Recommendations for Sources in Three Kingdoms Era in China

by Asyrin46

I know that the Records of the Three Kingdoms has not been translated into English. However I was just wondering if there were any books/sources that are in English that cover the period historically. Please note I am not asking about the Romance of the Three Kingdoms or other heavily fantasised portrayals. Just for books and such about the history of the time.

ohea

Mark Edward Lewis' China Between Empires is just about the only high-quality, readily-available text in English that I've been able to find. It spans the tail end of the Eastern Han (the decades leading up to the start of the Three Kingdoms era proper) through the long period of disunion up to the Sui. Cao Cao in particular gets quite a few pages, partly because he's such a well-attested figure and also because some of the institutions he created were carried forward into the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

Early Medieval China: A Sourcebook (Swartz, Campany, Choo and Lu, eds.) also has some material relevant to the Three Kingdoms, although it's more skewed towards the Northern and Southern Dynasties period that followed it.

Other than those, I can recommend general histories that give the Three Kingdoms some attention but the later Han through the Sui are a relatively neglected time period, in the same way that books on the Roman principate are abundant but works about the later empire are a little harder to come by.

HanWsh

You can try to google Rafe De Crespigny To Establish Peace an English translation of Sima Guang Zi Zhi Tong Jian.

http://kongming.net/novel/bios/type.php

http://xuesanguo.tumblr.com

These are where you all may find SanGuoZhi biographies. These are historical.

Apart from the Zi Zhi Tong Jian translated by Dr Rafe De Crespigny,

http://the-scholars.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=22087

Here you all may find the continuation of the Zi Zhi Tong Jian where Dr Rafe De Crespigny left off made by Dr Achilles Fang.

http://the-scholars.com/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=24289

And this covers the remaining Zi Zhi Tong Jian of the 3K Era not done by Dr Rafe De Crespigny and Dr Achilles Fang.