Chinese History

Last update: 13 Jun 2025 00:04
First version: Before 13 March 1995

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Yet Another Inadequate Placeholder

See also:
• Ancient Chinese bronzes (a personal obsession)
• Central Asia
• Ancient China
• 20th Century China
• China Since Mao
• Chinese Philosophy of the Warring States Period
• Confucianism
• Daoism
• Zen or Chan Buddhism

Recommended, big picture:
• Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past [Review will be finished Any Lifetime Now, Dammit]
• Joseph R. Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate
  • I: The Problem of Intellectual Continuity
  • II: The Problem of Monarchical Decay
  • III: The Problem of Historical Significance
• Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China
• Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China

Recommended, close-ups:
• Derek Bodde, Chinese Thought, Society and Science: The Intellectual and Social Background of Science and Technology in Pre-Modern China [I can't figure out what a lot of these essays have to do with science or technology, but they make for a fascinating ramble around many aspects of pre-modern Chinese culture and society.]
• Adeeb Khalid, Central Asia: A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present [i.e., from the 1700s to 2020]
• Henri Maspero, China in Antiquity
• Susan Naquin, Millenarian Rebellion in China: the Eight Trigrams Uprising of 1813
• Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy
• Edward H. Schafer
  • The Vermillion Bird: T'ang Images of the South
  • The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics
• Jonathan Spence
  • The Gate of Heavenly Peace
  • God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan
  • Mao Zedong
  • The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci
  • Treason by the Book
• Nicolas Tackett, The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy
• Hsien-Chun Wang, "Discovering Steam Power in China, 1840s--1860s", Technology and Culture 51 (2010): 31--54

To read:
• Tonio Andrade, The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History
• Robert Bagley, Ancient Sichuan: Treasures from a Lost Civilization
• Ying Bai and James Kai-sing Kung, "Climate Shocks and Sino-nomadic Conflict", Review of Economics and Statistics 93 (2011): 970--981
• Peter Bol, "This Culture of Ours": Intellectual Transitions in T'ang and Sung China
• Herrlee Glessner Creel, The Birth of China: A Study of the Formative Period of Chinese Civilization [Now-antiquated but then-pathbreaking book on the Shang excavations]
• Hilde De Weerdt, Information, Territory, and Networks: The Crisis and Maintenance of Empire in Song China
• Stella Dong, Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City
• Patricia Buckley Ebrey
  • Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China "Concubines in Sung China", Journal of Family History 11 (1986): 1--24
• Ronald A. Edwards, "Economic Revolution: Song China and England" [PDF preprint]
• Mark C. Elliott, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China
• Benjamin A. Elman
  • Civil Examinations and Meritocracy in Late Imperial China
  • A Cultural History of Modern Science in China
• Mark Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China
• Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising
• Joseph W. Esherick and Mary Backus Rankin (eds.), Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance
• Hsiao-Tung Fei, China's Gentry: Essays in Rural-Urban Relations
• Hill Gates, China's Motor: A Thousand Years of Petty Capitalism
• Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization
• David Graff, Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300--900 ["connects military affairs with political and social developments to show how China's history was shaped by war. The first survey of medieval Chinese military history to be published in English"]
• Chad Hansen, A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation
• Kung-chuan Hsiao, History of Chinese Political Thought
  • Volume 1: From the Beginnings to the Sixth Century, A.D.
• Ray Huang, 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline
• Francois Jullien, The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China
• Kwangmin Kim, Borderland Capitalism: Turkestan Produce, Qing Silver, and the Birth of an Eastern Market
• Philip A. Kuhn, Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768
• Brian Lander, The King's Harvest: A Political Ecology of China from the First Farmers to the First Empire
• Louise Levanthes, When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405--1433
• Ichisada Miyazaki, China's Examination Hell: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China
• Ruth Mostern, The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History
• Mote, Imperial China, 900--1900
• Sachiko Murata, William C. Chittick and Tu Weiming, The Sage Learning of Liu Zhi: Islamic Thought in Confucian Terms
• Gilbert Rozman, Urban Networks in Ch'ing China and Tokugawa Japan
• Dagmar Schäfer, The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-century China
• Edward L. Shaughnessy, Before Confucius: Studies in the Creation of the Chinese Classics
• Gideon Shelach-Lavi, The Archaeology of Early China: From Prehistory to the Han Dynasty
• Leo K. Shin, The Making of the Chinese State: Ethnicity and Expansion on the Ming Borderlands
• Spence
  • Chinese Roundabout: Essays in History and Culture
  • The Death of Woman Wang
  • Emperor of China : Self-Portrait of K'ang-Hsi
  • The Question of Hu
• Michael Sullivan, The Night Entertainments of Han Xizai: A Scroll by Gu Hongzhong
• Nicolas Tackett, The Origins of the Chinese Nation: Song China and the Forging of an East Asian World Order
• R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience
• Pei-yu Wu, The Confucian's Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China
• Angela Zito, Of Body and Brush: Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in Eighteenth-Century China