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The book is a meticulous work in answering these questions which often occur to foreigners as well as modern Chinese themselves at the thought of the old China and its experience in modern times: What is Chinese civilization? How could it exist for several millennia and spread that far? Is there anything inherent in this civilization?
From the standpoint of an "outsider" to this civilization, the author incorporates various elements, such as geographic factors, language, thoughts, with the recurrent themes along the two thousand years and changes throughout, rather than simply following a lineal progression. His historiographical approach, the methodology of eclectic common sense, as he termed it, is a new try in this field and will present a brand new perspective for both readers and researchers in that field.
List of contents
Chinese Civilization in World History.- Geographic Factors.- Chinese Language.- Rise of Classical Thoughts.- Confucianism.- Daoism and Other Schools of Thought.- Buddhism in China.- Recurrent Themes in Chinese Civilization.- Changes over Two Millennia.- Late Imperial State and Society (Qing).- Stratification of Late Imperial Society.- Sino-European Relations.- Background of the 19th Century Rebellion.- The Taiping Rebellion.- Foreign Affairs Movement.- Chinese Foreign Relations 1857-1895.- The Transitional Generation.- The Boxers.- Revolutionary Intellectuals 1898-1911.- The May Fourth Movement.- The New Literature.- The Political Scene in 1923-1927.- The Nanjing Decade.- War of Resistance Against Japan.
About the author
One of the best sinologists of modern times, Guy Alitto is an American academic in the History and East Asian Languages and Civilization Departments at the University of Chicago. He is known in China for revitalizing the scholarship on Chinese Confucian scholar Liang Shuming. He is best known in America for his scholarship and for his role as translator for the first official Chinese delegations to the United States after Richard Nixon's first visits to China.
