The Making of the Republican Citizen : Political Ceremonies and Symbols in China 1911-1929

Studies on Contemporary China

by Henrietta Harrison

How did the major political events of the early 20th century affect the everyday lives of ordinary people in China? Being a modern citizen of the Chinese republic meant repudiating much of the very ritual that had previously defined one as Chinese. This book uses a wealth of new sources to look at the political history of the period and to detail the complex interactions between an ever more activist state and its new citizens.

Genres: China, History

278 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

From: http://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/staff/ea/c...
"I am a historian and my main interest is in what ordinary people’s lives have been like in China from the Qing dynasty until today. I am also enthusiastic about writing the kind of history that tells stories as well as making arguments. Both of my most recent books have been micro-histories and I have made extensive use of fieldwork in China, especially conducting oral history interviews and collecting village-level materials, as well as using more conventional archives and libraries.

My research has included the 1911 revolution, nationalism, Confucianism in the twentieth-century, Catholicism, interactions between China and Europe, and above all the history of Shanxi province. I have worked across different periods, writing two books about the early twentieth century, and one that is the story of a single village from 1700 to 2012, as well as several articles about the 1950s and 60s. My main current research is on the eighteenth century, with a focus on diplomacy and the social history of oral interpreting."

Reviews

[Jessica Zu · Rating 4 out of 5]

more primary sources would have been nicer ... but overall a good first attempt on analyzing changes in political culture.

[Ting]

Notes 1. "...view both ethnicity and nationalism as historical constructs. They both often lay claims to an ancient past and a timeless present... Benedict Anderson has shown how this idea of the nation was imported into South-east Asia from Europe on the heels of colonial governments, and how the nations formed are to be considered rather as imagined communities than as pre-existing entities.. Yet he is very much aware that nationalism is not some primordial entity, as kinship... But the changing product of particular historical circumstances"