Book about Chinese History

by laytoable

Hello i want to ask for a recommendation about chinese history.

Does anyone have a good serious author/book to read about the history of China? It can be any period of time, maybe the transition into capitalism, or the origin of the first empires, as long as it is serious and not some guy saying that things happen because of family mischieves and treasons as if real life were game of thrones it works for me. I am specially interested in the economy of early China and in understanding the mode of production but also the transition between different modes of production.

Anyway, all topics are interesting to me as long as they are well written.

rememberthatyoudie

The best on the economy of early China (and premodern China in general) is Glahn's "The Economic History of China: From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century". He does a really good job describing how the patrimonial state of Zhou worked, and how it shifted to the military-physiocratic state of Qin and early Han, to the manorial estate economy of later Han and the Six Dynasties (and so on). The references in it is also a good starting point if there's any aspects you want to go deeper on. To understand the philosophical underpinnings/political thought behind the shift into Qin and the physiocratic states of the Warring States, I really like the various work by Yuri Pines, his Envisioning Eternal Empire is free online.

madd777

This is a really great topic. The topic is vast, but I think you can find a very interesting story by examining it through the lens of Chinese urban landscapes. Below are a series of readings that converse well with each other and should give you a broad understanding of the scholarly work.

If I had to just pick two readings, I would recommend works by William Skinner. They are dense, some say they are boring, but I personally find his writing to be compelling:

  • G. William Skinner, “Cities and the Hierarchy of Local Systems,” in Arthur Wolf, ed., Studies in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1978), 1-51.
  • Skinner, " Presidential Address: The Structure of Chinese History," The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Feb., 1985), 271-292

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For late imperial, early Republican period, these are fantastic resources for viewing economic development through an urban lens:

  • William Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796-1889 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984)
  • Joseph Esherick, “Modernity and Nation in the Chinese City,” in Esherick, ed., Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, 1900-1950
  • Bergere, Chapter 3: “The Birth of Shanghai Capitalism," in Shanghai: China’s Gateway to Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).
    • Bergere, Chapter 7: “The Golden Age of Shanghai Capitalism.”
  • Daniel Meissner, “Imports and Industrialization: China’s ‘War’ Against American Flour Imports, 1895-1910,” Twentieth Century China 28, no. 2 (April 2003): 1-40.
  • Elizabeth Perry, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 11-63

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For more recent history/transition into capitalism, I've chosen a few that examine foundational aspects of China's economic transition (danwei, hukou, local governments, urban migration). A few of the papers are by sociologists, but they're still incredibly instructive for a historian:

  • Jean C. Oi "The Role of the Local State in China's Transitional Economy," 1995.
  • Walder, Andrew G. 1995. "Local Governments as Industrial Firms: An Organizational Analysis of China's Transitional Economy."
  • Xie, Yu, Qing Lai, and Xiaogang Wu. 2009. "Danwei: The Economic Foundations of a Unique Institution."
  • Wu, Xiaogang, and Donald J. Treiman. 2004. "The Household Registration System and Social Stratification in China: 1955–1996."
  • Chan, Kam Wing, and Li Zhang. 1999. "The Hukou System and Rural-urban Migration in China: Processes and Changes."
  • Leslie T. Chang, Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China (Spiegel & Grau, 2009) (This is not an academic work, but it is well written and tells an important perspective)
  • Elanah Uretsky, Occupational Hazards: Sex, Business, and HIV in Post-Mao China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016)

Happy to give any other recommendations! Also, I know accessing these can be difficult at times. Message me if any can't be found and I'll see if I can help. It's always great to find someone with similar interests.