Opium War to the May Fourth Movement: Volume 2 [Paperback]

Hu Sheng (Author), Dun J. Li (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1991

From the Opium War to the May Fourth Movement, a major work by Hu Sheng, is the fruit of years of research on modern Chinese history.

The book is written in five parts, with 27 chapters in all, and carries a preface. The author analyzes modern Chinese history in terms of three waves of revolution. In Part I, he writes about the Opium War and the Taiping Peasant Revolution, the first wave of revolution; in Part II, about the formation of a semicolonial and semifeudal regime, which was ultimately to lead to a new wave of revolution; in Part III, about the Reform Movement of 1898 and the Yi He Tuan (Boxer) Movement, which was the second wave of revolution; in Part IV, about the Bourgeois Revolution of 1911, the third wave of revolution; and in Part V, about the transition toward the New-Democratic Revolution that led China out of darkness.

Using primary sources, this book analyzes the key events in modern Chinese history, and reflects the Chinese people's struggle against foreign aggressors and their own feudal rulers as they fought for national independence, democracy and freedom from 1840 to 1919.

Following his earlier work Imperialism and Chinese Politics, this book is yet another contribution by Hu Sheng to the study of modem Chinese history.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This book discusses one of the basic questions of modern Chinese political and revolutionary history - the political relationship between the imperialist powers, particularly the American imperialists, and semicolonial China. Based on extensive historical research of the period between the Opium War (1840-42) and the First Revolutionary Civil War (1924-27), it analyzes how the imperialists sought and created political leverage in China, how the reactionary Chinese rulers and the Chinese people reacted differently in the face of these foreign pressures, and how the illusions of reformist factions hindered the Chinese people's revolutionary cause.

This book not only describes the imperialist powers' political invasions of China, but also reflects the Chinese people's fight against these invasions to win national independence, democracy and freedom. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

The author of this book, Hu Sheng, is a renowned historian of China. He is also the president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Born in January 1918, he ended his regular school education in 1935 after completing one year at university. He went on to become a selftaught writer and historian. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1938. Many of his essays on culture and ideology are collected in the two books Reason and Freedom (1946), and Commentary Under the Jujube Tree (1961). His book Imperialism and Chinese Politics, first published in 1947 and reprinted many times since 1949, has been translated into English and Indonesian and published by the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 702 pages
• Publisher: Foreign Languages Press; 1 edition (January 1, 1991)
• ISBN-10: 711900008X
• ISBN-13: 978-7119000084
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,470,805 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Chinese view of the Opium War, June 19, 2000

By 

roger houghton - See all my reviews

This review is from: From the Opium War to the May Fourth Movement (Paperback)

This review refers to both volumes of Dr Hu's history as published by the Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, in English in 1991. The translation of these volumes, by Mr Dun J Li, is from the Chinese version published in 1981.

After a brief review of early Western penetration along the Chinese coast, the book focuses on approximately 80 years starting from the first Anglo-Chinese War. It has one over-riding value for the student of this period of Chinese history, it is derived from Chinese sources - books, letters and memorials - most of which have previously been unavailable in English and it is from the views contained in these sources that the book's fascination arises. I cannot over-state the value to the student of seeing this period with Chinese eyes and the book is worth buying for this reason alone. Having said that there are difficulties with the text.

Dr Hu is a self-taught historian. He became a party member when he was 20 years old and wrote 'Imperialism and Chinese Politics' ten years later in 1947 (also available in English but I have not read it). This latest work (published when he was in his sixties) couched in Marxist terminology, but with occasional references to Morse and other lesser known Western authorities, reviews the period from the standpoint of class struggle. This novel approach helps to bring out aspects of Western aggression against China that are not readily apparent from the Western sources. For example, the increasing loss of prestige of the Ching Government with the Chinese people following the Anglo-Chinese Wars is presented here as a cause of the myriad rebellions that characterised the period from the Tai Pings to the Boxers. The derivative insight - that when Western aggression exposed the Ching Government's incapacity, all the subsequent problems that Western countries experienced were bound to happen - is quite compellingly put. This is the value of a book that deals with a familiar subject using new source material and it is very welcome.

However, Dr Hu has an ideological axe to grind and he is not content to let the story tell itself. Had he done so, the power of the facts would have achieved his purpose. There can be no doubt that China was treated by the West in a way that would have been inconceivable had it been a European country, but this book was apparently written for a domestic audience. Thus on every page, mixed in with the interesting quotations and factual information, are opinions and analyses, some of which are insightful, others surprising while quite some few are frankly implausible. The main source of the implausible opinions offered is apparently a lack of familiarity with the realities of international diplomacy and the strict limits those realities place on the exercise of a country's self-interest. I should have preferred these opinions and comments to be annexed as separate chapters or perhaps the two volumes re-edited to produced one of fact and one of opinion. In that way the student will not be confused. A further but minor difficulty is with the place and personal names which are in Pinyin. A glossary would have been helpful.

This book will be most appreciated by those students who have already acquired a detailed knowledge of the period from Western sources and seek for comparative information. As a check on some of the tacit assumptions underlying Western histories it is very useful. I recommend it.

5.0 out of 5 stars History from the Chinese side. Unfiltered., December 7, 2003

By A Customer

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This review is from: From the Opium War to the May Fourth Movement (Paperback)

Both of Hu Sheng's histories, this one as well as his classic "Imperialism and Chinese Politics", provide badly-needed purely Chinese perspective on modern Chinese history and China's struggle with the West from late Qing dynasty onward. Hu Sheng's attack is powerful, fresh, insightful, startling, and, yes, appropriately angry. The anecdotes and sources, taken from Chinese language histories, are extremely valuable, and largely unavailable in English language histories of China. Do not be put off with Hu Sheng's political affiliations. His views are shared by Chinese across the spectrum, all over the world. In a world in which establishmentarian Western scholars have so badly clouded, neutered,inculcated and "made safe" the history of China, and the Chinese side of the story, Hu Sheng's analysis is a treasure.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars class struggle history of China c. 1840 -1920, July 12, 2000

By 

roger houghton - See all my reviews

This review is from: Opium War to the May Fourth Movement: Volume 2 (Paperback)

I have made some comments on this volume that may be found in the review for Volume One of Dr Hu's work.