The Red Spears, 1916–1949

The Red Spears, 1916–1949 PDF Author: Hsuan-chi Tai
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472901877
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Before Tai Hsüan-chih’s work on the Red Spear Society, the subject was a little understood movement that seemed of only passing interest to scholars of China—intriguing for its peculiar beliefs and rituals, perhaps, but hardly of central importance to modern Chinese history. Today, however, thanks in no small measure to the pioneering work of Professor Tai, the Red Spears have gained a secure niche in scholarship on modern China. Their numbers (reaching perhaps some three million participants at the height of the movement) and enduring (lasting intermittently for several decades) should stand as reason enough for the recent scholarly attention. But the Red Spears have generated interest for other reasons as well. As research has developed into the history both of China’s traditional rural rebellions and of her Communist revolution has developed over the past few years, the Red Spears have assumed increasing significance. A movement which bore marked similarities to earlier Chinese uprisings (most notably the Boxers), the Red Spears nevertheless operated in a later period of history (right through the middle of the twentieth century) which brought them in direct contact with Communist revolutionaries. An analysis of the Red Spears thus becomes important both for what it can tell us about longstanding patterns of rural rebellion in China, and for what it suggests about the nature of Chinese revolution.

The Red Spears, 1916–1949

The Red Spears, 1916–1949 PDF Author: Hsuan-chi Tai
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472901877
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

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Book Description
Before Tai Hsüan-chih’s work on the Red Spear Society, the subject was a little understood movement that seemed of only passing interest to scholars of China—intriguing for its peculiar beliefs and rituals, perhaps, but hardly of central importance to modern Chinese history. Today, however, thanks in no small measure to the pioneering work of Professor Tai, the Red Spears have gained a secure niche in scholarship on modern China. Their numbers (reaching perhaps some three million participants at the height of the movement) and enduring (lasting intermittently for several decades) should stand as reason enough for the recent scholarly attention. But the Red Spears have generated interest for other reasons as well. As research has developed into the history both of China’s traditional rural rebellions and of her Communist revolution has developed over the past few years, the Red Spears have assumed increasing significance. A movement which bore marked similarities to earlier Chinese uprisings (most notably the Boxers), the Red Spears nevertheless operated in a later period of history (right through the middle of the twentieth century) which brought them in direct contact with Communist revolutionaries. An analysis of the Red Spears thus becomes important both for what it can tell us about longstanding patterns of rural rebellion in China, and for what it suggests about the nature of Chinese revolution.

The Red Spears, 1916-1949

The Red Spears, 1916-1949 PDF Author: Hsuan-chih Tai
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780472127917
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description


Chinese Discourses on the Peasant, 1900-1949

Chinese Discourses on the Peasant, 1900-1949 PDF Author: Xiaorong Han
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791483924
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Shows how Chinese intellectuals with varying politics envisioned the peasantry and its role in changing society during the first half of the twentieth century. Xiaorong Han explores how Chinese intellectuals envisioned the peasantry and its role in changing society during the first half of the twentieth century. Politically motivated intellectuals, both Communist and non-Communist, believed that rural peasants and their villages would be at the heart of change during this long period of national crisis. Nevertheless, intellectuals saw themselves as the true shapers of change who would transform and use the peasantry. Han uses intellectuals’ writings to provide a comprehensive look at their views of the peasantry. He shows how intellectuals with varying politics created images of the peasant—a supposed contemporary image and an ideal image of the peasant transformed for political ends, how intellectuals theorized on the nature of Chinese rural life, and how intellectuals conceived their own relationships with peasants. Xiaorong Han is Assistant Professor of History at Butler University.

Encyclopedia of Chinese History

Encyclopedia of Chinese History PDF Author: Michael Dillon
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317817168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 862

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Book Description
China has become accessible to the west in the last twenty years in a way that was not possible in the previous thirty. The number of westerners travelling to China to study, for business or for tourism has increased dramatically and there has been a corresponding increase in interest in Chinese culture, society and economy and increasing coverage of contemporary China in the media. Our understanding of China’s history has also been evolving. The study of history in the People’s Republic of China during the Mao Zedong period was strictly regulated and primary sources were rarely available to westerners or even to most Chinese historians. Now that the Chinese archives are open to researchers, there is a growing body of academic expertise on history in China that is open to western analysis and historical methods. This has in many ways changed the way that Chinese history, particularly the modern period, is viewed. The Encyclopedia of Chinese History covers the entire span of Chinese history from the period known primarily through archaeology to the present day. Treating Chinese history in the broadest sense, the Encyclopedia includes coverage of the frontier regions of Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet that have played such an important role in the history of China Proper and will also include material on Taiwan, and on the Chinese diaspora. In A-Z format with entries written by experts in the field of Chinese Studies, the Encyclopedia will be an invaluable resource for students of Chinese history, politics and culture.

Carbon Technocracy

Carbon Technocracy PDF Author: Victor Seow
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226826554
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
A forceful reckoning with the relationship between energy and power through the history of what was once East Asia’s largest coal mine. The coal-mining town of Fushun in China’s Northeast is home to a monstrous open pit. First excavated in the early twentieth century, this pit grew like a widening maw over the ensuing decades, as various Chinese and Japanese states endeavored to unearth Fushun’s purportedly “inexhaustible” carbon resources. Today, the depleted mine that remains is a wondrous and terrifying monument to fantasies of a fossil-fueled future and the technologies mobilized in attempts to turn those developmentalist dreams into reality. In Carbon Technocracy, Victor Seow uses the remarkable story of the Fushun colliery to chart how the fossil fuel economy emerged in tandem with the rise of the modern technocratic state. Taking coal as an essential feedstock of national wealth and power, Chinese and Japanese bureaucrats, engineers, and industrialists deployed new technologies like open-pit mining and hydraulic stowage in pursuit of intensive energy extraction. But as much as these mine operators idealized the might of fossil fuel–driven machines, their extractive efforts nevertheless relied heavily on the human labor that those devices were expected to displace. Under the carbon energy regime, countless workers here and elsewhere would be subjected to invasive techniques of labor control, ever-escalating output targets, and the dangers of an increasingly exploited earth. Although Fushun is no longer the coal capital it once was, the pattern of aggressive fossil-fueled development that led to its ascent endures. As we confront a planetary crisis precipitated by our extravagant consumption of carbon, it holds urgent lessons. This is a groundbreaking exploration of how the mutual production of energy and power came to define industrial modernity and the wider world that carbon made.

Mountain Fires

Mountain Fires PDF Author: Gregor Benton
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520041585
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 686

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Book Description
"A milestone marking a new maturity in studies of Chinese Communist history."--John S. Service, UC, Berkeley "A milestone marking a new maturity in studies of Chinese Communist history."--John S. Service, UC, Berkeley

Civil War in China

Civil War in China PDF Author: Suzanne Pepper
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0742573656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
Many books have tried to analyze the reasons for the Chinese communist success in China's 1945_1949 civil war, but Suzanne Pepper's seminal work was the first and remains the only comprehensive analysis of how the ruling Nationalists lost that war_not just militarily, but by alienating the civilian population through corruption and incompetence. Now available in a new edition, this authoritative investigation of Kuomintang failure and communist success explores the new research and archival resources available for assessing this pivotal period in contemporary Chinese history. Even more relevant today given the contemporary debates in Hong Kong and Taiwan over the terms of reunification with a communist-led national government in Beijing, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking a nuanced understanding of twentieth-century Chinese politics.

Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950

Daily Life for the Common People of China, 1850 to 1950 PDF Author: Ronald Suleski
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004361030
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 483

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Book Description
In this exciting book, Ronald Suleski introduces daily life for the common people of China in the century from 1850 to 1950. They were semi-literate, yet they have left us written accounts of their hopes, fears, and values. They have left us the hand-written manuscripts (chaoben 抄本) now flooding the antiques markets in China. These documents represent a new and heretofore overlooked category of historical sources. Suleski gives a detailed explanation of the interaction of chaoben with the lives of the people. He offers examples of why they were so important to the poor laboring masses: people wanted horoscopes predicting their future, information about the ghosts causing them headaches, a few written words to help them trade in the rural markets, and many more examples are given. The book contains a special appendix giving the first complete translation into English of a chaoben describing the ghosts and goblins that bedeviled the poor working classes.

Crimson Rain

Crimson Rain PDF Author: William T. Rowe
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804754965
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
This book explores the cultural and social roots of violence in China by studying the history of recurrent, massive carnage in one county, Macheng, between the expulsion of the Mongols in the 14th century and the Japanese invasion of 1938.

Religion, Ethnicity, and Gender in Western Hunan during the Modern Era

Religion, Ethnicity, and Gender in Western Hunan during the Modern Era PDF Author: Paul R. Katz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429589883
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This book explores how beliefs and practices have shaped the interactions between different ethnic groups in Western Hunan, as well as considering how religious life has adapted to the challenges of modern Chinese history. Combining historical and ethnographic methodologies, chapters in this book are structured around changes that occurred during the interaction between Miao ritual traditions and religions such as Daoism, with particular focus on the commonalities and differences seen between Western Hunan and other areas of Southwest China. In addition, investigation is made into how gender and ethnicity have shaped such processes, and what these phenomena can teach about larger questions of modern Chinese history. As such, this study transcends existing scholarship on Western Hunan – which has stressed the impact of state policies and elite agendas – by focusing instead on the roles played by ritual specialists. Such findings call into question conventional wisdom about the ‘standardization’ of Chinese culture, as well as the integration of local society into the state by means of written texts. Religion, Ethnicity, and Gender in Western Hunan during the Modern Era will prove valuable to students and scholars of history, ethnography, anthropology, ethnic studies, and Asian studies more broadly.