Chinese nationalism" (Foreign Policy), this provocative account shows that "China"--and its 5,000 years of unified history--is a national myth, created only a century ago with a political agenda that persists to this day China's current leadership lays claim to a 5,000-year-old civilization, but "China" as a unified country and people, Bill Hayton argues, was created far more recently by a small group of intellectuals. In this compelling account, Hayton shows how China's present-day geopolitical problems--the fates of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and the South China Sea--were born in the struggle to create a modern nation-state. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, reformers and revolutionaries adopted foreign ideas to "invent' a new vision of China. By asserting a particular, politicized version of the past the government bolstered its claim to a vast territory stretching from the Pacific to Central Asia. Ranging across history, nationhood, language, and territory, Hayton shows how the Republic's reworking of its past not only helped it to justify its right to rule a century ago--but continues to motivate and direct policy today.

The Invention of Madness

The Invention of Madness PDF Author: Emily Baum
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022655824X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Throughout most of history, in China the insane were kept within the home and treated by healers who claimed no specialized knowledge of their condition. In the first decade of the twentieth century, however, psychiatric ideas and institutions began to influence longstanding beliefs about the proper treatment for the mentally ill. In The Invention of Madness, Emily Baum traces a genealogy of insanity from the turn of the century to the onset of war with Japan in 1937, revealing the complex and convoluted ways in which “madness” was transformed in the Chinese imagination into “mental illness.” ​ Focusing on typically marginalized historical actors, including municipal functionaries and the urban poor, The Invention of Madness shifts our attention from the elite desire for modern medical care to the ways in which psychiatric discourses were implemented and redeployed in the midst of everyday life. New meanings and practices of madness, Baum argues, were not just imposed on the Beijing public but continuously invented by a range of people in ways that reflected their own needs and interests. Exhaustively researched and theoretically informed, The Invention of Madness is an innovative contribution to medical history, urban studies, and the social history of twentieth-century China.

The Genius of China

The Genius of China PDF Author: Robert K. G. Temple
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780233004006
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
'The Genius of China' is based on the immense erudition and research of the late Dr. Joseph Needham, the world's foremost authority on Chinese science. The key discoveries of the modern world that were made in China are outlined.

China

China PDF Author: Henrietta Harrison
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN: 9780340741344
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
With Chinese nationalism a vital ingredient of both the domestic politics of the People's Republic of China and its international relations, this book explores how China came to be a nation, arguing that from early times China had all the features of a nation state- a common language, culture, and bureaucracy- and that China as it exists today was invented through the construction of a modern state. The book describes the attitudes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese towards identity and ethnicity and how these factors affected the structure of the state. The Chinese efforts to build a modern nation state that could resist the Western imperial powers are also documented as are the efforts in the twentieth century to spread nationalism from the cities into rural China. The book argues that China has not been an exception to the process of the invention of nations. Instead, its differences arise from the complexities of the relationship between nationalism and imperialism. Moreover, the role of imperialism was not limited to Western empires: the Manchu Qing empire played quite as significant a role in the construction of the modern Chinese nation state as did imported European ideologies.

Behind the Gate

Behind the Gate PDF Author: Fabio Lanza
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231526288
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
On May 4, 1919, thousands of students protested the Versailles treaty in Beijing. Seventy years later, another generation demonstrated in Tiananmen Square. Climbing the Monument of the People's Heroes, these protestors stood against a relief of their predecessors, merging with their own mythology while consciously deploying their activism. Through an investigation of twentieth-century Chinese student protest, Fabio Lanza considers the marriage of the cultural and the political, the intellectual and the quotidian, that occurred during the May Fourth movement, along with its rearticulation in subsequent protest. He ultimately explores the political category of the "student" and its making in the twentieth century. Lanza returns to the May Fourth period (1917-1923) and the rise of student activism in and around Beijing University. He revisits reform in pedagogical and learning routines, changes in daily campus life, the fluid relationship between the city and its residents, and the actions of allegedly cultural student organizations. Through a careful analysis of everyday life and urban space, Lanza radically reconceptualizes the emergence of political subjectivities (categories such as "worker," "activist," and "student") and how they anchor and inform political action. He accounts for the elements that drew students to Tiananmen and the formation of the student as an enduring political category. His research underscores how, during a time of crisis, the lived realities of university and student became unsettled in Beijing, and how political militancy in China arose only when the boundaries of identification were challenged.

Ancient Chinese Inventions

Ancient Chinese Inventions PDF Author: Yinke Deng
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521186927
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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Book Description
Ancient Chinese Inventions provides an illustrated introduction to the numerous scientific and technological inventions to which China can lay claim.

Inventing China through History

Inventing China through History PDF Author: Q. Edward Wang
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791447314
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
A critical examination of the rise of national history in early-twentieth-century China.

John Dewey in China

John Dewey in China PDF Author: Jessica Ching-Sze Wang
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791479544
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Combining biography with philosophy, this book explores John Dewey's two-year trip to China (1919–1921) and its legacy for him as a teacher and a learner. Jessica Ching-Sze Wang looks at how Dewey was received in China, what he learned, and how he was changed as a result. She examines the intriguing dynamics shaping China's reactions to Dewey and Dewey's interpretations of China, and details the evolving process in which Dewey came to understand China on its own terms, rather than from Eurocentric perspectives. Tracing China's influence on Dewey, Wang considers how his visit contributed to the subsequent development of his social and political philosophy. China provided a unique vantage point for Dewey to observe international politics, which led him to reconsider the meaning of internationalism. Also, his exposure to Chinese communal culture enabled him to reject the Western preoccupation with democracy in politics and to emphasize democracy as all-encompassing culture. Finally, Wang discusses how Dewey's own observations and appraisals of Chinese society can give credence to the notion of Confucian democracy for China.

The Tyranny of History

The Tyranny of History PDF Author: William John Francis Jenner
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
The author examines China's political, economic and social structures which have resulted in a culture that has stifled creative thinking - He argues that China has been both held together and held back by its extreme deference to history - Boxer movement - Cultural Revolution - Great Leap Forward.