The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China

by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom (Editor)

This lavishly illustrated volume explores the history of China during a period of dramatic shifts and surprising transformations, from the founding of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) through to the present day.The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China promises to be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this rising superpower on the verge of what promises to be the 'Chinese century', introducing readers to important but often overlooked events in China's past, such as the bloody Taiping Civil War (1850-1864), which had a death toll far higher than the roughly contemporaneous American Civil War. It also helps readers see more familiar landmarks in Chinese history in newways, such as the Opium War (1839-1842), the Boxer Uprising of 1900, the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, and the Tiananmen protests and Beijing Massacre of 1989.This is one of the first major efforts — and in many ways the most ambitious to date — to come to terms with the broad sweep of modern Chinese history, taking readers from the origins of modern China right up through the dramatic events of the last few years (the Beijing Games, the financial crisis, and China's rise to global economic pre-eminence) which have so fundamentally altered Western views of China and China's place in the world.

Genres: History, China, Nonfiction, Asia

373 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 16, 2016

About the author

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, a Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, is a modern Chinese social and cultural historian, with a strong interest in connecting China's past to its present and placing both into comparative and global perspective. He has taught and written about subjects ranging from gender to revolution, human rights to urban change.

His work has received funding from the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation.

Reviews

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a glossy, lavishly illustrated history of modern China (from 1550-present, or about 2014 - although the book was published in 2016) - that does convey a lot of information about China's history, but unfortunately, I got the impression that the essays weren't thoughtfully written. There were also a number of editing errors. Somehow, I got the impression that the book was quickly put together possibly to capitalize on the interest in China, and that the essays were not that carefully considered by the authors (despite their impressive academic credentials) because the book is not a journal article or a book by each author, but rather it may be seen as a mass market "coffee-table" type book, where the buyer might not actually read the text but instead try to absorb information from the photos, and charts. I actually read the entire book and wasn't impressed with the quality of the writing, although in some places the writing was somewhat more fluent or graceful.

The book also had a somewhat anti-Chinese slant, which is unfortunate, since the expectation would be to present information without bias and let the reader decide. For me, nonetheless, it was a very useful volume. It filled in many gaps in my knowledge of Chinese history - and gave a rational account of how events played out in the aftermath of the death of Mao and hou in 1976. I'd recommend the book to anyone who is interested in finding out about modern Chinese history - why China is the way it is today, what led up to it, and so forth - but without any expectations that the writing quality is anything but usually pedestrian.

As usual, there are many quotes from the book that I think are worth noting here.

"It is precisely by the start of our period, the late Ming dynasty, or around 1550, that significant changes began to shake the foundations laid by the first Ming emperor."
"...men and women mingled on the occasions of markets and fairs, deities' birthdays, and the numerous festivals in the moon calendar."
"Fashion was, then as now, about creating identities, showing personal style, and presenting an image of the self to the outside world. Houses and gardens were similarly subject to fashion and ostentation."
"...manufacturing and export on a vast scale ...brought enormous wealth to the Ming empire, mostly in the form of Spanish silver."
"...for much of Qianlong's reign, population growth was a strength that allowed for dynamic urban centers, with large-scale manufacturing for domestic use and for export, and active networks of trade connecting far-flung regions."
"Imperial interest and support lifted he skill levels of the artisans and their knowledge of materials to unprecedented heights."
"...the Chinese emperors... ...were keen to capture the Jesuits' skills for their own purposes."
"The early Qing emperors were keen to marshal the powers of these astronomers for the empire and happy to employ European specialists for the purpose."
"The High Qing was a period of growth and dynamic development: the population grew, the territory under Qing control increased, a more sophisticated multi-cultural and multi-lingual administration than ever before was in operation, Chinese manufactures increased and tea, silk, and porcelain were exported all over the world and in larger quantities than ever before."
"In one especially mountainous region of Hubei province known as the Han River Highlands, new migrants had multiplied the local population six times over during the course of the eighteenth century, most of them refugees squeezed out from more prosperous and longer-settled regions."
"As the religious groups in Hubei province began to rebel -- individual cells acting in almost complete Independence of one another, typically number in the hundreds or low thousands, looting villages and setting up blockages on the roadways -- most counties in the province had no more than a few dozen soldiers on hand to stop them."
"...the generals in charge of fighting the White Lotus appear to have prolonged the conclusion of the war for several years after it might have otherwise have ended, allowing the fighting to go on so they could ensure a constant flow of funding from the government."
"Harsh cutbacks in military spending followed, as reprisal for the corruption of the White Lotus campaign, and China thus moved forward into the nineteenth century with a demoralized military and exceptionally stringent limits on military spending that all but ensured that he empire's soldiers would be poorly trained, underpaid, and have no new weapons or equipment."
"Until the early nineteenth century the balance of trade at Canton favored the Chinese merchants, with a net inflow of millions of silver dollars per year coming into the country from foreign trade."
"There were secret societies, often referred to as Triads, that were often heavily involve din opium smuggling and which promised mutual protection to their members as they traveled along rivers and between towns."
"Many foreign interests were not interested in actually treating the Quing as diplomatic equals after all; they saw the empire as a site in which to make new gains at China's expense."
"The "foreign" was also increasingly widely represented in print, in both image and text."
"A new machine, the rickshaw (which was invented in Japan and added Western-style wheels to the sedan chair, dispensing with the rear shafts), spread rapidly across Asia after the late 1860s."
"A new butt for jokes, or target for social criticism, arrived: the "foreignized" comprador, near-illiterate in his own language (at least, in the caricature) and a slave to foreign fashions and fads."
"The rise of Shanghai also subverted the geography of power in China, as did the growth in influence of provincial power-holders such as Li Hongzhang."
"Foreign observers would routinely factor in a society's treatment of women as emblematic of its level of "civilization."
"For the Qing this came to a head in 1894-95 when Japanese ambitions in Korea (in which the Qing had been reasserting its presence) led to war, and to victory for Tokyo."
"The broader context was provided by the "New Imperialism" generated by the rise of German ambition, and of Russo-British antagonism, and by the emergence of notions of declining nations and "races" derived from vulgar understandings of Social Darwinism."
"The influence of Kang's brand of loyalist constitutional monarchy was steadily to be supplanted by more radical thinkers, however, such as Sun Yat-sen, outraged at the weakness of the Qing, and the failure of reform."
"Landless young men prepared themselves through martial arts and spirit possession to purify the realm."
"From Guangdong -- a somewhat peripheral province far to the south from Beijing's point of view but a corner of the empire that had long enjoyed foreign contacts and that produced most of China's overseas merchants -- arose a small revolutionary movement dedicated to the outright overthrow of the dynasty."
"In the first decade of the twentieth century a series of doomed uprisings, mostly reflecting Sun Yat-sen's feckless faith that a spark would start a prairie fire resulted in the deaths of hundreds in the southeast."
"In 1905 in Tokyo, small and disparate revolutionary groups were brought together in an umbrella organization, the National Alliance or Tongmenghui, under Sun Yat-sen's leadership."
"Socialism won Chinese adherents by promising a practical path toward economic development."
"The National Alliance's support for land nationalization was not designed to "free" peasants but to forestall future class conflict as well as provide the basis for future state development programs."
"The political culture of urban elites was transformed at the beginning of the twentieth century, but the countryside was sinking further into stagnation."
"Revolutionaries in the years before 1911 looked to secret societies for support."
"...by 1912, revolutionaries agreed worth Yuan that China was to be the "republic of five races" -- Han, Manchu, Mongol, Hui (Muslim, Uighur), and Tibetan. The ROC flag consisted of five stripes of red, yellow, blue, white, and black, symbolizing the five races."
"Sun Yat-sen, among others, was to complain about Chinese who farted and blew their noses in public."
"Every schoolchild came across "humiliation maps" in history and geography textbooks detailing when and where particular instances of imperialist aggression and territorial loss occurred."
"Utopian longings were a natural response to the continuing disintegration of traditional society."
"Japan's military power -- it had defeated Russia in war just fifteen years earlier - gave it political clout, whereas China remained internally divided and militarily weak."
"Versailles changed that. By handing over Chinese territory to Japan, the Allies demonstrated that China still could not fully trust the Western imperial powers."
"After 1917, when Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution succeeded in Russia, [the journal] New Youth increasingly advocated Marxism alongside science, democracy, and the usage of the vernacular in place of classical Chinese."
"For first time in centuries, the written Chinese language corresponded to the way people spoke."
"The buildings along the Bund -- Shangai's waterfront on the Huangpu River -- were the tallest in Asia."
"In the 1920s, Shanghai's population approached 3 million -- about 90 percent of it Chinese -- with the city itself behind equally divided between foreign and Chinese-controlled districts."
"The roaring twenties were just that in Shanghai: with the world at a peak of free trade policies, the Chines market just upstream from Shanghai offered seemingly limitless opportunities."
"As China's industrial center it had the largest concentration of workers, and was perhaps China's only city with a Marxist urban proletariat."
"The Communist Manifesto had first been translated into Chinese around 1899, and the revolutionary movements that eventually overthrew the Qing dynasty included many strands of Marxism. Anarchism, especially, was powerful in the first decades of the twentieth century."
"The warlords who dominated this era were a colorful and diverse group."
"People started to live and work in the same locations, which often had built-in bomb shelters."
"...it was the Communists, not the Nationalists, who had produced the most radical visions of a new China."
"In Stilwell's eyes, the problems all stemmed from what he saw as Nationalist incompetence and corruption, along with reluctance to reform either military or political structures, all presided over by "the Peanut," as he called Chiang.
"Stilwell's account of his time in China, aided by allies in the press such as the journalist Theodore White, would paint a picture of Nationalist China as purely a corrupt, incompetent, and brutal state."
"By summer 1952, the "land to the tiller" movement was complete. About 43 percent of China's cultivated land was redistributed to about 60 percent of the rural population with about 88 percent of households affected."
"The other major campaign through which the CCP projected its power into rural areas was that around the Marriage Law of 1950."
"The Korean war saw 2.3m Chinese soldiers fight and up to half a million lose their lives between October 1950 and July 1953."
"The suppression of counter-revolutionaries not only targeted Guomindang special agents and military officials, war criminals, Japanese collaborators, and notorious bandits, but also the heads of redemptive religious societies."
"The First Five-Year Plan (1953-57), like its Soviet prototype, emphasized central planning and the rapid growth of heavy industry, notably iron- and steel-making, machine building, chemicals and power supply."
"Capitalists, accused in 1952 of widespread bribery and tax evasion, were pressed into joining "public-private mergers," but were notionally compensated for their loss of assets and allowed to continue in a secondary management role."
"In eight years China's manufacturing economy was transformed from one of small workshops and individual artisans to one increasingly dominated by factories, mines, and modern transportation."
"The work unit exercised detailed control over the lives of its members, and this, combined with the fact that relations in the workplace tended to take the form of clientelist networks centered on party-branch officials or security-department chiefs, made collective working-class action difficult."
"National figures for female employment show a tenfold increase between 1949 and 1959."
"Industrialization depended on the peasantry, since only they could provide the agricultural produce and textiles that the country needed to export if it were to pay for the import of capital goods; and only they could provide the raw materials, such as cotton and oil seed, needed for domestic industry."
"On July 31, 1955, however, Mao called for he acceleration of cooperativization, albeit on a "gradual and voluntary" basis."
"By the end of 1956, 88 percent of households (400 million people) had been pressed into joining "advanced cooperatives," each comprising 200 to 300 households."
"In contrast to collectivization in the soviet Union in 1928-32, there was no mass violence, thanks to the existence of a disciplined Party apparatus in the countryside."
"The mid-1950s witnessed a drive to eradicate illiteracy through the extension of primary education into rural areas and through a crash campaign targeted at adults."
"Over the next three years, nearly 80 million people received some form of literacy training."
"In early 1957, Mao summoned working peole "to be simultaneously intellectuals and intellectuals simultaneous to be laborers."
"Mao Zedong was convinced that Communism could only be achieved if there were a spiritual and moral transformation of the masses."
"A vast range of activities was funded by the government to "raise the cultural level" of the masses: from libraries and reading rooms, to peripatetic film and slide shows, to roving opera performances, to cultural stations in the cities that aimed "to spread literacy, conduct political propaganda, promote recreational activities and popularize scientific knowledge."
"Visual forms of culture, such as posters, cartoons, woodcuts, and serial picture stories, were especially important in getting across the CCP's message to a largely illiterate population."
"Ding Ling, feminist writer and recipient of the Stalin Prize for literature, had in recent times displayed exemplary loyalty to the CCP, yet she was put through twenty-seven "struggle sessions" before being dispatched to work on a chicken farm near the Soviet border."
"Mao convinced himself that massive communes responsible for production, consumption, residence, social services, and local modernization were the solution to China's backwardness."
"An extraordinary utopianism gripped society."
"Commune "workers" (as peasants were now called) received work points for all the tasks they performed for the collective. These points were calculated according to the size and value of the year's harvest, minus the state-levied grain taxes, and could be exchanged for grain and cash."
"For their part, the work teams vowed to "uproot superstition utterly, to bring materialist education to the masses, and to propagate scientific atheism."
"The years between 1949 and 1964 witnessed the most ambitious attempt in history to smash an existing social order and to replace it with a radially improved society, in this instance one based on collectivism, equality, and ideological uniformity."
"Following the withdrawal of Soviet experts from China in 1960, Mao began to reflect on the evolution of the Soviet regime, coming to the view that it had turned int a state-capitalist society in which a privileged stratum of bureaucrats had "converted the function of serving the masses into the privilege of dominating them." Seeing the revival of the market, the restoration of material incentives in industry, the re-emergence of a two-track system in education or the resurgence of "feudal superstition," Mao was haunted by the fear that capitalist restoration would occur in China too."
"The rewards of high wage differentials, foreign models, and an urban-centered development were among the bourgeoisie's "sugar-coated bullets."
"The upshot was a political stand-off. ... All honored Mao, contributing to the growth of the Mao cult which came to dominate political life. However, Mao complained later that Deng Xiaoping treated him like the corpse at a funeral, respecting his image while ignoring his opinions."
"The fourth group which Mao cultivated was urban youth."
"But new graduates faced limited opportunities because the 1949 revolution installed a cohort of relatively young leaders, many still on the job. Thus the political ideals of the young were joined by anxieties about their personal futures; Maoist politicians channeled this explosive combination."
"The Red Guards combined political zeal with teen rebellion, breaking social barriers as they looked for ways to promote revolution."
"It is important to recognize internal diversity among the millions of Red Guards. The majority did not beat up anyone, and many spoke out against violence."
"The 1968 restoration of Party authority and the dispersal of the Red guards led to two years of extraordinary growth; by Mao's death,China had a decade of moderate economic expansion. China's gross domestic product increased nearly 56 percent annually."
"The Maoist political economy substituted China's abundant labor for scarce capital. In the absence of sharp material incentives, it relied upon political campaigns to mobilize labor."
"China's economic growth was rested upon individual austerity and Spartan consumption, which freed funds for greater public investment."
"The service sector languished, tarnished as bourgeois (there was only one restaurant for 8,000 citizens). Ration coupons related the purchase of cotton grain, meat, cooking oil, and other essential goods."
"The Cultural Revolution also pursued longer-term policies to improve China's human capital. Improved nutrition, lower infant mortality, and control of infectious disease helped increase life expectancy, which increased from only 35 in 1949, to 65 by 1980."
"Education was another success... Most impressive was the growth in literacy, reflecting a fifteenfold increase in rural junior middle schools between 1965 and 1976."
"Schools put work into the school curriculum (such as student gardens) in an effort to make the classrooms relevant

[Joel Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as textbooks go, I didn't mind reading this one. The pictures matched each situation very well and the writing was engaging. I think some of the chapters could have gone in a bit more depth at time but I accept that it is a more cursory history. I could tell that this book was written to be acceptable to CCP standards as well since almost all death tolls are mentioned except the amount of death the CCP are responsible for. I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, the CCP death toll under Mao is the largest death toll in the world - beating both Stalin and Hitler. On the other hand, the writers seem to be aware of this. They write in an eagles eye perspective and turn a blind eye to some of the more unacceptable statistics and blame (to CCP standards). But as I read, I was able to still get the general idea of each perspective and I was able to still see the damage the Cultural Revolution brought to the social fabric of China. Yet, it is written so that someone who is brought up in the CCP political mythology doesnt have to be challenged to an unacceptable level (probably according to CCP standards). I had a negative view this type of selective history but the coda, written in the first person perspective, is what makes me feel justified in writing positively of it's selective history. The coda was written by Ian Johnson who has observed the history change around him. He doesn't attribute value to his statements but he lets the things that he uncovers speak to the social damage of the Cultural Revolution. Yet, he speaks positively about ancient Chinese history and of China's resulting emerging traditionalism. This book gets four stars because I think that the chapters on the Cultural revolution and on Tiananmen Square weren't entirely sound (possibly because of CCP standards again). I have no complaints on the chapters before the People's Republic of China. It was a fairly good textbook.

[Tim Chamberlain · Rating 4 out of 5]

An old adage says you should never judge a book by its cover. At first glance The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China looks like a glossy coffee-table book, but its colourful exterior belies an accessible yet scholarly work within. Edited by Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, the book consists of eleven chapters and a final coda, each written by a leading China specialist. Many of these names – including Robert Bickers, Rana Mitter, Stephen R. Platt, Kate Merkel-Hess and Ian Johnson – will be familiar to anyone with an interest in the history of modern China. And, as the title suggests, each chapter is beautifully illustrated with large format colour photographs as well as explanatory maps and charts that ably compliment the text.

Focusing predominantly on the political and economic aspects of China’s history and thereby contextualising its present place in the globalised community of nations, this book forms an excellent introduction to the history of modern China for the general reader and student alike. It will sit well on undergraduate and master’s degree reading lists as it is furnished with comprehensive chapter-by-chapter ‘further reading’ lists, a timeline of modern Chinese political history as well as a detailed index. The illustrations are excellent and help to bring the text to life with further colour (in both senses of the word) and detail. The Oxford Illustrated History of China is a highly accessible and admirably comprehensive work that covers a lot of ground without stinting on detail; as such, it will undoubtedly prove popular with students and the general public alike.

= Excerpt from a more detailed review of this book which I wrote for the LSE Review of Books.

[Shashank Pathak · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is extremely well organized in its chapters which though from different authors cross reference each other. The quality of writing is decently engaging and the content is suitable for someone with little knowledge about modern Chinese history, especially from the Western perspective. The book is also very respectful of its readers by optimizing the words for the original content; at least for me, I enjoyed every page of it. (I am largely China-ignorant yet could follow every chapter quite well). In the beginning, there is a very helpful list of westernized spelling for Chinese words and how to pronounce them; again helpful for absolute beginners.

The negatives (reasons for not rating it 5 stars) of this book are not none. Despite a long list of contributors, it’s strange that publication didn’t manage to get a single Chinese author, leave alone an author who is associated with a Chinese institution. In fact, the book is from bunch of people (extremely accomplished nonetheless) from UK and US. Given how much western bias has already proliferated in our science and culture, this error needs to be corrected. Secondly, given the meteoric rise of China, it’s a shame that the book ends at 2010 with a free flowing non-commital ending chapter. Certainly, this chapter should be revisited and updated. Lastly, the book is too linear with often only one position explained. This implies that U-turns (of world powers, of CCP) are often ignored and conflicting stands often not brought out. These conflicting stands are crucial in modern times especially when Xi’s party is re-embracing Confucian philosophy. If I were to be harsh, I would say the book is not on modern China’s history but history of China as seen from purely western perspective (choosing mid Qing as starting point and calling it modern further helps because “western” perspective began roughly from there on).

[Nils · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lushly illustrated textbook (suitable for HS students) about the emergence of what we think of as China today, which is dated from around 1500. While it of course doesn't challenge the idea that civilizational matrix of what has evolved into China has a millennia-long history, it does suggest that what we (both in China and the West) think of today as "China," both in geographic and civilizational terms, only really began to crystallize around 1500, suggesting that the linkages between contemporary Chinese leadership strategies and institutions and the ones of ancient China, while not irrelevant, are perhaps more important for their ideological and mythological than functional value -- just as classical Rome and Greece provide intellectual foundations for contemporary Western institutions despite a lack of any very great institutional continuity from that ancient time.

[Jingsheng · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does not cover every important events in China during modern era, and I find some points apparently misleading. However, I still consider such a book essential for both westerners and Chinese readers. If you only read newspaper and magazine articles, you will never ever understand the modern China. The book try to tell a story connect the present China with its history, so not only westerners but also Chinese people nowadays can understand what is going on.

[James Crabtree · Rating 4 out of 5]

I prefer to have a complete history written by the same person. Rather, this one is broken down by periods and then each period is covered by a different person (or persons). This leads to different weight being given to the different periods, based upon (I'm assuming) the emphasis given by the different historians writing this.

The first couple of chapters suffered from typos... not enough to seriously distract from the text but surprising in a book from Oxford. Also, the book fails to address in the later chapters the role of the PLA in China's "economic miracle" and it's relationship to both the military complex and the economy as a whole. Indeed, even FINDING the PLA listed in the index is a chore. You wind up going to Military Forces: Communist: People's Liberation Army (PLA). Even then, it does not break it down further despite the PLA's role in the Cultural Revolution and other aspects of Communist China.

I did learn what I wanted about the post-Cultural revolution China and also revisited the period from 1900 to the 1960s. The volume is well-illustrated with photographs and maps. I believe that it could have been a better book, however.

[James S. · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very basic collection of articles on Chinese history. Lots of recitation of facts, little editorializing or analysis. Reads like a high-school textbook.

[Paul Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good history here, but not very well organized and now feels dated 10+ years later.

[!Tæmbuŝu]

Reviewed by Asian Review of Books