The Pattern Of The Chinese Past

A satisfactory comprehensive history of the social and economic development of pre-modern China, the largest country in the world in terms of population, and with a documentary record covering three millennia, is still far from possible. The present work is only an attempt to disengage the major themes that seem to be of relevance to our understanding of China today. In particular, this volume studies three questions. Why did the Chinese Empire stay together when the Roman Empire, and every other empire of antiquity of the middle ages, ultimately collapsed? What were the causes of the medieval revolution which made the Chinese economy after about 1100 the most advanced in the world? And why did China after about 1350 fail to maintain her earlier pace of technological advance while still, in many respects, advancing economically? The three sections of the book deal with these problems in turn but the division of a subject matter is to some extent only one of convenience. These topics are so interrelated that, in the last analysis, none of them can be considered in isolation from the others.

This important volume affords a panoramic view of local elites during the dramatic changes of late imperial and Republic China. Eleven specialists present fresh, detailed studies of subjects ranging from cultivated upper gentry to twentieth-century militarists, from wealthy urban merchants to village leaders. In the introduction and conclusion the editors reassess the pioneering gentry studies of the 1960s, draw comparisons to elites in Europe, and suggest new ways of looking at the top people in Chinese local social systems. Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance lays the foundation for future discussions of Chinese elites and provides a solid introduction for non-specialists. Essays are by Stephen C. Averill, Lenore Barkan, Lynda S. Bell, Timothy Brook, Prasenjit Duara, Edward A. McCord, William T. Rowe, Keith Schoppa, David Strand, Rubie S. Watson, and Madeleine Zelin. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

A major scholarly work, published in conjunction with the exhibition titled "Splendors of Imperial China: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei" (on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during 1996, and scheduled for several other American cities during 1996-1997). Written by scholars of both Chinese and Western cultural backgrounds and conceived as a cultural history, the book synthesizes scholarship of the past three decades to present the historical and cultural significance of individual works of art and analyses of their aesthetic content, as well as reevaluation of the cultural dynamics of Chinese history. Includes some 600 illustrations, 436 in color. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Environment, Modernization and Development in East Asia critically examines modernization's long-term environmental history. It suggests new frameworks for understanding as inter-related processes environmental, social, and economic change across China and Japan.

This collection of eleven essays furthers the dialogue between early modern history and the social sciences through an analysis of Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World of Philip II. The contributors review various historiographical traditions to arrive at conclusions on contemporary theory and practice in the exchange between history and the disciplines of geography, economics, sociology, anthropology, politics (diplomatic history and the study of revolutions), psychology (law), religion, and area studies (China and the Americas). Contributors Peter Burke, Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge Jan de Vries, University of California, Berkeley Mark Elvin, Australian National University, Canberra Jack A. Goldstone, University of California, Davis Antonio Manuel Hespanha, Universidade Nova de Lisboa Henry Kamen, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Institució Milà i Fontanals, Barcelona John A. Marino, University of California, San Diego Ottavia Niccoli, Università degli Studi di Trento Anthony Pagden, University of California, Los Angeles M. J. Rodríguez-Salgado, London School of Economics Bartolomé Yun Casalilla, Universidad Pablo de Olavide de Sevilla