A Companion to Chinese History

With a history as lengthy and complex as China's, it should come as no surprise that the scholarly effort to understand its historical experience has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. A Companion to Chinese History is a comprehensive overview of the latest intellectual developments in the study of China's history from antiquity to the present day. Offering cutting-edge scholarship by top historians from both China and around the globe, essays provide readers with an understanding of the current state of the field of Chinese history, including exciting recent developments, and promising future directions. Initial readings present an overview of Chinese historiography while covering such topics as China's changing position in global and world history, the role of history in contemporary Chinese politics, and the current state of the field from European, Chinese, and Japanese perspectives. The full chronology of China's history is covered next-with individual essays often challenging more conventional approaches to the periodization of Chinese history. Thematic approaches to Chinese history are then addressed, with essays touching on such diverse topics as sexuality and gender, literature, environmental history, science and technology, intellectual history, Taiwan, religion, economic and urban history, and many more. Timely and important, A Companion to Chinese History offers illuminating insights into the formidable history of one of the most important and least understood regions of the world.