Gaining an understanding of China's long and sometimes bloody history can help to shed light on China's ascent to global power. Many of China's imperial dynasties were established as the result of battle, from the chariot warfare of ancient times to the battles of the Guomindang (KMT) and Communist regimes of the twentieth century. China's ability to sustain complex warfare on a very large scale was not emulated in other parts of the world until the Industrial Age, despite the fact that th...

Gaining an understanding of China's long and sometimes bloody history can help to shed light on China's ascent to global power. Many of China's imperial dynasties were established as the result of battle, from the chariot warfare of ancient times to the battles of the Guomindang (KMT) and Communist regimes of the twentieth century. China's ability to sustain complex warfare on a very large scale was not emulated in other parts of the world until the Industrial Age, despite the fact that th...

Volume II of The Cambridge History of War covers what in Europe is commonly called 'the Middle Ages'. It includes all of the well-known themes of European warfare, from the migrations of the Germanic peoples and the Vikings through the Reconquista, the Crusades and the age of chivalry, to the development of state-controlled gunpowder-wielding armies and the urban militias of the later middle ages; yet its scope is world-wide, ranging across Eurasia and the Americas to trace the interregion...

This book is a comparative study of military practice in Sui-Tang China and the Byzantine Empire between approximately 600 and 700 CE. It covers all aspects of the military art from weapons and battlefield tactics to logistics, campaign organization, military institutions, and the grand strategy of empire. Whilst not neglecting the many differences between the Chinese and Byzantines, this book highlights the striking similarities in their organizational structures, tactical deployments and...

This volume explores the relationship between culture and the military in Chinese society from early China to the Qing empire, with contributions by eminent scholars aiming to reexamine the relationship between military matters and law, government, historiography, art, philosophy, literature, and politics.The book critically investigates the perception that, due to the influence of Confucianism, Chinese culture has systematically devalued military matters. There was nothing inheren...

“A wonderful job! So lucid, beautfully written, with greatrange and insight. This will set a new standard for shortgeneral histories of China.”—Michael Gasster,professor emeritus of history at Rutgers UniversityNewly updated and revised, China: Its History and Culture,Fourth Edition, incorporates the crucial social and economicchanges that have taken place in China over the last decade.Through rich detail and engaging illustrations, the book tracesChina’s ...

As the increasingly powerless Qing Dynasty in 19th Century China struggled to defend itself from European, American and Japanese colonial control, and bloody civil wars and rebellions fought by an angry and desperate people raged, a new revolutionary force emerged.Sun Yat Sen's Tongmenghui, later known as the Kuomintang adopted the revolutionary ideas of the west, but in a bid to sweep away not only the weak Qing Dynasty, but the western powers that had brought China to her knees. This is ...

The invasion of Korea by Japanese troops in May of 1592 was no ordinary military expedition: it was one of the decisive events in Asian history and the most tragic for the Korean peninsula until the mid-twentieth century. Japanese overlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi envisioned conquering Korea, Ming China, and eventually all of Asia; but Korea’s appeal to China’s Emperor Wanli for assistance triggered a six-year war involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers and encompassing the whole region. For...

Inserting China into the history of nineteenth-century colonialism, English Lessons explores the ways that Euroamerican imperial powers humiliated the Qing monarchy and disciplined the Qing polity in the wake of multipower invasions of China in 1860 and 1900. Focusing on the processes by which Great Britain enacted a pedagogical project that was itself a form of colonization, James L. Hevia demonstrates how British actors instructed the Manchu-Chinese elite on “proper” behavior in...

Providing historical insights essential to the understanding of contemporary China, this text presents a nation's story of trauma and growth during the early twentieth century. It explains how China's defeat by Japan in 1895 prompted an explosion of radical reform proposals and the beginning of elite Chinese disillusionment with the Qing government. The book explores how this event also prompted five decades of efforts to strengthen the state and the nation, democratize the political syste...

China’s unmatched ability to reinvent itself over the centuries is perhaps its most timeless asset. Even in the wake of violent civil wars, Mongol invaders, and turbulent governance, China has endured and, in recent times, achieved a level of prosperity rivaled by few other countries in the world. The events that transformed China from an imperial nation to a superpower are chronicled in this comprehensive volume that introduces the history of the world’s largest and one of its most dynami...

The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 is a seminal event in world history, yet it has been virtually ignored in Western literature. In the East, the focus of Chinese foreign policy has been to undo its results whereas the focus of Japanese foreign policy has been to confirm them. Japan supplanted China as the dominant regional power, disrupting the traditional power balance and fracturing the previous international harmony within the Confucian world, leaving enduring territorial and political...