Download or read book War Politics and Society in Early Modern China 900 1795 written by Peter Lorge and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-03-29 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive survey of Chinese military history is the only book in English to span the significant years from 900 – 1795. Peter Lorge questions current theories on China’s relationship to war, and argues that war was the most important tool used by the Chinese in building and maintaining their empire. Emphasizing the relationship between the military and politics, chapters are organised around specific military events and, Lorge argues, the strength of territorial claims and political impact of each dynasty were determined by their military capacity. Ideal as a course adoption text for Asian military studies, this is also valuable for students of Chinese studies, military studies and Chinese history.
Download or read book Modern Chinese Warfare 1795 1989 written by Bruce A. Elleman and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A survey of Chinese warfare, both internal and international, from the opium wars of the 1840s through to the end of Vietnam.
Download or read book The Measure of Civilization written by Ian Morris and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-27 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking look at Western and Eastern social development from the end of the ice age to today In the past thirty years, there have been fierce debates over how civilizations develop and why the West became so powerful. The Measure of Civilization presents a brand-new way of investigating these questions and provides new tools for assessing the long-term growth of societies. Using a groundbreaking numerical index of social development that compares societies in different times and places, award-winning author Ian Morris sets forth a sweeping examination of Eastern and Western development across 15,000 years since the end of the last ice age. He offers surprising conclusions about when and why the West came to dominate the world and fresh perspectives for thinking about the twenty-first century. Adapting the United Nations' approach for measuring human development, Morris's index breaks social development into four traits—energy capture per capita, organization, information technology, and war-making capacity—and he uses archaeological, historical, and current government data to quantify patterns. Morris reveals that for 90 percent of the time since the last ice age, the world's most advanced region has been at the western end of Eurasia, but contrary to what many historians once believed, there were roughly 1,200 years—from about 550 to 1750 CE—when an East Asian region was more advanced. Only in the late eighteenth century CE, when northwest Europeans tapped into the energy trapped in fossil fuels, did the West leap ahead. Resolving some of the biggest debates in global history, The Measure of Civilization puts forth innovative tools for determining past, present, and future economic and social trends.
Download or read book Emperor Huizong written by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China was the most advanced country in the world when Huizong ascended the throne in 1100 CE. In his eventful twenty-six year reign, the artistically-gifted emperor guided the Song Dynasty toward cultural greatness. Yet Huizong would be known to posterity as a political failure who lost the throne to Jurchen invaders and died their prisoner. The first comprehensive English-language biography of this important monarch, Emperor Huizong is a nuanced portrait that corrects the prevailing view of Huizong as decadent and negligent. Patricia Ebrey recasts him as a ruler genuinely ambitious—if too much so—in pursuing glory for his flourishing realm. After a rocky start trying to overcome political animosities at court, Huizong turned his attention to the good he could do. He greatly expanded the court’s charitable ventures, founding schools, hospitals, orphanages, and paupers’ cemeteries. An accomplished artist, he surrounded himself with outstanding poets, painters, and musicians and built palaces, temples, and gardens of unsurpassed splendor. What is often overlooked, Ebrey points out, is the importance of religious Daoism in Huizong’s understanding of his role. He treated Daoist spiritual masters with great deference, wrote scriptural commentaries, and urged his subjects to adopt his beliefs and practices. This devotion to the Daoist vision of sacred kingship eventually alienated the Confucian mainstream and compromised his ability to govern. Readers will welcome this lively biography, which adds new dimensions to our understanding of a passionate and paradoxical ruler who, so many centuries later, continues to inspire both admiration and disapproval.
Download or read book The Evolution of Operational Art written by John Andreas Olsen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Broadly defined as the grey area between strategy and tactics, operational art spans the theory and practice of planning and conducting campaigns and major operations aimed at accomplishing strategic and operational objectives in a given theatre of operations. An intermediate link between strategy and tactics has always existed, but a distinct concept that encompasses a systematic and deliberate plan of campaign for major operations is a mere two hundred years old. Based on country specific case-studies, this book describes how the concepts that underpin operational art originated, how they received practical expression in various campaigns, and how they developed over time. The point of departure is the campaigns of 'the God of War', Napoleon Bonaparte. The book then proceeds with chapters on the evolution of operational art in Prussia / Germany, the Soviet Union / Russia, the United Kingdom, United States, Israel, and China. The final chapter deals with the future of operational art in irregular warfare. Theory is critical to refining and improving existing methods of applying operational warfare, and its importance cannot be overstated; however, to be useful, theory and its accompanying vocabulary must be combined with a proper examination of historical trends and practical experience. The present volume attempts to achieve that combination. This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.
Download or read book Modern China written by Bruce A. Elleman and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-02-18 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in a fully updated edition, this accessible text provides a balanced history of modern China in a global context. Through years of living and research in China, Taiwan, Japan, and Russia, the authors are deeply qualified to understand China’s internal dynamics as well as its foreign relations over centuries. Arguing that modern Chinese history cannot be understood without a deep appreciation of the outside factors that have influenced the country, the authors focus on China’s near neighbors, especially Japan and Russia. They also emphasize the tragic role of almost endless warfare throughout Chinese history. Providing a unique comparative approach, the authors bridge the cultural divide separating Chinese history from Western readers trying to understand it. Specifically geared to the teaching requirements of the semester system, the book is divided into four parts and a total of twenty-eight chapters, corresponding either to two chapters per week in a fourteen-week semester or one chapter per week in a two-semester course.
Download or read book Atrocities The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History written by Matthew White and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-11-07 with total page 727 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An amusing (really) account of the murderous ways of despots, slave traders, blundering royals, gladiators and assorted hordes.”—New York Times Evangelists of human progress meet their opposite in Matthew White’s epic examination of history’s one hundred most violent events, or, in White’s piquant phrasing, “the numbers that people want to argue about.” Reaching back to the Second Persian War in 480 BCE and moving chronologically through history, White surrounds hard facts (time and place) and succinct takeaways (who usually gets the blame?) with lively military, social, and political histories.
Download or read book China at War written by Xiaobing Li and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-01-10 with total page 641 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive volume traces the Chinese military and its experiences over the past 2,500 years, describing clashes with other kingdoms and nations as well as internal rebellions and revolutions. As the first book of its kind, China at War: An Encyclopedia expands far beyond the conventional military history book that is focused on describing key wars, battles, military leaders, and influential events. Author Xiaobing Li—an expert writer in the subjects of Asian history and military affairs—provides not only a broad, chronological account of China's long military history, but also addresses Chinese values, concepts, and attitudes regarding war. As a result, readers can better understand the wider sociopolitical history of the most populous and one of the largest countries in the world—and grasp the complex security concerns and strategic calculations often behind China's decision-making process. This encyclopedia contains an introductory essay written to place the reference entries within a larger contextual framework, allowing students to compare Chinese with Western and American views and approaches to war. Topics among the hundreds of entries by experts in the field include Sunzi's classic The Art of War, Mao Zedong's guerrilla warfare in the 20th century, Chinese involvement in the Korean War and Vietnam War, and China's nuclear program in the 21st century.
Download or read book Defending Heaven written by James Waterson and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2013-06-19 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A very readable account of the protracted and ultimately unsuccessful efforts of the Song, Xia, and Jin dynasties to defend China from the Mongols.”—StrategyPage Defending Heaven brings together, for the first time in one volume, the complete histories of the wars the Jin, Song, Xia, and Ming dynasties fought against the Mongols. Lasting nearly two centuries, these wars, fought to defend Chinese civilization against a brutal and unrelenting foe, pitted personal heroics against the inexorable Mongol war machine and involved every part of the Chinese state. The resistance of the Chinese dynasties to the Khans is a complex and rich story of shifting alliances and political scheming, vast armies and navies, bloody battles and an astonishing technological revolution. The great events of China’s Mongol war are described and analyzed, detailing their immediate and later implications for Chinese history. In this excellent new book, James Waterson tackles this fascinating subject with characteristic verve and skill. Setting the Mongol war in the wider context of China’s ancient and almost perpetual conflict with the northern nomads, it sheds light on the evolution of China’s military society and the management, command, and control of the army by the Chinese state. “An excellent contribution not only to the study of the Mongol Empire but also to military history . . . Anyone interested in medieval warfare will find Defending Heaven of interest.”—Professor Timothy May, in De Re Militari
Download or read book Political Warfare written by Kerry K. Gershaneck and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Political Warfare provides a well-researched and wide-ranging overview of the nature of the People's Republic of China (PRC) threat and the political warfare strategies, doctrines, and operational practices used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The author offers detailed and illuminating case studies of PRC political warfare operations designed to undermine Thailand, a U.S. treaty ally, and Taiwan, a close friend"--
Download or read book Civil Military Relations in Chinese History written by Kai Filipiak and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-17 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern studies of civil--military relations recognise that the military is separate from civil society, with its own norms and values, principles of organization, and regulations. Key issues of concern include the means by which – and the extent to which – the civil power controls the military; and also the ways in which military values and approaches permeate and affect wider society. This book examines these issues in relation to China, covering the full range of Chinese history from the Zhou, Qin, and Han dynasties up to the Communist takeover in 1949. It traces how civil--military relations were different in different periods, explores how military specialization and professionalization developed, and reveals how military weakness often occurred when the civil authority with weak policies exerted power over the military. Overall, the book shows how attitudes to the military’s role in present day Communist China were forged in earlier periods.
Download or read book The Oxford World History of Empire written by Peter Fibiger Bang and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-02 with total page 1449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first world history of empire, reaching from the third millennium BCE to the present. By combining synthetic surveys, thematic comparative essays, and numerous chapters on specific empires, its two volumes provide unparalleled coverage of imperialism throughout history and across continents, from Asia to Europe and from Africa to the Americas. Only a few decades ago empire was believed to be a thing of the past; now it is clear that it has been and remains one of the most enduring forms of political organization and power. We cannot understand the dynamics and resilience of empire without moving decisively beyond the study of individual cases or particular periods, such as the relatively short age of European colonialism. The history of empire, as these volumes amply demonstrate, needs to be drawn on the much broader canvas of global history. Volume Two: The History of Empires tracks the protean history of political domination from the very beginnings of state formation in the Bronze Age up to the present. Case studies deal with the full range of the historical experience of empire, from the realms of the Achaemenids and Asoka to the empires of Mali and Songhay, and from ancient Rome and China to the Mughals, American settler colonialism, and the Soviet Union. Forty-five chapters detailing the history of individual empires are tied together by a set of global synthesizing surveys that structure the world history of empire into eight chronological phases.
Download or read book A Model for All Christian Women written by Gail King and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This biography of Candida Xu (1607–1680), granddaughter of the prominent Chinese Christian convert and statesman Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) and foremost Chinese Christian woman of the seventeenth century, is based on the biography of Candida Xu titled Histoire d’une dame chrétienne de la Chine (Paris, 1688) written by her confessor Philippe Couplet, S.J. (1623–1693), an obituary of his mother and other writings by her eldest son, and the Xu family history. Using these as well as other relevant European missionary and Chinese language sources, Candida Xu’s life as daughter, wife, mother, and generous contributor to the Christian Church is recounted. Events in her life are set in the context of historical and religious circumstances in China at the time. Consideration of the situation of women, particularly Christian women, draws out how Candida Xu’s faith helped her and other believing Christian women to gain greater freedom of choice and action.
Download or read book Beyond Power Transitions written by David C. Kang and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2024-10-08 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions about the likelihood of conflict between the United States and China have dominated international policy discussion for years. But the leading theory of power transitions between a declining hegemon and a rising rival is based exclusively on European examples, such as the Peloponnesian War, as chronicled by Thucydides, as well as the rise of Germany under Bismarck and the Anglo-German rivalry of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. What lessons does East Asian history offer, for both the power transitions debate and the future of U.S.-China relations? Examining the rise and fall of East Asian powers over 1,500 years, Beyond Power Transitions offers a new perspective on the forces that shape war and peace. Xinru Ma and David C. Kang argue that focusing on the East Asian experience underscores domestic risks and constraints on great powers, not relative rise and decline in international competition. They find that almost every regime transition before the twentieth century was instigated by internal challenges and even the exceptions deviated markedly from the predictions of power transition theory. Instead, East Asia was stable for a remarkably long time despite massive power differences because of common understandings about countries’ relative status. Provocative and incisive, this book challenges prevailing assumptions about the universality of power transition theory and shows why East Asian history has profound implications for international affairs today.
Download or read book The Rise of the Semi Core written by Samee Lashari and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-05-29 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its establishment in Europe, capitalism has witnessed a shift in global politico-economic power dynamics. Some nations ascended to dominate the world economy, while others fell from prominence to poverty. This transformation was particularly evident in the case of China and India, which were once central to the pre-modern global economy with their respective empires but transitioned into peripheries of the capitalist world trade structure. These regions experienced occupation, colonization, de-industrialization, and resource exploitation for the industrialization and modernization of core countries, primarily Western Europe and the United States. The Rise of the Semi-Core: China, India, and Pakistan in the World-System delves into modern capitalist history, unraveling the increasing complexities that give rise to the emergence of a semi-core. It argues that nations must possess both economic and strategic national powers to maintain their hierarchical position within the capitalist world-system. Western powers of the eighteenth century, equipped with superior military capabilities, expanded their dominion globally, including in China and India, converting these regions into peripheries that served the core's interests in terms of raw material provision, product consumption, and facilitating capital flow. Once decolonized, China and India initially adopted a statist model of development, nevertheless these nations could grow only when they aligned with core interests.
Download or read book The History of Taiwan written by Xiaobing Li and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-10-25 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This one-volume handbook explores the history of Taiwan, from its prehistory to its Japanese colonization to its tumultuous relationship with China in the 21st century. This addition to the Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations series focuses on significant events in the history of Taiwan, from ancient history to the present. Following the general series format, the book opens with the series foreword and a chronology of key events in Taiwan's history. Eleven chapters follow, with half of the book focusing on the modern historic events that occurred post–World War II. Chapters examine topics and eras including Pre-history and Early Civilization to 1100; Formosa: The Dutch Colony, 1622–1662; Cold War Island: Conflicts and Control, 1950–1972; and Democratization and Independence Movement, 1996–2004. A glossary of terms and annotated bibliography rounds out the work, making it an ideal resource for high school and undergraduate students as well as general readers who are looking for an introduction to Taiwan's history.
Download or read book State Reconstitution in China Japan and East Africa written by Graham F. Odell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-20 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presented through an investigation of Sengoku Japan and Republican China, this book proposes an innovative explanation of state formation that focuses on ideational and geographic factors. This study addresses the question; why are some collapsed states able to reconstitute themselves where others have not? Graham F. Odell employs two cases of successful state reconstitution – Republican China (1912-1949) and Sengoku Japan (1477-1615) – to derive a new theoretical framework around this question. These cases are distinct across several significant factors, making them ideal for a research design that seeks to formulate an original theoretical explanation for a phenomenon. Taken together, these two periods of Chinese and Japanese history are paradigmatic cases of state collapse and reconstitution and thus intrinsically compelling to the study of state formation. By developing a new theory of successful state reconstitution through emphasizing the roles of ideology, political symbolism and the geographical distribution of social power, this text provides an answer to the question that has not only scholarly and practical implications, but also a wide geographical applicability. This book will be key reading for scholars interested in matters of international politics, political science, and state formation, especially in East Asia.
