Product Description

China is now poised to take a key role on the world stage, but in the early twentieth century the situation could not have been more different. Rana Mitter goes back to this pivotal moment in Chinese history to uncover the origins of the painful transition from a premodern past into a modern world. By the 1920s the seemingly civilized world shaped over the last two thousand years by the legacy of the great philosopher Confucius was falling apart in the face of western imperialism and internal warfare. Chinese cities still bore the imprints of its ancient past with narrow, lanes and temples to long-worshipped gods, but these were starting to change with the influx of foreign traders, teachers, and missionaries, all eager to shape China's ancient past into a modern present. Mitter takes us through the resulting social turmoil and political promise, the devastating war against Japan in the 1940s, Communism and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, and the new era of hope in the 1980s ended by the Tian'anmen uprising. He reveals the impetus behind the dramatic changes in Chinese culture and politics as being China's "New Culture" - a strain of thought which celebrated youth, individualism, and the heady mixture of strange and seductive new cultures from places as far apart as America, India, and Japan.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42740 in Books
• Published on: 2005-05-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 378 pages

Review
an impressive and inventively researched book Jonathan Fenby, FT Magazine

Jonathan Fenby, FT Magazine
"an impressive and inventively researched book"

Jonathan Fenby, FT Magazine
"an impressive and inventively researched book"

Customer Reviews

China from 1919 to the 21st Century.
This is a well written and well researched book by the young university lecturer Rana Mitter at Oxford. He is also the author of at least two other books on China. The author attempts to tell us the 20th century story of China's political awakening by tracing many of the historical figures and writers to the small number of universities primarily in Beijing and Shanghai and the demonstrations of May 1919 in Beijing.

The book starts around the time of the May 4, 1919 demonstrations or what the author calls the first Tian'anmen Square (gate) demonstrations. The small number of protestors served as a touch stone or reference to future generations of Chinese as the century unfolded. In summary that group wanted to free China of its past ties to Confucianism and replace it with science and democracy. The author tells us the story of the development of China from that date and we read about a general "awakening" and the recent history of modern China. At the time of the 1919 demonstrations China was fragmented politically and had only 28,000 university students. Although the Nationalists had seized power, it lacked its own central authority and unifying government and was dominated by war lords and by colonial powers, the latter at its major seaports. The author believes that the students from the 1919 era and their contemporaries or those that followed in the decade after - the 1920s - set in motion the ideas, the political philosophies, and provided the leaders that changed China into a more modern state.

The modernization of China sharply lagged behind its Asian neighbor Japan, who started to modernize in the early 1850's building steel plants, railways, shipyards, and universities, in a unified effort among banks, the government including the military, and industry. China on the other hand remained fragmented, divided, a vast agrarian society with its costal cities dominated by colonial powers. The universities and intellectual base were very small by any standards, and for a country of the size of China were very small. In some ways China was similar to Russia in that it had a revolutionary spirit and rural unrest but a political vacuum. There was a general yearning for a new government or economic system and the communists filled that void almost by default after the Nationalists were weakened by WWII.

In any case the author tells a very detailed story about the people and ideas of the early café societies in Shanghai and the Beijing University that produced many popular writers and famous politicians including Mao and others. The author tells us about other writers such as Zou Raofen, Lu Xun, and the woman Ding Ling who wrote her "Miss Sophie" about her inner thoughts including sexuality in her writings, and about popular magazines such as "Life". The author goes on to lead us through the Nationalist movement, the communists, the invasion by Japan, the rise of the communists, the great leap forward, the cultural revolution, the failures of communism, the 1989 Tian'anmen massacre, etc. Instead of science and democracy China suffered through a series of crisis with as many as 60 million or more dead by famine and wars, with the people sometimes turning to cannibalism. Through all of the politicians and writers including Mao and others would reference the spirit of May 1919 although their own actions were no longer a reflection of the early ideals.

The book is just over 300 pages in medium font and gives a good introduction and overview to the development of modern China with many details on writers and political figures. As an added feature he includes nine pages of comments on follow up readings - mostly academic books or histories or other popular books - and mostly in English divided by category.

I enjoyed the book but thought it a bit short. Still it is worth 5 stars.

A Bitter Revolution
Mitter gives a thorough account of the influence of the May 4th movement on the political development of China in the twentieth century. He illustrates this with accounts of some of the principal players and their roles in the major dramas, or tragedies, to sweep across China.

However, although Mitter provides detail and a scholarly approach I feel the portraits he paints lack something of the human elements that bring historical characters to life.

Apart from this minor failing 'A Bitter Revolution' is a very enlightening read.

I would recommend this book to readers with some prior knowledge about post 1911 China.

an excellent book for A-level students
I am using this book as my principle source for my A-level history coursework on the Cultural Revolution, and strongly recommend it to anyone of a similar standard - here is an historian who can actually write flowing prose as well as tackle many of the difficult issues at the heart of this period!