Becoming Chinese

Becoming Chinese
Author: Wen-hsin Yeh
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2023-11-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 052092441X

This volume evaluates the dual roles of war and modernity in the transformation of twentieth-century Chinese identity. The contributors, all leading researchers, argue that war, no less than revolution, deserves attention as a major force in the making of twentieth-century Chinese history. Further, they show that modernity in material culture and changes in intellectual consciousness should serve as twin foci of a new wave of scholarly analysis. Examining in particular the rise of modern Chinese cities and the making of the Chinese nation-state, the contributors to this interdisciplinary volume of cultural history provide new ways of thinking about China's modern transformation up to the 1950s. Taken together, the essays demonstrate that the combined effect of a modernizing state and an industrializing economy weakened the Chinese bourgeoisie and undercut the individual's quest for autonomy. Drawing upon new archival sources, these theoretically informed, thoroughly revisionist essays focus on topics such as Western-inspired modernity, urban cosmopolitanism, consumer culture, gender relationships, interchanges between city and countryside, and the growing impact of the state on the lives of individuals. The volume makes an important contribution toward a postsocialist understanding of twentieth-century China.

The Pacific in the Age of Early Industrialization

The Pacific in the Age of Early Industrialization
Author: Kenneth Pomeranz
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2017-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351884514

The essays selected for this volume show how the Pacific rapidly became part of an industrializing world. Its raw materials (notably rubber and copper) were critical, some of its handicraft industries were devastated by mechanized competition, others survived and adapted, contributing to distinctive patterns of industrialization that made Japan a new center of power, and also laid the groundwork for later growth in Taiwan, Korea, and coastal China. The Pacific coast of the Americas was also first drawn into an industrial world largely as an exporter of raw materials, but North and South diverged rapidly, portending futures even more different than those of Northeast and Southeast Asia. By the 1930s - when the uneven effects of industrialization would have much to do with plunging the Pacific into war - one can already glimpse in outline the structural bases for many of the region's contemporary characteristics. All this is set in context in the important introduction by Kenneth Pomeranz.

Disease, Colonialism, and the State

Disease, Colonialism, and the State
Author: Ka-che YIP
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9622095879

Studying malaria in modern East Asia in the context of the global history of the disease, this book fills an important gap in our understanding of the cultural, social, economic, and political dimensions of the relationship between malaria and human society in a region which has often been neglected by historians of the disease. The authors examine the development and consequences of various anti-malaria strategies in Hong Kong, Okinawa, Taiwan, mainland China, and East Asia as a whole. The British and Japanese colonial models of disease control are explored, as is the later American technological model of DDT residue spraying, promoted by the Rockefeller Foundation which played a significant role in the global anti-malaria campaign and the development of public health in Asia. In the post- World War II period, the use of DDT and international political and economic interests helped to shape anti-malaria policies of the Nationalist government in Taiwan. In mainland China, the Beijing government's mass mobilization and primary health care model of anti-malaria control has given way to new strategies as recent changes in the health care system have affected anti-malaria efforts and public health developments. This book illuminates an important and largely unexplored dimension of the history of malaria: the interplay of the state (colonial or sovereign), international interests, new medical knowledge and technology, changing concepts of health and disease, as well as local society in the formulation and implementation of anti-malaria policies. It will be of interest to historians of colonialism, medicine and public health, Asia, as well as health and social policy planners.

Single Sparks

Single Sparks
Author: Kathleen Hartford
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2016-09-16
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1315493918

First Published in 1990. Written at a new juncture in the study of the Chinese revolution. A new generation of scholarship is emerging which promises to resolve old debates, bridge old dichotomies, and join formerly separate strands of analysis. Several of the essays in this volume are based on papers presented at a workshop on Chinese Communist base areas held at Harvard University's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research. These papers chronicle the varied approaches to China's revolution.

China's Nation-building Effort, 1927-1937

China's Nation-building Effort, 1927-1937
Author: Arthur Nichols Young
Publisher: [Stanford, Calif.] : Hoover Institution Press
Total Pages: 584
Release: 1971
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Monograph appraising financial administration and economic development under the nationalist political party in China from 1927 to 1937 - covers fiscal policy, tariff policy, debt consolidation, debt repayment, monetary policy, currency reforms, banking, national planning, development aid, foreign investment, etc. Bibliography pp. 529 to 540, references and statistical tables.