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Imperial China 900-1800
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Product Description：
This is a history of China for the 900-year time span of the late imperial period. A senior scholar of this epoch, F. W. Mote highlights the personal characteristics of the rulers and dynasties and probes the cultural theme of Chinese adaptations to recurrent alien rule. No other work provides a similar synthesis: generational events, personalities, and the spirit of the age combine to yield a comprehensive history of the civilization, not isolated but shaped by its relation to outsiders. This vast panorama of the civilization of the largest society in human history reveals much about Chinese high and low culture, and the influential role of Confucian philosophical and social ideals. Throughout the Liao Empire, the world of the Song, the Mongol rule, and the early Qing through the Kangxi and Qianlong reigns, culture, ideas, and personalities are richly woven into the fabric of the political order and institutions. This is a monumental work that will stand among the classic accounts of the nature and vibrancy of Chinese civilization before the modern period. Amazon.com Review：
A major preoccupation of this work by Princeton's highly respected professor emeritus, Frederick W. Mote, is the interplay between China and Inner Asia, a region that includes Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet. This is an important advance on previous broad examinations of imperial China, which have a distinct bias toward sinocentric dynastic politics. The year 907 marked the final breakdown of the Tang government and the establishment of a series of non-Chinese dynasties, from the Liao to the Qing, who ruled over all or much of Chinese territory for the next thousand years. Mote explains the impact on China of the Turkic and Mongol tribes to the north and west, a cultural influence that, for political reasons, is normally neglected by Chinese historians. The book's many excellent maps show how China's boundaries were constrained by powerful neighbors, a fact that also has political significance today. Economic questions are discussed, such as transportation systems and trade with the northern tribes. Environmental issues, such as the silting and flooding of the Yellow River, firmly insert geography into historical studies. Meanwhile, the next edition--and there will surely be another edition--will benefit from a standardized modern romanization of such languages as Mongolian.
Imperial China 900-1800 represents the distillation of a lifetime's study by a senior scholar steeped in Chinese history, yet it incorporates recent archaeological discoveries and is up to date, even radical, in its concepts. The author has the stature and confidence to avoid compulsive footnoting without losing credibility, which assists the easy unfolding of the book's narrative and analysis. This excellent work will stimulate the general reader and be an extremely useful text for the next generation of students of Chinese history. --John Stevenson |
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