Nineteenth and Twentieth Century China

general courses

The main aim of this course is presenting and analysing the basic events and historical processes that shaped China in the last two hundred years: a demise of the imperial institutions, construction and crisis of the republican state, revolutions, experiences of Maoism and o the Reform and Opening after 1978

Main topics and titles of the lecture series:

1. The Great Enterprise of the Qing Empire

2. Qing colonialism and the system of world hierarchies

3. Economic disintegration, ecology and population pressure

4. Competing imperial systems, Opium Wars and the shift of the global trade balance

5. Religions, rebellions, revolutions and the Restoration of Qing

6. Military systems and industrial modernization

7. Intellectual crisis, paradigm shift and the New Policies, 1901-1911 – creation of the modern China

8. Nationalism, collapse of the empire and a republican failure

9. Civil wars and the Nationalist Party regime

10. Fascism, Japan’s imperial project and the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945

11. 1949 Communist Party victory and building of the People’s Republic

12. Radicalization: The Great Leap Forward of 1958-1962 and the Cultural Revolution, 1966-1976

13. Deng Xiaoping, rebuilding the Party and the country

14. Into the 2000s: prosperity, inequality, and challenges of the new world power.

De Bary, Wm. Theodore and Richard Lufrano, Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume Two: From 1600 through the Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Bianco, Lucien. Translated by Philip Liddell. Wretched Rebels: Rural Disturbances on the Eve of the Chinese Revolution. Harvard East Asian Monographs 323. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Brown, Jeremy and Paul G. Pickowicz, eds. Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Brown, Shana J. Pastimes: From Art and Antiquarianism to Modern Chinese Historiography. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011.

Chen, Janet Pei-kai Cheng, and Michael Lestz with Jonathan D. Spence, eds., The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection. New York: Norton, 2014.

Clark, Paul. The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Chu, Cindy Yik-yi. Chinese Communists and Hong Kong Capitalists, 1937-1997. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Cliver, Robert K. “Surviving Socialism: Private Industry and the Transition to Socialism in China, 1945-1958.” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, E-Journal, no. 16 (Sept., 2015): 139-164.

Cochran, Sherman. Encountering Chinese Networks: Western, Japanese, and Chinese Corporations in China, 1880-1937. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Cochran, Sherman. Chinese Medicine Men: Consumer Culture in China and Southeast Asia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Elman, Benjamin A. A Cultural History of Modern Science in China. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Elvin, Mark. The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Garnaut, Anthony. “The Geography of the Great Leap Famine.” Modern China 40, no. 3 (2014), 315-348.

Goodman, Bryna. Native Place, City, and Nation: Regional Networks and Identities in Shanghai, 1853-1937. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

Goossaert, Vincent. The Taosits of Peking, 1800-1949: A Social History of Urban Clerics. Harvard East Asian Monographs 284. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Goossaert, Vincent and David Palmer. The Religious Question in Modern China. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Harrison, Henrietta. The Man Awakened from Dreams: One Man’s Life in a North China Village, 1857-1942. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.

Harrison, Henrietta. The Missionary’s Curse and Other Tales from a Chinese Catholic Village. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.

Henriot, Christian. Translated by Noel Castelino. Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History, 1849-1949. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Henriot, Christian and Wen-hsin Yeh, eds. Visualising China, 1845-1965. China Studies 23. Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2013.

Hsü, Immanuel C. Y. The Rise of Modern China, 6th edition. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Huang, Philip C. C. “China’s Hidden Agricultural Revolution, 1980-2010, in Historical and Comparative Perspective.” Modern China 42, no. 4 (2016): 339-376.

Jersild, Austin. The Sino-Soviet Alliance: An International History. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014.

King, Amy. China-Japan Relations After World War II: Empire, Industry and War, 1949-1971. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Lampton, David M. Following the Leader: Ruling China, from Deng Xianping to Xi Jinping. Berkeley: University of California Press: 2014.

Lary, Diana. Warlord Soldiers: Chinese Common Soldiers, 1911-1937. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Lary, Diana, The Chinese People at War: Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937-1945. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Lee, Haiyan. Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Li Huaiyin. Village China Under Socialism and Reform: A Micro History, 1948-2008. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.

Looney, Kristen E. “China’s Campaign to Build a New Socialist Countryside: Village Modernization, Peasant Councils, and the Ganzhou Model of Rural Development.” The China Quarterly 224 (Dec. 2015): 909-932.

Luthi, Lorenz M. The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.

Mathews, Gordon. Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chunking Mansions, Hong Kong. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011.

Meyer-Fong, Tobie. What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013.

Mitter, Rana. Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.

Mitter, Rana. A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Palmer, David. Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Pantsov, Alexander and Steven I. Levine. Mao: The Real Story. New York and London: Simon & Shuster Paperbacks, 2012.

Pantsov, Alexander V. and Steven I. Levine, Deng Xiaoping: A Revolutionary Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Pepper, Suzanne. Civil War in China: The Political Struggle. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.

Perry, Elizabeth J. Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Remick, Elizabeth J. Regulating Prostitution in China: Gender and Local Statebuilding, 1900-1937. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014.

Rowe, William T. Crimson Rain: Seven Centuries of Violence in a Chinese County. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

Schoenhals, Michael. Spying for the People: Mao’s Secret Agents, 1949-1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Shen Zhihua and Li Danhui. After Leaning to One Side: China and Its Allies in the Cold War. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.

Shiroyama, Tomoko. China During the Great Depression: Market, State, and the World Economy, 1929-1937. Harvard East Asian Monographs 294. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Smith, S. A. A Road is Made: Communism in Shanghai, 1920-1927. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000.

Smith, S. A. Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895-1927. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002.

Smith, Stephen A. Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Stapleton, Kristin. Fact in Fiction: 1920s China and Ba Jin’s Family. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.

Wang Yuhua. “Beyond Local Protectionism: China’s State-Business Relations in the Last Two Decades.” The China Quarterly 226 (June 2016): 319-341.

Westad, Odd Arne. Decisive Encounters: the Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Van Dyke, Paul A. The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700-1845. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005.

Ven, Hans van de. Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.

Vogel, Ezra F. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Wright, Tim. “Distant Thunder: The Regional Economies of Southwest China and the Impact of the Great Depression.” Modern Asian Studies, 34, no. 3 (2000): 697-738.

Yang Jisheng, Stacy Mosher and Jian Guo. Tombstone: The Untold Story of Mao’s Great Famine. London: Penguin Books, 2013.

Yeh, Wen-hsin. Shanghai Splendor: Economic Sentiments and the Making of Modern China, 1843-1949. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Zarrow Peter. China in War and Revolution, 1895-1949. London and New York: Routledge, 2005

Main educational outcomes:

- knowledge about the largest state and society in East Asia,

- understanding main problems analyzed by specialists in the field of China studies,

- knowledge of some of the most important scholarly works in field of China studies,

- ability to write a critical essay on the topic related to Chinese history,

- ability to critically respond and discuss issues related to China's past and present situation

Course combining lectures with in-class discussions. Students are going to read chosen fragments of specialist literature or historical sources and are obliged to participate in discussions (by asking questions, responding to lecture or to the readings). Each course participant is going to write a short essay (4-5 pages) on the topic of his choice (agreed on with the lecturer). The course will finish with a written exam. Grade structure: participation 50%; essay 25%; examination 25%.