Customer Reviews

T'ang China: The Rise of the East in World History

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The description on the approach of the book provided by the "Book reviews" is fairly accurate. Therefore, I will only point out that rethinking world history has become a major concern of a significant number of historians over recent decades, and, in particular, China's role in world history is again controversial thanks to Andre Gunder Frank's Re Orient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. In this book Adshead looks at the forces which have shaped China throughout its history in order to offer an alternative interpretation of that role. He offers a survey of T'ang China, with the aim of asking questions such as how China came to occupy a central place in the world economy in pre-modern times; what forces helped shape China during this period, or how these forces may alter China's place in the Twenty-First century. More broadly, the book explores the ways in which regional changes have, throughout history, shifted the balance of the world. In order to achieve that, Adshead covers much of the political, cultural and economical history of Eurasia over the last two millenia. Besides, the book is not a difficult reading (content: 5 starts; pleasure of reading: 3).

Other books I would recommend to read are the following: "The History of Gov-ernment" by S.E. Finer; "The world economy. A millennial perspective" by Angus Maddison; "The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy", by Kennetz Pomeranz; "Strange Parallels: Volume 1, Integration on the Mainland : Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830", by Victor Lieberman; and "The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation" by John M. Hobson.

The author clearly knows his Chinese history, there's no denying that. But this was a difficult and boring read, especially for someone like myself who has a layman's interest in the subject. He writes in an unnecessarily complicated and academic prose, full of extravagantly worded concepts that probably could've been more simplistically explained. Only other history professors can fully appreciate the writing style.