China: A New History [Hardcover]

John King Fairbank (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1992 | ISBN-10: 0674116704 | ISBN-13: 978-0674116702 | Edition: 2nd

Bringing to bear 60 years of research, travel, and teaching, Fairbank weaves a detailed history that reaches from China's neolithic days to its troubled present. He depicts a country ever-changing and yet constant in its effort to achieve a cohesive identity, an enormous and enormously complex nation perpetually balancing between the imperatives of force and the power of ideas. Here are the Chinese autocrats in their various times and guises, maintaining Confucian civility and order through - paradoxically - the perpetual threat of irrational imperial violence. Here is the intellectual class, revered for its wisdom and counsel and yet - as events from the Cultural Revolution to the massacre in Tiananmen Square demonstrate - eminently expendable. And here are China's farmers engaged in a never-ending backbreaking attempt to tame their temperamental countryside only to face repeated famine as China's agrarian-based economy fails to develop. At the centre of all stands the Chinese family, until recently the model for both obedience and tyranny in society at large. Fairbank traces the growth of a civilization that could embrace so many contradictions and disruptions and yet retain a strong sense of its identity. Following China's ambivalent relations with the West and with the forces of modernization, he identifies, even in the great leap forward signaled by the Communist Revolution, the assumptions that have informed Chinese society for thousands of years. From the influences of Buddhism through the flowering of Song China to the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, this illustrated history unfolds in the style thst is quintessentially Fairbank.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

No American scholar of China was better known to the public and academia alike than Fairbank. This history of China, completed two days before his death in 1991, is a fitting final work. In covering the breadth of the country's history, from the earliest archaeological records to the present, the author is occasionally short on details, but lay readers and undergraduate students will appreciate the perceptive analysis and explanation throughout, leading to a better understanding of this complex nation, its people, and its importance in the world. Furthermore, Fairbank's command of recent research, along with an excellent bibliography, will appeal to the scholarly audience. Highly recommended. History Book Club selection.
- Kenneth W. Berger, Duke Univ. Lib., Durham, N.C.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Manages to tell its sprawling, turbulent, 4,000-year story in a single volume without either losing clarity or oversimplifying its subject...Rich and fascinating.
--Arnold R. Isaacs (San Francisco Chronicle )

Will serve for decades to come as a standard reference and textbook.
--Robert L. Worden (Washington Post Book World ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 560 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press; 2nd edition (April 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674116704
• ISBN-13: 978-0674116702
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.7 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #320,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great History; Great Writing, October 25, 2003

By 

events3 - See all my reviews

This review is from: China: A New History, Enlarged Edition (Paperback)

This, along with Wing-Tsit Chan's A SOURCE BOOK IN CHINESE PHILOSOPHY provided my first serious look at Chinese culture.

Fairbank's CHINA details the development of China from earliest times through the Tiananmen massacre: Xia & Shang, Zhou, the Spring and Autumn period, the Warring States period, the Qin Unification, the Han dynasty, disintegration, the subsequent rise of Sia and Tang dynasties, disintegration and the rise of the Song, the Northern and Southern Song along with the development of the kingdoms and empires of the Mongols who slowly conquered China, the Ming dynasty that expelled the Mongols, the Manchurian Qing dynasty that conquered all China and ruled until China became a Republic, Sun Yatsen, Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kaishek), fascism and communism, the rise of Mao and the Nationalist flight to Taiwan, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and Deng Xiaphing (Dong Zai-phong).

Of special interest are discussions on the rise of Confucianism, Daoism, Chinese Buddhism and Christian in-roads created by missionaries; the respective roles of Legalism, early imperial Confucianism and neo-Confucianism in the formation and evolution of the Chinese state; the horrors and extent of foot-binding among Chinese women; the influence of both communists and fascists in the Guomindang party and the open conflict between the "blue shirt" fascists (formed by Chiang Kaishek) and the Communist party; and the role of the USSR and Comintern in the development and organization of Communism in China (originally in the Guomindang and later in the Chinese Communist Party).

Thought-provoking and interesting, the book does suffer from infrequent flaws such as irrelevant personal attacks (e.g., Reaganesque = simple-minded) and giving too little details in some areas. Despite these (and the fact that the author once thought Maoisim the greatest thing to happen in China for centuries), anyone interested in Chinese history cannot afford to pass up this important work.

It should also be noted that the earlier edition's last chapter was replaced by essays from other authors in the revised addition.

33 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good history for non-scholars, September 1, 2001

By 

Philip J. Moore (Alma, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: China: A New History, Enlarged Edition (Paperback)

I am not a scholar of Chinese history. I just wanted to know more about the culture. I found the book to be very enjoyable. The topic was too broad for the book to spend much time in any detail of the subject. The book is well reasoned and excellent for those of us that want to know the basics about Chinese history. For those that read the other reviewer comments, bear in mind that the book covers Chinese history for prehistoric time to present day. Any commentary about US policy occurs in the very tail end. The book does do a good job contrasting the Chinese outlook to the western viewpoint.

82 of 101 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars solid, but pedestrian, April 8, 2001

By 

Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: China: A New History, Enlarged Edition (Paperback)

You can get a lot out of this book as a basic introduction to Chinese civilization if you are willing to slog through it. It is clearly written and covers the essential facts, but it lacks taste and deep interpretation. In others words, it can be studied but should not be read for pleasure or even intellectual stimulation. I used it to complete certain gaps in my knowledge of Chinese history, which was necessary and useful, but it just feels so academic and pedantic. Maybe that is what must happen in most general survey introductions like this one: it is stripped down so far that it cut not just fat but muscle and bone. In contrast, "The Search for Modern China" by J. Spence is a work of art as well as history, and constantly stimulates the reader to probe deeper, farther, opening a world. Unfortunately, Fairbank and Goldman accomplished none of that.