China

Hucker, Charles O. China’s Imperial Past: An Introduction to Chinese History and Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975.
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A introduction to the sweep of Chinese history starting with the “Formative Age” through the “Prehistory” to 206 BCE and on finally to the Late Empire.
Chang, Kwang-chih. The Archaeology of Ancient China. 4th ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986. The book covers Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age archaeology in China. Although somewhat dated, it remains one of the most authoritative general overviews of research on Neolithic cultures up to the 1980s and provides a framework for the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in China.
Higham, Charles. The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia. Cambridge World Archaeology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Chapter 1 of the book provides a chronological chart showing the cultural sequence of China and Southeast Asia, while chapters 2 to 5 are overviews of the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures in the Yellow River valley, the Yangzi River valley, and Southwest and South China.
Ho, Ping-ti. The Cradle of the East: An Inquiry into the Indigenous Origins of Techniques and Ideas of Neolithic and Early Historic China, 5000–1000 B.C. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1975. By the 1970s the majority of scholars in the world believed that agriculture was introduced into China from the Middle East. This book points out that China should be seen as one of the primary centers of Neolithic agriculture and that millet must have been domesticated in the Yellow River valley. It challenges the diffusion hypothesis on the origin of prehistoric agriculture at that time.
Liu, Li, and Xingcan Chen. The Archaeology of China: From the Late Paleolithic to the Early Bronze Age. Cambridge World Archaeology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Discusses cultural evolution from the hunters and gatherers of the late Paleolithic to the farmers of the Neolithic to the early states in China. It also illustrates the environmental changes associated with this process of cultural development and discusses the interaction between prehistoric cultures inside and outside China. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139015301
Liu, Li. The Chinese Neolithic: Trajectories to Early States. New Studies in Archaeology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Applying theories of anthropological archaeology from the West, this book discusses the subsistence strategies, the settlement patterns, and the development of complex societies of the middle and late Neolithic cultures in the Yellow River valley and adjacent areas and how these changes set the foundation for the early states in China.
Wu, Xinzhi. “On the Origin of Modern Humans in China.” Quaternary International 117.1 (2004): 131–140. A comprehensive general overview with evidence of various aspects is presented. A new hypothesis concerning human evolution in China, namely, continuity and hybridization, is introduced and discussed. DOI: 10.1016/S1040–6182(03)00123-XS
Zhao, Zhijun. “New Archaeobotanic Data for the Study of the Origins of Agriculture in China.” Current Anthropology 52.S4 (2011): S295–S306. This is an updated review on archaeobotanic remains found in many Neolithic sites in mainland China. The author also argues that dryland farming of millets might have occurred in the Yellow River valley and North and Northeast China, while rice farming originated in the Yangzi valley and adjacent areas. Available online by subscription.
Nelson, Sarah M. The Development of Complexity in Prehistoric North China. Sino-Platonic Papers 63. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 1994. Focusing on the Hongshan culture, dated to c. sixty-five hundred to forty-two hundred years ago, this is one of the early studies on social changes and the development of social complexity of the late Neolithic period in North China, providing a theoretical framework for succeeding studies of the Neolithic cultures in Chinese archaeology.
Peterson, Christian E., Xueming Lu, Robert D. Drennan, and Da Zhu. “Hongshan Chiefly Communities in Neolithic Northeastern China.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107.13 (2010): 5756–5761. This article studies the social and political structure of the communities and changing populations of the Hongshan culture, dated to c. sixty-five hundred to forty-two hundred years ago in northeast China, by analyzing the distribution, contents, quantity, and density of the settlement in the region. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1000949107
Shelach, Gideon. Leadership Strategies, Economic Activity, and Interregional Interaction: Social Complexity in Northeast China. New York: Gardners, 2010. The book, originally published in 1999 (New York: Kluwer Academic / Plenum), is a study of the natural context; the economic, social, and political structure; the ideology; the population; the political hierarchy; and the interregional interaction of the Neolithic Hongshan culture, dated between c. sixty-five hundred and forty-two hundred years ago, and Bronze Age and historical cultures, dated between forty-three hundred and eight hundred years ago, in Northeast China.
Underhill, Anne P., and Junko Habu. “Early Communities in East Asia: Economic and Sociopolitical Organization at the Local and Regional Levels.” In Archaeology of Asia. Edited by Miriam T. Stark, 121–148. Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology 7. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. The first part of the chapter discusses changed subsistence strategies, growing population, labor division, regional differences in terms of social and economic systems, and increased intercommunity dynamics in North and South China between nine thousand and forty-six hundred years ago, which leads to the occurrence of local polities c. six thousand to forty-six hundred years ago. DOI: 10.1002/9780470774670
Underhill, Anne P. Craft Production and Social Change in Northern China. Fundamental Issues in Archaeology. New York: Kluwer Academic / Plenum, 2002. Focusing on the production and use of food containers made of pottery and bronze, the author analyzes the relation between the production and use of prestigious goods and the development of complex societies in northern China, particularly from the Dawenkou, Yangshao, and Longshan Neolithic cultures (dated from c. sixty-one hundred to thirty-nine hundred years ago in the middle and lower Yangzi River valley) to the early Bronze Age. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4615-0641-6
Lu, Tracey L.-D. “The Occurrence of Cereal Cultivation in China.” Asian Perspectives 45.2 (2006): 129–158. With more data from archaeological experiments of foraging and cultivating wild rice, it is argued that foraging is much more efficient than cultivation of wild cereals. Further, the author argues that farming and foraging were not mutually exclusive but coexisted in many Neolithic cultures and that both were important for Neolithic peoples living in different natural contexts. DOI: 10.1353/asi.2006.0022
Lu, Tracey L.-D. “Mid-Holocene Climate and Cultural Dynamics in Eastern Central China.” In Climate Change and Cultural Dynamics: A Global Perspective on Mid-Holocene Transitions. Edited by David G. Anderson, Kirk A. Maasch, and Daniel H. Sandweiss, 297–330. New York: Elsevier, 2007. This chapter focuses on the dynamics between climatic and resource changes and prehistoric cultural development in eastern China between c. seven thousand and forty-five hundred years ago. It also points out problems in the reconstruction of past climates and environments and in the interpretation of cultural changes, criticizing the environmental determinism adopted by some natural scientists in mainland China.


CHINA GENERAL
Balazs, Etienne. Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy: Variations on a Theme. Edited by Arthur W. Wright. Translated by H. M. Wright. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972. Serves as good background reading on the formation of entrenchment of Confucian bureaucracy, especially after the Tang. Originally published in 1964; reprinted as recently as 1991.
Wang, Gungwu. Anglo-Chinese Encounters since 1800: War, Trade, Science, and Governance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Originally presented at the Smuts Commonwealth Lectures at the University of Cambridge, this book synthesizes the broad range of interplays between the Anglo world—including the United States—and the Chinese. Moving beyond politics and diplomacy, Wang calls for attention to the underappreciated impact of the West on China’s modernization. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511481321
Dardess, John W. “From Mongol Empire to Yüan Dynasty: Changing Forms of Imperial Rule in Mongolia and Central Asia.” Monumenta Serica 30 (1972–1973): 117–165. Dardess traces the expansion of the Yuan state, largely for military considerations, into the former Tangut Empire, Mongolia, the Uighur kingdom, and the upper Yenisei region. Such far-flung expansions proved to be a huge financial burden, and by 1300 the Yuan state had yielded control of all but Mongolia. The result was a contiguous unitary state that linked China proper and Mongolia.Brose, Michael C. Subjects and Masters: Uyghurs in the Mongol Empire. Studies on East Asia 28. Bellingham: Center for East Asian Studies, Western Washington University, 2007. Brose traces the ways that several influential Uyghur families adapted to the rise of the Mongol Empire, noting their status both as subjects of the Mongols and masters of the Chinese. He shows that Uyghurs exploited their mastery of Chinese culture as a form of political and cultural capital that helped them advance bureaucratic careers and social status in the Mongol Empire.
Fletcher, Joseph. “The Mongols: Ecological and Social Perspectives.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 46.1 (1986): 11–50. A classic essay by a pioneering scholar that analyzes Mongolian political dynamics in terms of social organization and the steppe environment. Available online by subscription. DOI: 10.2307/2719074
Martin, Henry Desmond. The Rise of Chingis Khan and His Conquest of North China. Edited by Eleanor Lattimore. New York: Octagon, 1981. Originally published in 1950 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press). Dated but still useful for those without direct access to works in East Asian languages, this detailed narrative of the Mongol conquest emphasizes battles.
Endicott-West, Elizabeth. Mongolian Rule in China: Local Administration in the Yuan Dynasty. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph 29. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Council on East Asian Studies, 1989b. A detailed study of local administration in China under the Mongols, with particular focus on the evolution of the Mongolian office of darugachi from military-conquest institution to a civilian bureaucratic administration. Endicott-West stresses the relatively decentralized nature of Mongol governance with its strong tradition of conciliar decision making.
Smith, Paul J., and Richard Von Glahn, eds. The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History. Harvard East Asian Monograph 221. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2003. The Yuan has often fallen between the cracks of two far-better-studied periods (the Tang-Song and the Ming-Qing, c. 7th to 13th centuries and 1550–1900, respectively). This important collection of eleven essays both explores the Yuan’s links to these earlier and later periods and, more provocatively, argues that the early 12th to early 15th centuries constituted a distinct historical epoch, the “Song-Yuan-Ming transition.”
Morgan, David O. The Mongols. 2d ed. Peoples of Europe. Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. An accessible and well-written introduction to the Mongol Empire, written by a Persian specialist who in the first edition (originally published in 1986) synthesized the best Western-language scholarship up to the mid-1980s. This second edition of the book includes a bibliographic supplement of works published up to the mid-1990s.
Delgado, James P. Khubilai Khan’s Lost Fleet: In Search of a Legendary Armada. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Deftly synthesizing Western historical scholarship and the results of recent underwater archaeology, Delgado tells the story of the abortive Mongol invasions of Japan, from the perspective of maritime history.
May, Timothy M. The Mongol Art of War: Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Military System. Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2007. May’s focus is earlier than the Yuan period, but much of the book is directly relevant for understanding the Yuan armies. He synthesizes most of the relevant Western-language scholarship, offers cogent analysis of the changing Mongol military, and provides a wonderful bibliography of primary sources in translation.
Allsen, Thomas T. Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997.  Allsen shows that Mongol political interests and aesthetic preferences deeply shaped the flow of textiles across Eurasia. The Mongols harnessed the textile technologies and craftsmen from Persia, central Asia, and China to produce what they wanted, how they wanted it, and where they wanted it.
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Allsen, Thomas T. Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Allsen examines in detail how the economic, military, political, religious, medical, and gastronomic imperatives the Mongols set into motion had an effect on material resources, personnel, technologies, and information throughout Eurasia. He focuses especially on China and Persia as cultural and technological centers of the time. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511497445
Dardess, John W. Conquerors and Confucians: Aspects of Political Change in Late Yüan China. Studies in Oriental Culture 9. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973. Dardess argues that beginning in the early 14th century, the Mongol court was increasingly isolated from the steppe, and as a result, Mongol elites and their central Asian advisors increasingly underwent a “thorough Confucianization.” He chronicles the Yuan government’s experiments with devolving resources and authority to regional authorities, and later efforts to direct the dynastic restoration from the center.
Robinson, David M. Empire’s Twilight: Northeast Asia under the Mongols. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph 68. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009. Drawing on Chinese and Korean primary materials, Robinson traces the impact of spreading rebellion on the political, military, social, economic, and social connections that linked North China, Liaodong (southern Manchuria), and the Korean kingdom of Koryŏ. He argues that personal and family allegiances often trumped those of “nation.”




Smith, Paul J. Taxing Heaven’s Storehouse: Horses, Bureaucrats, and the Destruction of the Sichuan Tea Industry, 1074–1224. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph 32. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1991. A study of the Sichuan Tea and Horse Agency established by Wang Anshi as a part of new policies in the 1070s, Smith portrays the agency as an example of governmental engagement in the economy at its fullest extent and depicts its subsequent decline over the succeeding 150 years.
Wang Gungwu. Divided China: Preparing for Reunification, 883–947. 2d ed. Singapore: World Scientific, 2007. This is a revised edition of Professor Wang’s pathbreaking study of the Five Dynasties politics, titled The Structure of Power in North China during the Five Dynasties (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1963), which argues that the northern dynasties played a critical role in taming the power that the military governors had accumulated in the late Tang. DOI: 10.1142/9789812770554
Davis, Richard L. Wind against the Mountain: The Crisis of Politics and Culture in Thirteenth-Century China. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph 42. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1996. Davis provides a detailed account of the Song loyalist movement during the transition from Song to Yuan, with particular attention given to the psychology of loyalism and to the ways in which it was gendered.
Bingham, Woodbridge. The Founding of the T’ang Dynasty: The Fall of Sui and Rise of T’ang; A Preliminary Survey. Studies in Chinese and Related Civilizations 4. Baltimore: Waverly, 1941. An outdated but meticulous study of the transition from the Sui to Tang dynasties, this is valuable for its careful treatment of the primary sources. Republished in 1970 (New York: Octagon).
Pulleyblank, Edwin G. The Background of the Rebellion of An Lu-shan. London Oriental Series 4. London: Oxford University Press, 1955. A comprehensive and detailed overview of the first half of the 8th century, commonly known as the “high Tang,” focusing on the political events as well as the social and economic conditions that led up to An Lushan’s rebellion in the 750s, which almost toppled the dynasty. Republished in 1982 (Westport, CT: Greenwood).
Kuhn, Dieter. The Age of Confucian Rule: The Song Transformation of China. History of Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2009. A new and excellent single-volume treatment by a leading German historian, it combines a narrative history with chapters on a wide range of topics.
Lorge, Peter Allan, ed. Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2011. The only book-length history in Western languages of this important period between the Tang and Song dynasties, the authors present the diverse states of north and south through art and culture as well as politics.
Beckwith, Christopher I. The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia: A History of the Struggle for Great Power among Tibetans, Turks, Arabs, and Chinese during the Early Middle Ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987. A political and military history of medieval Tibet, a period when it was a power to be contended with by its east and middle Asian neighbors.
Drompp, Michael R. Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History. Brill’s Inner Asian Library 13. Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 2005. A well-documented study of the sudden collapse of the Uighur Empire in 840 and the crisis it precipitated in Tang policies toward central Asia, on the basis of the accounts in the two Tang dynastic histories and the rich collection of documents in the writings of Li Deyu, who had been charged by the Tang emperor with handling the crisis.
Dunnell, Ruth W. The Great State of White and High: Buddhism and State Formation in Eleventh-Century Xia. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1996. The only Western-language history of the Tangut state of Xi Xia, this book shows how the Tanguts fashioned an imperial ideology from tantric Buddhism, and in so doing provided a model for the Mongols and Manchus.
Mackerras, Colin. The Uighur Empire according to T’ang Dynastic Histories: A Study in Sino-Uighur Relations, 744–840. Asian Publications 2. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1973. A parallel translation of the sections on the Uighur Empire in the two Tang dynastic histories, with numerous details concerning the relationship between the Uighurs and the Tang. Originally published in 1968 (Canberra: Center of Oriental Studies, Australian National University).
Wittfogel, Karl A., and Feng Chia-sheng. History of Chinese Society: Liao, 907–1125. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society n.s. 36. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1949. A comprehensive and systematic treatment of the Khitan Liao Empire in northeastern Asia.
Wright, Arthur F. The Sui Dynasty: The Unification of China, A.D. 581–617. New York: Knopf, 1978. The only history devoted to the Sui in a Western language, this work was published after the author’s death and provides both in-depth treatment of the reunification of China and a general survey of this short but important dynasty.
Wright, Arthur F., and Denis C. Twitchett, eds. Perspectives on the T’ang. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973. A topical volume that defined the state of Western historical studies of the Tang in the 1970s, its eleven chapters cover a wide range of topics: political and institutional, intellectual and religious, and literary.
Lewis, Mark Edward. China’s Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty. History of Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2009. Lewis’s book is a welcome new treatment of Tang history, a scholarly and accessible introduction to a complex period, and reflects many of the scholarly findings of recent years.
Holcombe, Charles. The Genesis of East Asia, 221 B.C.–907 A.D. Asian Interactions and Comparisons. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001. A pathbreaking study that places the history of imperial China, through the Tang, within the framework of the spread of a Sinocentric East Asian civilization.
Fairbank, John K. China: A New History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1992. The classic Fairbank textbook on China. Devotes a major segment to China’s experience with imperialism and the anti-imperialism (nationalism) that emerged as a consequence.
Cohen, Paul A. China Unbound: Evolving Perspectives on the Chinese Past. London and New York: Routledge/Curzon, 2003. Absolutely essential reading. A collection of selections from Cohen’s lifetime of careful scholarship. Argues (p. 16) that Eurocentric approaches to Chinese history all too easily lead to the failings of “stereotyping, caricaturing, essentialization, and mythologization.”
Cassel, Pär Kridtoffer. Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Extremely interesting, well-informed discussion of the problematical meaning of the concepts of nation-state and sovereignty, as exemplified by the practice of extraterritoriality. Cassel notes that there was an “acute sense of indeterminancy [surrounding] . . . an institution that was supposed to give foreigners a privileged status” (p. 4). DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199792054.001.0001
Kayaoğlu, Turan. Legal Imperialism: Sovereignty and Extraterritoriality in Japan, the Ottoman Empire, and China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511730252
Discusses the central issue of extraterritoriality in the jurisprudence of imperialism, in three national settings. Extensive bibliography.
Wang, Dong. China’s Unequal Treaties: Narrating National History. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. Explores several related questions: What is an unequal treaty, in the Chinese context but also more generally? “Are all treaties between powers of unequal strength—that is, virtually all international treaties—unequal treaties?” (p. 5) How has the concept “unequal treaties” shaped Chinese nationalism? Extensive bibliography of works in English and Chinese.


MING GENERAL
Brook, Timothy. The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. History of Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2010. A leading historian of the Ming dynasty, Brook supplements his expertise in commerce, trade, transportation, and administrative structures with attention to climate change and its consequences to illustrate patterns of underlying continuity between the Yuan and Ming periods.
Dardess, John W. Ming China, 1368–1644: A Concise History of a Resilient Empire. Critical Issues in World and International History. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. A concise and insightful synthesis of a lifetime of teaching and research by a leading scholar of the Ming period. Intended for undergraduate courses but useful for specialists too.
Mote, Frederick W. Imperial China, 900–1800. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Another readable and insightful synthesis of a lifetime of teaching and research. Nearly a third of the book is devoted to the Ming. Mote also provides an excellent bibliography of the best secondary scholarship.
Dreyer, Edward L. Early Ming China: A Political History, 1355–1435. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982. An important study that demonstrates the prominence of military concerns and personnel at the early Ming court. Dreyer argues that the death of the Xuande emperor marked a growing dominance of civil officials in court politics and dynastic policy.
Huang, Ray. 1587, a Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981. An evocative study of Ming political culture, organized in finely drawn chapters of key figures from the late 16th century. It is essential reading that serves as a point of departure for many studies, whether they accept or reject Huang’s notion about the inflexibility of Ming administrative structures.
Swope, Kenneth. A Dragon’s Head and a Serpent’s Tail: Ming China and the First Great East Asian War, 1592–1598. Campaigns and Commanders 20. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009.
SaHu, Sheng. Imperialism and Chinese Politics. Beijing: Foreign Languages, 1955. Oft-cited Chinese account of imperialism in China. First published in Chinese in 1948. Detailed discussion of events between 1839 (First Opium War) and 1925 (death of Sun Yat-sen). Quotes many important documents, including those from official government archives of the Qing dynasty.
Swope makes extensive use of Chinese and Korean primary sources, in this detailed narrative of the abortive campaigns by Hideyoshi, Japan’s paramount leader, in Korea.
Waldron, Arthur. The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth. Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature, and Institutions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990. A pioneering study that examines the interplay of cultural constructs regarding self and the Other, geopolitical strategy, logistics, and politics. Waldron argues that the Great Wall was the result of debate and compromise at the Ming court rather than an emblem of xenophobia or some unchanging Chinese attitudes toward the rest of the world.
Levathes, Louise. When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–1433. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. An informed and accessible account of Zheng He’s voyages, written for an educated general audience. The book works well in undergraduate college courses.
Ptak, Roderich. China’s Seaborne Trade with South and Southeast Asia, 1200–1750. Collected Studies CS640. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999. A collection of fourteen previously published essays on sharply focused topics, by a leading scholar of Chinese maritime trade during the premodern period. These painstakingly documented essays are perhaps most useful for those who bring substantial background knowledge to the table.
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Wade, Geoff. “The Zheng He Voyages: A Reassessment.” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 77.1 (2005): 37–58. Wade critically examines claims made about objectives, accomplishments, and limitations of the Ming dynasty’s early-15th-century maritime expeditions into Southeast and South Asia, arguing that the Ming was engaged in a variety of gunboat diplomacy and military intimidation.


QING GENERAL
Hsü, Immanuel C. Y. The Rise of Modern China. 6th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. The best introduction to more traditional scholarship on the period, but the author’s strength is clearly after 1840. Good for foreign relations. Originally published in 1970. Substantially re-edited with the third edition in 1983. Chapters 1 to 8 deal with the period with no major changes since that edition.
Rowe, William T. China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2009. A succinct exposition of recent research by a leading scholar among the “revisionists” of Qing historians. An excellent supplement to other more traditional overviews, helping us to place Qing history on a sounder basis as that of a state, or empire, in recent history.
Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. 3d ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2013. Good as a first introduction to the field and a great pleasure to read. Political and economic history with a great deal of social history often focused on individuals. Chapters 2 to 6 on the period. First edition 1990. Third edition has been revised to incorporate recent scholarship, including commerce and related topics. A volume with sources has been published to accompany its use as a textbook.
Di Cosmo, Nicola. “The Manchu Conquest in World-Historical Perspective: A Note on Trade and Silver.” Journal of Central Eurasian Studies 1 (2009): 43–60. A leading specialist on early Manchu history emphasizes the need to study all constituent elements in a historical event, like the Manchu conquest of China, in a world-historical perspective. Focus on the elements in the formation of the Manchu state and the importance of trade and how it was put to use for the state.
Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Controversial study on how and when the Eastern or Western end of the Eurasian continent held a dominating position in the world economy. Argues that there were differences in various technologies but neither was really ahead until the European take-off around 1800 and due to contingent factors.
Wong, R. Bin. China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. A comparative study of Chinese and European developments searching the factors that eventually led to European dominance from around 1850. Emphasis on the political development of Europe and the analytical tools to use this in comparison with the Chinese development, which is then studied on its own premises.



QING
Wakeman, Frederic, Jr. The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. A magisterial work starting in the Northeast during the Ming Dynasty and following the formation of the Manchu state and the Qing dynasty, with developments in the economy and climate and details of the military campaigns but also the intellectual life in the transition. Manchu sources not used. Mistakes found, so do not use details unchecked.
Chang, Michael G. A Court on Horseback: Imperial Touring and the Construction of Qing Rule, 1680–1785. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007. The Southern Tours of the Kangxi and, particularly, the Qianlong emperors were, among other things, projections of imperial power to the prosperous regions of the lower Yangzi region. They brought the emperor out of the palace, demonstrated the logistic talent of the Manchu and Mongol military officials, and could serve as a way to lessen tensions between a dynasty founded on the banner institution and the Han Chinese elite.
Crossley, Pamela Kyle. A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. The development of rulership as the territory expanded from the formation of the banner system and to its full extent under the Qianlong emperor. Important for its understanding of what happened to the Han Chinese who lived close to, or mixed with, the Manchus and how they entered the banners. Also how the emperors later adopted roles that would legitimate their power in the eyes of various groups when they came under Qing rule and the history created around them.
Elliott, Mark C. The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. The banner system as a military and state institution and how it contributed to the Qing state and survived to the end of the dynasty, as a distinct group to live in their own way side by side with the Han Chinese. Important is the use of sources in Manchu and what the Manchus wrote about themselves in their own language.
Rawski, Evelyn. The Last Emperors: A Social History of the Qing Imperial Institution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. An exhaustive study of the Qing imperial institution from the founding around 1600. Focuses on material conditions, including the capitals and other buildings, on the construction of the Qing elite, and, in Part Three, on the rituals. Important to understand the role of the Manchu imperial institution from the early days. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520212893.001.0001
Torbert, Preston M. The Ch’ing Imperial Household Department: A Study of Its Organization and Principal Functions, 1662–1796. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977. The Imperial Household Department was in charge of the palace and the institutions and personnel connected to it, both inside and outside the palace, and including procurements of money and material predominantly in Southern China. Still the basic work on this institution.
HAN STUDIES
Crespigny, Rafe de. “The Recruitment System of the Imperial Bureaucracy of Later Han.” Chung Chi Journal 崇基學報 November 1966, 6.1: 67–78. This is a concise overview of the recruitment system after Wang Mang was destroyed and the Han dynastic order reestablished.
Herbert, Penelope Ann. Examine the Honest, Appraise the Able: Contemporary Assessments of Civil Service Selection in Early T’ang China. Canberra: Australian National University, 1988. Containing a complete translation of the relevant chapters in the late-eighth-century encyclopedic history Tongdian 通典, this book also provides a good introduction to the basic features of the Tang examination system.
Wu, Xinzhi. “On the Origin of Modern Humans in China.” Quaternary International 117.1 (2004): 131–140. A comprehensive general overview with evidence of various aspects is presented. A new hypothesis concerning human evolution in China, namely, continuity and hybridization, is introduced and discussed. DOI: 10.1016/S1040–6182(03)00123-XS
Chang, Kwang-chih. The Archaeology of Ancient China. 4th ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986. The book covers Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age archaeology in China. Although somewhat dated, it remains one of the most authoritative general overviews of research on Neolithic cultures up to the 1980s and provides a framework for the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in China.
Ho, Ping-ti. The Cradle of the East: An Inquiry into the Indigenous Origins of Techniques and Ideas of Neolithic and Early Historic China, 5000–1000 B.C. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1975. By the 1970s the majority of scholars in the world believed that agriculture was introduced into China from the Middle East. This book points out that China should be seen as one of the primary centers of Neolithic agriculture and that millet must have been domesticated in the Yellow River valley. It challenges the diffusion hypothesis on the origin of prehistoric agriculture at that time.
Higham, Charles. The Bronze Age of Southeast Asia. Cambridge World Archaeology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Chapter 1 of the book provides a chronological chart showing the cultural sequence of China and Southeast Asia, while chapters 2 to 5 are overviews of the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures in the Yellow River valley, the Yangzi River valley, and Southwest and South China.
Liu, Li, and Xingcan Chen. The Archaeology of China: From the Late Paleolithic to the Early Bronze Age. Cambridge World Archaeology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Discusses cultural evolution from the hunters and gatherers of the late Paleolithic to the farmers of the Neolithic to the early states in China. It also illustrates the environmental changes associated with this process of cultural development and discusses the interaction between prehistoric cultures inside and outside China. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139015301
Zhao, Zhijun. “New Archaeobotanic Data for the Study of the Origins of Agriculture in China.” Current Anthropology 52.S4 (2011): S295–S306. This is an updated review on archaeobotanic remains found in many Neolithic sites in mainland China. The author also argues that dryland farming of millets might have occurred in the Yellow River valley and North and Northeast China, while rice farming originated in the Yangzi valley and adjacent areas. Available online by subscription.
Liu, Li. The Chinese Neolithic: Trajectories to Early States. New Studies in Archaeology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Applying theories of anthropological archaeology from the West, this book discusses the subsistence strategies, the settlement patterns, and the development of complex societies of the middle and late Neolithic cultures in the Yellow River valley and adjacent areas and how these changes set the foundation for the early states in China.
Nelson, Sarah M. The Development of Complexity in Prehistoric North China. Sino-Platonic Papers 63. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 1994. Focusing on the Hongshan culture, dated to c. sixty-five hundred to forty-two hundred years ago, this is one of the early studies on social changes and the development of social complexity of the late Neolithic period in North China, providing a theoretical framework for succeeding studies of the Neolithic cultures in Chinese archaeology.
Peterson, Christian E., Xueming Lu, Robert D. Drennan, and Da Zhu. “Hongshan Chiefly Communities in Neolithic Northeastern China.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107.13 (2010): 5756–5761. This article studies the social and political structure of the communities and changing populations of the Hongshan culture, dated to c. sixty-five hundred to forty-two hundred years ago in northeast China, by analyzing the distribution, contents, quantity, and density of the settlement in the region. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1000949107
Shelach, Gideon. Leadership Strategies, Economic Activity, and Interregional Interaction: Social Complexity in Northeast China. New York: Gardners, 2010. The book, originally published in 1999 (New York: Kluwer Academic / Plenum), is a study of the natural context; the economic, social, and political structure; the ideology; the population; the political hierarchy; and the interregional interaction of the Neolithic Hongshan culture, dated between c. sixty-five hundred and forty-two hundred years ago, and Bronze Age and historical cultures, dated between forty-three hundred and eight hundred years ago, in Northeast China.
Underhill, Anne P., and Junko Habu. “Early Communities in East Asia: Economic and Sociopolitical Organization at the Local and Regional Levels.” In Archaeology of Asia. Edited by Miriam T. Stark, 121–148. Blackwell Studies in Global Archaeology 7. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. The first part of the chapter discusses changed subsistence strategies, growing population, labor division, regional differences in terms of social and economic systems, and increased intercommunity dynamics in North and South China between nine thousand and forty-six hundred years ago, which leads to the occurrence of local polities c. six thousand to forty-six hundred years ago. DOI: 10.1002/9780470774670
Underhill, Anne P. Craft Production and Social Change in Northern China. Fundamental Issues in Archaeology. New York: Kluwer Academic / Plenum, 2002. Focusing on the production and use of food containers made of pottery and bronze, the author analyzes the relation between the production and use of prestigious goods and the development of complex societies in northern China, particularly from the Dawenkou, Yangshao, and Longshan Neolithic cultures (dated from c. sixty-one hundred to thirty-nine hundred years ago in the middle and lower Yangzi River valley) to the early Bronze Age. DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4615-0641-6
Lu, Tracey L.-D. “The Occurrence of Cereal Cultivation in China.” Asian Perspectives 45.2 (2006): 129–158. With more data from archaeological experiments of foraging and cultivating wild rice, it is argued that foraging is much more efficient than cultivation of wild cereals. Further, the author argues that farming and foraging were not mutually exclusive but coexisted in many Neolithic cultures and that both were important for Neolithic peoples living in different natural contexts. DOI: 10.1353/asi.2006.0022
Lu, Tracey L.-D. “Mid-Holocene Climate and Cultural Dynamics in Eastern Central China.” In Climate Change and Cultural Dynamics: A Global Perspective on Mid-Holocene Transitions. Edited by David G. Anderson, Kirk A. Maasch, and Daniel H. Sandweiss, 297–330. New York: Elsevier, 2007. This chapter focuses on the dynamics between climatic and resource changes and prehistoric cultural development in eastern China between c. seven thousand and forty-five hundred years ago. It also points out problems in the reconstruction of past climates and environments and in the interpretation of cultural changes, criticizing the environmental determinism adopted by some natural scientists in mainland China.








LONGUE DUREE
Needham, Joseph. The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West. London: Allen & Unwin, 1969b.Needham’s collected arguments for the primacy of social and economic factors in the conditioning of Chinese scientific achievement. One can follow in this collection of papers, published from 1944 onward, the development and modification of the author’s views. See the book review by Nathan Sivin in Journal of Asian Studies 30.4 (1971): 870–873.
Needham, Joseph. Science in Traditional China: A Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. Four informal lectures, of which only one is based on previously unpublished research.
Huang, Ray, and Joseph Needham. “The Nature of Chinese Society: A Technical Interpretation.” East and West n.s. 24.3–4 (1974): 381–401. Emphasizes failure to fully develop a money economy (although paper money was first used in China). Zilsel, Edgar. The Social Origins of Modern Science. Edited by Diederick Raven, Wolfgang Krohn, and Robert S. Cohen. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 200. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 2000. Zilsel was one of the very few social historians of science in the United States c. 1940. He argued that under capitalism artisans and scholars interacted, giving rise to new technical ideas, an idea that has been fruitful since. His studies were generally ignored by mainstream historians of scientific thought, who exclusively depended on intellectual history. The essays in this collection were published mostly between 1940 and 1945, but a couple first appear here. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-4142-0
Reid, Anthony, ed. Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese. St. Leonards, Australia: Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with Allen and Unwin, 1996. Provides a rare and valuable insight into the historical interaction between China and Southeast Asia through a number of excellent case studies. A must-read for those interested in Southeast Asian history and those willing to gain a broader understanding of contemporary relations between China and Southeast Asia.
Hamashita, Takeshi. China, East Asia, and the Global Economy: Regional and Historical Perspectives. Edited by Linda Grove and Mark Seldon. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. Translation of eight essays from the hand of a renowned Japanese historian with an excellent introduction by the editors. Covering the period since the Ming (1368–1644) dynasty, the essays discuss the tribute system, the silver and opium trade, and trade and financial networks from a Chinese, regional, and global perspective.
Wang, Gungwu. “Patterns of Chinese Migration in Historical Perspective.” In Observing Change in Asia: Essays in Honour of J.A.C. Mackie. Edited by Ronald James May and W. J. O’Malley, 33–48. Bathurst, Australia: Crawford House, 1989. In this illuminating article, Wang Gungwu describes the characteristics and interrelations of four patterns of Chinese migration since 1800, namely, the huashang (Chinese trader), the huagong (Chinese laborer), the huaqiao (Chinese sojourner), and the huayi (descendant of migrants), arguing that the huashang pattern has been dominant since ancient times.
Cartier, Carolyn L. Globalizing South China. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. Covering the period from Zheng He’s 15th-century expeditions up to contemporary times, Cartier looks at South China as a “transboundary cultural economy” and exposes the complexities involved in the making of a region. The first five chapters cover the period before 1978; the last three deal with post-1978 South China. DOI: 10.1002/9780470712764
McKeown, Adam. “Conceptualizing Chinese Diasporas, 1842 to 1949.” Journal of Asian Studies 58.2 (May 1999): 306–337. Challenging migration narratives that center around adaptation or patriotism, McKeown’s approach places Chinese migration in a global context. From the analytical viewpoint of diasporic institutions, identities, links, and flows, the article covers the topics of labor migration, migration networks, nationalism, ethnic Chinese, and culture. Available online for purchase or by subscription. DOI: 10.2307/2659399
Ma, Lawrence J. C., and Carolyn Cartier, eds. The Chinese Diaspora: Space, Place, Mobility, and Identity. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. The five parts of the volume discuss the following themes: historical and contemporary diasporas; Hong Kong and Taiwan as diasporic homelands; ethnicity, identity, and diaspora as home; migration and settlements in North America; and transmigrants in Oceania.
Kuhn, Philip A. Chinese among Others: Emigration in Modern Times. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008. In this impressive volume that contains eight chapters, Kuhn discusses Chinese emigration in relation to maritime expansion, early colonial empires, imperialism, revolution, and reform. He pays special attention to the various “human ecologies” of Southeast Asia, the Americas and Australasia, and Europe. Contains glossary and index.
Wang, Gungwu. The Chinese Overseas: From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Originally delivered as three Reischauer lectures at Harvard University, the book offers a long-term overview of the Chinese overseas experience. It treats the basic migration patterns of traders, laborers, and economic and political migrants, and discusses main themes, including identity, self-perception, and policies of the homeland and host societies.
Lu, Gwei-Djen, and Joseph Needham. Celestial Lancets: A History and Rationale of Acupuncture and Moxa. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980. A detailed and authoritative work on the history of acupuncture. Offers important information on its transmission to Europe and its influence from the 16th century on.
Unschuld, Paul. Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Focuses on bencao (pharmaceutics) literature and its contents in Chinese history and the historical development of bencao. The Chinese pharmacopoeias of the 20th century and the drug code of the People’s Republic of China are also mentioned.
Unschuld, Paul. Medicine in China: A History of Ideas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Explores the history of Chinese medicine from the Shang dynasty to the People’s Republic of China. Focuses on medical thought in different periods and its relation to Confucianism and Chinese religions. Medicine in transition in the 20th century is also mentioned. Selected Chinese medical texts are translated.
Hinrichs, T. J., and Linda Barnes, eds. Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2012. A collection of articles by many leading scholars in the field intended as a standard introduction for university students in the United States. Organized according to dynasties, this book sums up modern research perspectives combined with copious illustrations. Discussion of the development of Chinese medicine around the world is also included.
Chang, K. C., ed. Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977. Like Anderson 1988, this is a classic study of the anthropology of food in China. Rather than take a regional approach to cuisines as Anderson does, this collection takes a historical approach by examining food traditions in major periods of Chinese history.
Bray, Francesca. The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Prior to 1600, Asian societies were technologically superior to European ones. This book provides a strong background to understand the basis on which rice cultivation occurred in these Asian societies.
Perkins, Dwight. Agricultural Development in China, 1368–1968. Chicago: Aldine, 1969. One of the most significant studies by a Westerner of Chinese agricultural development. The main focus of this book is the ways that China has been able to build and sustain agricultural production to feed its large population over time.
King, F. H. Farmers of Forty Centuries. Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 1911. Seeks to address how Asian (including Chinese) farmers have been able to produce crops on their land intensively for so long. Reprinted as recently as 2011 (Folkestone, UK: Global Oriental).
Kuhn, Philip A. Origins of the Modern Chinese State. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. This work explores the origin of the PRC state in late–Imperial China, with useful consideration of the roots of China’s hukou system as a statecraft that has been used by emperors and the ROC and PRC governments.
Wang, Fei-Ling. Organizing through Division and Exclusion: China’s Hukou System. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. This is the first comprehensive study of China’s hukou system in English. The text traces the history and development of the hukou system, describing and assessing its functions, impact, and operational mechanisms. The work also analyzes the hukou, in comparison with the systems of exclusion and discrimination in other nations, notably, Brazil and India, by employing a theory of institutional exclusion.
Leong, Sow-Theng. Migration and Ethnicity in Chinese History: Hakkas, Pengmin, and Their Neighbors. Edited by Tim Wright. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Describes Chinese ethnic groups that settled in the Gan River subbasin of the Middle Yangzi, as well as peripheral mountain areas of adjacent macroregions, and highlights the usefulness of the regional systems approach when social structures do not correspond to fixed administrative boundaries.
Yeh, Wen-hsin. Provincial Passages: Culture, Space, and the Origins of Chinese Communism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Traces the history of the Lower Yangzi macroregion to show how the founder of the Ming dynasty (c. 1368) countered the concentration of economic power thereby dividing the regional core between Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, “superimposing] his administrative divisions on the natural boundaries [and] thereby doubling the presence of the imperial state bureaucracy in an area of considerable urban wealth and strong local gentry initiatives” (p. 16).
Fan, I-chun. “Long-Distance Trade and Market Integration in the Ming-Chíng Period 1400–1850.” PhD diss., Stanford University, 1992. Shows that key commodities were traded between China’s coastal macroregions and overseas, even prior to industrialization, mediated by the market structures of the regions’ urban systems.
Marks, Robert. Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. A long historical view of the Lingnan macroregion, presenting evidence that the regional core zone in the early Ming was farther south, around the Leizhou peninsula, and shifted with the development of the Pearl River delta area. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511511998
Perdue, Peter C. Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasant in Hunan, 1500–1850. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1987. An environmental and social history that situates Hunan province within the Middle Yangzi macroregion and provides evidence that subregional marketing systems were oriented differently at earlier points in history.
Li, Lillian M. “Integration and Disintegration in North China’s Grain Markets, 1738–1911.” Journal of Economic History 60.3 (2000): 665–699. Uses the fluctuations in grain prices to examine the degree to which North China’s grain markets were tied to other regions through the middle and later Qing dynasty.
Perry, Elizabeth J. Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China, 1845–1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1980. Applies a macroregional approach to identify the conditions that led to the emergence of both bandits and peasant revolutionaries in areas that were economically and socially peripheral.
Mann, Susan. “Urbanization and Historical Change in China.” Modern China 10 (1984): 79–113. Analyzes paradigms of urbanization in the late imperial and early Republican eras, contrasting the macroregional approach with other models that tend to obscure differential rates of urban concentration across China. DOI: 10.1177/009770048401000103
Barnett, A. Doak, and Ezra F. Vogel. Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967. Outlines the geographical structure of governance in the early People’s Republic.
Blunden, Caroline, and Mark Elvin. Cultural Atlas of China. Rev. ed. New York: Checkmark, 1998. Includes maps comparing macroregions with the salt distribution system of the Qing dynasty.
Skinner, G. William. “Presidential Address: The Structure of Chinese History.” Journal of Asian Studies 44.2 (1985): 271–292. Links the geographical structure of marketing and social systems to the arc of Chinese history: “Chinese history [has] a hierarchical structure that parallels and expresses the on-the-ground hierarchy of local and regional systems. [E]very level from the standard marketing community to the macroregional economy [has] characteristic rhythms and distinctive histories. They should be seen as spatial-cum-temporal systems of human interaction” (p. 287). DOI: 10.2307/2055923
Skinner, G. William, ed. The City in Late Imperial China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1977. Includes five essays by Skinner that lay out the logic and evidence for using macroregions to analyze urbanization in China, including maps of the macroregions and their urban systems (pp. 214–215 and endpapers). Also available as an e-book.
Eastman, Lloyd E. Family, Fields, and Ancestors: Constancy and Change in China’s Social and Economic History, 1550–1949. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Provides a brief and accessible summary of the theory and evidence for rural market systems culminating in macroregional economies.
Elman, Benjamin A. A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. This is the largest academic book ever published on the imperial examinations in the English language. Even though focused on the late imperial period—i.e., Ming and Qing dynasties—it also treats the historical evolution prior to that period, both in the main text and in the many appendices.
Sen, Tansen. Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003.
Examines the historical Sino-Indic encounter from the 7th to 15th centuries and the transformation in Sino-Indian relations from Buddhist-dominated to trade-centered exchanges. Provides an additional dimension and understanding of China’s traditional foreign relations beyond the tribute system.
Stuart-Fox, Martin. A Short History of China and Southeast Asia: Tribute, Trade and Influence. Crows Nest, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2003. Helpful in gaining a broad view of how the tribute system operated in regulating relations between China and Southeast Asia, including a brief chapter discussing the traditional Chinese worldview, and the European encounter with the Chinese world order in Southeast Asia.
Jansen, Marius B. China in the Tokugawa World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. A short book that recounts the importance of China economically and culturally to Japan in the early modern era, when Tokugawa Japan was formally outside the China-centered tribute system in East Asia.
Mancall, Mark. Russia and China: Their Diplomatic Relations to 1728. Harvard East Asian Series 61. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Discusses and evaluates the confrontations between the Chinese and Russian Empires and contends that a working compromise was reached between the tribute system and European norms of sovereignty and legitimacy of commerce, through the signing of the Nerchinsk Treaty (1689) and Kiaktha Treaty (1727) by China and Russia.
Viraphol, Sarasin. Tribute and Profit: Sino-Siamese Trade, 1652–1853. Harvard East Asian Monograph 76. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977. Acknowledging the semblance of the tribute system in governing relations between China and Siam, focuses on the dynamic interactions between Siamese mercantilism and South Chinese commercial expansionism that clearly defy the ideological dogma of the tribute system.
Suzuki, Shogo. Civilization and Empire: China and Japan’s Encounter with European International Society. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. A comparative study of how China and Japan responded to European expansion into Asia in the second half of the 19th century, offering compelling arguments about Japan’s role in dismantling the tribute system through empirical examinations of the 1874 Japanese expedition to Taiwan, the annexation of the Ryukyu Kingdom in 1879, and Sino-Japanese rivalry over Korea leading to the Sino-Japanese War, 1894–1895.
Toby, Ronald P. State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. Provides a revisionist critique of traditional scholarship that separates the study of foreign relations from domestic developments in the Tokugawa era, arguing that the Tokugawa Bakufu pursued a dynamic foreign policy designed to legitimate the exercise of shogunal authority and to place Japan at the center of a self-determined international order, involving most importantly Korea, Ryukyu, China, and Holland.
Mungello, David E. The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800. 3d ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009. Focuses on religious, cultural, and civilizational encounters between China and Europe from 1500 to 1800.
Heng, Derek. Sino-Malay Trade and Diplomacy from the Tenth through the Fourteenth Century. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2009. Provides a rich, multilayered picture of Sino–Southeast Asian relations in the precolonial era, addressing both the Chinese and Southeast Asian perspectives with rich archaeological and textual data.
Naquin, Susan. Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400–1900. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. This magisterial study of the temples of Beijing and the life that went on around them is a good start to understand aspects of life that are sometimes forgotten. A substantial part is on the early Qing period, but its value is increased by bridging the dynastic change-over.
Skinner, G. William, ed. The City in Late Imperial China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1977. A number of the articles in this important collection deal with city life in the period, seen from various roles in the city such as officials and traders and the systems used to control the city. Still useful, also to understand the idea of regional systems that has played a considerable role in studies of the period.
Zhu, Jianfei. Chinese Spatial Strategies: Imperial Beijing, 1420–1911. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. A stimulating study of the spatial layout of Beijing by an architect venturing into the field of social and cultural analysis. The main source is a map from 1750. Careful use of sources in their chronological context is, however, not the strength of the book.
Wilkinson, Endymion, ed. Chinese History: A New Manual. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph 84. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. This is a well-received manual of Chinese history. In this new version Books 10–13 provide essential information on primary sources, including local gazettes.
Ho, Ping-ti. The Ladder of Success in Imperial China: Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368–1911. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962. Based on a large number of primary sources, Ho demonstrates how the civil service examinations opened the door to upward social mobility for elite, educated families. Ho shows that as a link between the imperial state and local society, the examination system bestowed power on local elite families.
Elman, Benjamin A. A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. This is a comprehensive English-language study of the examination system. The book traces the changes of the examination system from the 11th century to the late 19th century. It contains a detailed study of the examination questions.
Ebrey, Patricia, and James L. Watson, eds. Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, 1000–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. This collection of essays covers various aspects of kinship organization in late imperial China. In the introduction the two editors explain why the anthropological concept of kinship is useful in understanding the dynamics of Chinese local society.
Finnane, Antonia. Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550–1850. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004. This is a biography of Yangzhou. It provides valuable information about the city’s merchants.
Ong, Chang Woei. Men of Letters within the Passes: Guanzhong Literati in Chinese History, 907–1911. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008. A study of the ways in which the Guanzhong literati conceptualized and wrestled with the idea of locality and their own local identity by negotiating with the tensions between the central and regional, official and unofficial, and national and local, seeking to carve out a social and cultural niche within the overarching ideal of a national culture.
Clunas, Craig. Empire of Great Brightness: Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China, 1368–1644. London: Reaktion, 2009. Based on the author’s lectures as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford in 2004, this volume offers a cultural history that illustrates the brilliance of late imperial Chinese culture through images and objects, such as paintings, weapons, textiles, and ceramics, as well as textual sources, revealing the robust interactions between China and the rest of Asia, thereby debunking the myth of Ming China as a secluded culture.
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Elman, Benjamin A. From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China. 2d ed. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, 2001. The second half of the book offers a finely told and carefully constructed social history of the Yangzi Delta, cogently showing how social changes in this rich area provided the material conditions that supported the growth of evidential research, which increasingly became the professional mainstay of many literati who failed to secure positions in the imperial bureaucracy. Originally published by the Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, in 1984.
Chia, Lucille, and Hilde De Weerdt, eds. Knowledge and Text Production in an Age of Print: China, 900–1400. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2011. A volume of essays that examines the diversity of Chinese textual production from the 10th through the 14th centuries, providing a good background for the study of book and print culture in the late imperial period.
Dennis, Joseph R. Writing, Publishing, and Reading Local Gazetteers in Imperial China, 1100–1700. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asian Center, 2015. Examination of the history of the book in Ming China by looking at the various aspects of the compilation and production of local gazetteers—authorial rationale, finances, costs, printing processes and technologies, distribution, circulation, and reception—shedding light, in the process, on other facets in late imperial China: social, cultural, and administrative.
Yu, Li. “A History of Reading in Late Imperial China, 1000–1800.” PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2003. A historico-ethnographic study of the act of reading (dushu) in late imperial China by examining the practice and representation of reading. Shows how reading, governed by social conventions and cultural expectations, was conceptualized, perceived, conducted, and transmitted during the 10th to the 18th centuries.
Chia, Lucille. Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th–17th Centuries). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002. A study of the publishers of Jianyang, Fujian, from the 11th through the 17th century, showing how they actively responded to the market by offering genres and titles that were in demand. In the process, the author also provides clear glimpses of the diverse late imperial Chinese culture of books that was composed of the varied reading habits, tastes, and level of literacy at different social strata.
Von Glahn, Richard. Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000–1700. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Clearly explains Chinese monetary history and economic theory. Von Glahn traces the uneven efforts of successive Chinese governments to control the value of currency and the subsequent rise of the “silver economy” that reflected the power of the autonomous market.
Geiss, James. “Peking under the Ming (1368–1644).” PhD diss., Princeton University, 1979. Although never published, Geiss’s dissertation remains the standard treatment of Beijing’s transformation from a frontier military garrison early in the 15th century to the empire’s political center. Geiss shows the importance of the imperial court, its needs, and its tastes to the socioeconomic development of Beijing.
Marmé, Michael. Suzhou: Where the Goods of All the Provinces Converge. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. A detailed examination of one of the premodern world’s most affluent cities, Suzhou explores the complex interplay of the state and local elites; the shifting dynamics among commercial wealth, scholarship, and social status; and the place of the Ming in longer patterns of Chinese history.
Mote, Frederick W. “A Millennium of Chinese Urban History: Form, Time, and Space Concepts in Soochow.” Rice University Studies 59.4 (1973): 35–65. Mote notes the lack of a clear divide between the city and the surrounding countryside; the preference for monuments in writing and memory rather than buildings; and the attraction of the rural, both actual and imagined, through his discussion of Suzhou, an important and affluent city in Jiangnan. These concepts are also readily apparent in his other writings.
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Naquin, Susan. Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400–1900. Philip E. Lilienthal Book in Asian Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. A detailed examination of communities and urban activity that draws on and is in many ways shaped by the body of primary documents (including temple inscriptions, stelae, travel accounts, pilgrimage and tourist guides, private literati jottings, and observations by foreign visitors, to name just a few) that Naquin uses to recreate the social world of the city that served as the capital both for the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Chia, Lucille. Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th–17th Centuries). Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph 56. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2002. The definitive account of the publishing houses in Jianyang, which specialized in relatively low-end works that ranged from vernacular fiction and plays to medicine and geography to study aids for the civil-service examination. A leading specialist in the field, Chia discusses with insight how changes in calligraphy, page layout, and wood blocks related to shifting readerships.
Clunas, Craig. Empire of Great Brightness: Visual and Material Cultures of Ming China, 1368–1644. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007. This innovative study attempts to recreate the visual culture(s) of Ming China, through consideration of paintings, porcelains, book illustrations, furniture, ancestral shrines, clothing, calligraphy, playing cards, and more. Chapter 6, “Dark Warriors: Cultures of Violence,” examines the ways that the military and the martial were represented during the Ming.
Kang, David C. East Asia before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute. Contemporary Asia in the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Kang contrasts the Westphalian multilateral system of formally equal sovereign nations with the Chinese tributary system, recognized a single regional hegemony that ruled through superior achievements in culture. With buy-in from China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, the system laid out a clear and accepted order that resulted in fewer wars than in western Europe during the early modern period.
Wang Yi-t’ung. Official Relations between China and Japan, 1368–1549. Harvard-Yenching Institute Studies 9. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953. An early but still-useful look at the development of relations between China and Japan, from the earliest days of the Ming dynasty until the collapse of formal diplomatic ties in the mid-16th century. Wang examines the frequency, size, and verification of Japanese embassies to the port city of Ningbo, and the various commercial exchanges that occurred along the way to the capital.
Sen, Tansen. “The Formation of Chinese Maritime Networks to Southern Asia, 1200–1450.” In Special Issue: Maritime Diasporas in the Indian Ocean and East and Southeast Asia (960–1775). Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 49.4 (2006): 421–453. Spanning the Song, Yuan, and Ming periods, this study explores both official state-to-state relations and privately organized networks between China and South Asia. DOI: 10.1163/156852006779048372
Jagchid, Sechin, and Van Jay Symons. Peace, War, and Trade along the Great Wall: Nomadic-Chinese Interaction through Two Millennia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. An account of long-term relations between China and various steppe groups, with extensive and detailed discussion of developments during the Ming period.
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Johnston, Alastair Iain. Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History. Princeton Studies in International History and Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. Challenging long-standing notions about the traditional defensive orientation of the Chinese military, this monograph combines political science theory, a close reading of military texts, and political/military actions taken by the Ming court vis-à-vis the Mongols. Johnston concludes that Ming policy demonstrated a clear preference for coercive, offensively oriented strategy.
Johnson, Linda C. Shanghai: From Market Town to Treaty Port, 1074–1858. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995. Argues that the development of Shanghai cannot be easily divided into “before” and “after” the Opium War—that continuities in the urban evolution were important. Also argues that “’Imperialism’ is a loaded term, pejorative in some contexts and ambiguous in others” (p. 14).
Begère, Marie-Claire. Shanghai: China’s Gateway to Modernity. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Eloquent and essential. Originally published in French in 2002. Argues that “Shanghai, the most ‘foreign’ of all Chinese towns, was also the one where nationalist awareness and the revolutionary mobilization of the masses first developed” (p. 5).
Tsang, Steve. A Modern History of Hong Kong. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2004. Attempts to neither underplay nor overplay the role of either the British colonists or the local people. The declared intention is to “ignore political correctness and present a modern history that does justice to all who . . . have been part of this shared history” (p. x). Extensive bibliography, including archival guidance.
Hansen, Valerie. Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China: How Ordinary People Used Contracts, 600–1400. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. An exploration of the varied uses made of legal contracts by ordinary people over the span of the Tang through Yuan dynasties, demonstrating that the legal knowledge involved in the use of contracts was widespread.
Bielenstein, Hans. Diplomacy and Trade in the Chinese World, 589–1276. Handbuch der Orientalistik. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005. A monumental study detailing the diplomatic and commercial relations between the Chinese and its continental and maritime neighbors from the Sui through the Song.
Graff, David A. Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300–900. Warfare and History. London: Routledge, 2002. Although this book begins well before the Sui to Song parameters of this article, its masterful treatment of the role played by the military through a six-hundred-year span of history provides excellent background for an understanding of Sui and Tang history.
Rossabi, Morris, ed. China among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors, 10th–14th Centuries. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. A collection detailing the diplomatic relations between the Song and its neighbors, mainly continental but with one chapter on maritime relations as well. As the title suggests, this period was distinctive for the lack of dominance by the Song, which necessitated a new rhetoric and new—though humiliating to Chinese eyes—set of diplomatic practices.
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Sen, Tansen. Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400. Asian Interactions and Comparisons. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003. A wide-ranging study that explores Sino-Indian relations over an eight-hundred-year time span. The central theme is the role played by Buddhism in those relations, but the book also manages to provide important insights into continental ties between the two civilizations during the Tang dynasty and into maritime ties during the Song and Yuan.
Von Glahn, Richard. Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000–1700. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Although the book’s scope goes into the early Qing dynasty, the early chapters provide an excellent introduction of imperial Chinese monetary history, and a succinct description of Song monetary practices, including the development of paper money.
Heng Chye Kiang. Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats: The Development of Medieval Chinese Cityscapes. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999. A detailed comparative study of the Tang and Song capitals, contrasting the highly structured and supervised Tang capitals (particularly Chang’an) with the open character of Kaifeng and Hangzhou.
Shiba Yoshinobu 斯波義信. Commerce and Society in Sung China. Translated and edited by Mark Elvin. Michigan Abstracts of Chinese and Japanese Works on Chinese History 2. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1970. An abridged translation of Professor Shiba’s pathbreaking Sōdai shōgyōshi kenkyū (宋代商業史研究) (Tokyo: Kazama shobō, 1968), this work provides a vivid portrait of merchant enterprises and, more generally, the role of commerce in Song society, especially in the prosperous southeastern regions.
Heng, Derek Thiam Soon. Sino-Malay Trade and Diplomacy from the Tenth through the Fourteenth Century. Research in International Studies, Southeast Asia 121. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2009. A methodologically sophisticated study of trade and political relations between the Chinese empire and Southeast Asia from the Five Dynasties through Yuan periods.
Schottenhammer, Angela, ed. The Emporium of the World: Maritime Quanzhou, 1000–1400. Sinica Leidensia 49. Leiden, The Netherlands, and Boston: E. J. Brill, 2001. A wide-ranging set of chapters relating to the port city of Quanzhou during the Song and Yuan, covering such diverse topics as archaeology, the ceramics industry, the role of metals and the money supply, merchant groups in the city, and the impact of maritime trade on Quanzhou society.
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So, Billy Kee-lung. Prosperity, Region, and Institutions in Maritime China: The South Fukien Pattern, 946–1368. Harvard East Asian Monograph 195. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000. A regional study of the economic and social impact of maritime trade on southern Fujian, from the Five Dynasties through Yuan. While dealing with the same region and much the same periods as Clark 1991 (cited under Industry, Domestic Commerce, and Urbanization), So’s book focuses more exclusively upon maritime trade and the groups involved in it.
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Wang Gungwu. “The Nanhai Trade: A Study of the Early History of Chinese Trade in the South China Sea.” Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 31.2 (1958): 1–135. A classic, pioneering study of Chinese maritime trade; focusing on the Tang through Song, it presents a historical framework for the topic that continues to be useful today.
Hartwell, Robert M. “Demographic, Political, and Social Transformations of China, 750–1550.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42.2 (1982): 365–442. An influential study, employing a mass of quantitative data, of the long-term (eight-hundred-year) changes in China’s population and society, with particular attention given to macroregional developments and to the roles of the social and political elites, which, he argues, became increasingly localized over the course of this period. Available online by subscription. DOI: 10.2307/2718941
Birge, Bettine. Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction in Sung and Yüan China (960–1368). Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature, and Institutions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. An important contribution to Chinese women’s history, which describes the very considerable legal status of Song women and argues that their subsequent decline in status did not stem from Song Neo-Confucianism but rather from social and legal changes initiated by the Mongols. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511511950
Lee, Thomas H. C. Education in Traditional China: A History. Handbuch der Orientalistik 13. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2000. The only Western-language modern history of Chinese education, Lee’s comprehensive account is especially useful for its coverage of the Tang and Song.
Carter, Thomas F. The Invention of Printing in China and Its Spread Westward. 2d ed. Revised by L. Carrington Goodrich. New York: Ronald, 1955. Long the standard Western source for the origins of printing, Carter’s account remains very useful, particularly with regard to the diffusion of printing to the West. Originally published in 1925.
Johnson, David G. The Medieval Chinese Oligarchy. Westview Special Studies on China and East Asia. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1977. This study, encompassing the years 256–906 CE, focuses on the aristocratic ruling class, which Johnson terms the “medieval oligarchy.” He argues that, whereas in the pre-Sui/Tang period the status of the aristocratic families was established locally where they had their main landholding, during the Tang their status came to be dependent on political position, determined in considerable part by the examination system.
Bol, Peter K. “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transition in T‘ang and Sung China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992. This magisterial treatment of intellectual history uses the problematic of culture to analyze the intellectual developments spanning the Tang and Song, and it is in that context that Bol places the rise of “Tao Learning” (Daoxue) via the Cheng brothers and the other Neo-Confucian masters.
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Bol, Peter K. Neo-Confucianism in History. Harvard East Asian Monograph 307. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008. Bol presents a comprehensive and novel approach to Neo-Confucianism and its role in Chinese society, politics, and thought. He argues that Song thinkers moved toward a new and more autonomous notion of self, and that this change coincided with the localization of many political and social functions in the Southern Song and especially the Ming.
Halperin, Mark. Out of the Cloister: Literati Perspectives on Buddhism in Sung China, 960–1279. Harvard East Asia Monograph 272. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006. This book details the numerous and multifaceted ways in which the Song elite viewed Buddhism and Buddhist institutions and interacted with Buddhists. It further contributes to a growing literature testifying to the vitality of Buddhism during the Song.
Hymes, Robert P. Way and Byway: Taoism, Local Religion, and Models of Divinity in Sung and Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. This book traces the development of two Southern Song Daoist cults that had their beginnings in the vicinity of Fuzhou (Jiangxi), arguing that they exemplify two distinct models of religion: bureaucratic and personal. In making this case Hymes is challenging the common assertion by students of modern Chinese religion that Chinese gods are a metaphor for the state. DOI: 10.1525/california/9780520207585.001.0001
Teiser, Stephen F. The Ghost Festival in Medieval China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988. This is a study of the origins of the Chinese festival for feeding hungry ghosts, which was based on the story of the monk Mulian saving his mother from her deserved punishment in hell. Teiser explores both Buddhist and Chinese shamanic antecedents to the festival, as well as the role it played in Tang society.
Furth, Charlotte. A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China’s Medical History, 960–1665. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. A pioneering treatment of the theory and practice of women’s medicine, which was recognized as a discrete branch of medicine. Although the book’s coverage extends into the early Qing, special attention is given to the Song, which the author sees as the formative period in the development of women’s medicine.
So, Billy K. L. Prosperity, Region, and Institutions in Maritime China: The South Fukien Pattern, 946–1368. Harvard East Asian Monograph 195. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000. So examines the changing patterns of agriculture, commerce, and maritime trade in the coastal region of Fujian over nearly four centuries. The book charts the interactions of politics, tax policies, land use, economic integration between coastal and inland areas, and impact of foreign rule in a single province. His treatment of the coastal port of Quanzhou during the Yuan period shows that economic prosperity was real but was not shared by all parties equally.
Yeh, Wen-hsin. Shanghai Splendor: Economic Sentiments and the Making of Modern China, 1843–1949. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. A fascinating study of Shanghai’s culture, especially as it pertained to the commercial circles. Only a few cases are drawn from the Qing period, however.



Girardot, Norman J. The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge’s Oriental Pilgrimage. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. An exhaustive study and a reappraisal of Legge as translator of the Chinese classics and as the pioneer of Chinese studies in Britain and of the study of Chinese religions in the West.
Chu, Samuel C., and Kwang-ching Liu, eds. Li Hung-chang and China’s Early Modernization. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994. The self-strengthening movement is much larger than Li Hongzhang (Li Hung-chang). Still, he was arguably the most influential of its leading officials. This volume is the best attempt at studying Li in the round, with chapters on his rise, his pragmatism and patriotism, and his role as national figure, diplomat, and modernizer.
Pong, David. Shen Pao-chen and China’s Modernization in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Originally published in 1993. China’s first modern naval dockyard and academy experienced a period of success under the direction of Shen. The book demonstrates how a Confucian scholar-official, Shen Baozhen (Shen Pao-chen), made the transition to become a modernizer who, beyond the naval establishment, went on to advocate broader areas of modernization.
Ayers, William. Chang Chih-tung and Educational Reform in China. Harvard East Asian Series 54. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Zhang Zhidong (Chang Chih-tung) strongly believed in the moral persuasive power of Confucian learning, even as he turned to the self-strengthening type of education (military academies; schools for mining, agriculture, industry, science, commerce, international affairs, and foreign languages). Instrumental in abolishing both the traditional military and civil-service examinations, in the establishment of a modern school system, and in sending students abroad, Zhang insisted on combining traditional values with Western learning.
Chang, Hao. Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890–1907. Harvard East Asian Series 64. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Examines Liang Qichao’s (Liang Ch’i-ch’ao) intellectual development: how it was grounded in practical statecraft (jingshi 經世), leading him to favor Xunzi and discard Han learning as he incorporated Western ideas into his reformist thought. He assigned a critical role to a new education system in the rejuvenation of the Chinese people as a prerequisite to political transformation.
Hsiao, Kung-chuan (Xiao Gongquan). A Modern China and a New World: K’ang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858–1927. Publications on Asia of the Institute for Comparative and Foreign Area Studies 25. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975. A detailed study of Kang Youwei (K’ang Yu-wei), his ideas, and his reform efforts. This volume is a mine of information and is very insightful. However, Kang’s central role in the Hundred Days Reform has been challenged in Kwong 1984.
Zarrow, Peter. “He Zhen and Anarcho-Feminism in China.” Journal of Asian Studies 47.4 (November 1988): 796–813. Late Qing anarchists linked feminism to social and political revolution. He Zhen, however, advocated women’s liberation for its own sake, not for that of the nation. Available online for purchase or by subscription. DOI: 10.2307/2057853
Schwartz, Benjamin I. In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West. Harvard East Asian Series 16. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1964. One of the first graduates of the Fuzhou Navy Yard academy to study in Europe, Yan, in his search for wealth and power for China, found his answer in the ideas of Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, and others: ideas to exalt human energy and actualize human potentials. Yan understood the nature of Western civilization and avoided the simplistic perspective that pitted Western materialism against Eastern spirituality.
Chang, Hao. Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning (1890–1911). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Studies four thinkers and activists (mainly antidynastic): Kang Youwei, Tan Sitong, Zhang Binglin, and Liu Shipei. All four were informed by and drew inspiration from the Confucian tradition as they responded, each in his own distinct way, to the national crises—intellectual challenges, imperialism, and internal disintegration.
MacKinnon, Stephen R. Power and Politics in Late Imperial China: Yuan Shi-kai in Beijing and Tianjin, 1901–1908. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Yuan Shikai’s reform activities show how political initiatives had returned to the central government, a development also hastened by the foreign powers’ preference to exert their influence through Beijing. Reforms in education, police, and economy aside, Yuan’s biggest role was military modernization, but MacKinnon shows that Yuan’s power was always derived from the throne and thus he should not be seen as a protowarlord.
Bergère, Marie-Claire. Sun Yat-sen. Translated by Janet Lloyd. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Though generally sympathetic, this work successfully places Sun’s revolutionary career in the larger historical context and is by no means uncritical of the shortcomings either of Sun or his organizations.
Temple, Robert K. G. The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery, and Invention. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986. A concise survey of China’s achievements in premodern science and technology.
Ronan, Colin A. The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China: An Abridgement of Joseph Needham’s Original Work. 4 vols. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978–1995. A boutique version of the multivolume Needham 1954–2008 on Chinese science and technology; easy to read.
Deng, Gang. Chinese Maritime Activities and Socioeconomic Development, c. 2100 B.C.–1900 A.D. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997.
Reveals China’s shipbuilding and shipping activities, which experienced a sudden growth during the Song period. See chapters 3–4.

Hartwell, Robert. “A Cycle of Economic Change in Imperial China: Coal and Iron in Northwest China, 750–1350.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 10.1 (1967): 102–159.
DOI: 10.1163/156852067X00109Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Traces the beginning of Song mining and metallurgy and examines its ending. The author’s optimistic estimates are not always shared by others—the main criticism is that Hartwell’s estimates are based exclusively on a fixed rate of government taxes. Because these rates increased from time to time, these estimates may well be too high. See, for example, Wang 2005.
Von Glahn, Richard. Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000–1700. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Examines money demand, supply, and policies from the Song onward.

Jones, Eric L., Lionel Frost, and Colin White. Coming Full Circle: An Economic History of the Pacific Rim. Melbourne, Australia, and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Looks at global swings of economic center of gravity, with a reference to urbanization since the Tang-Song era.
Chi, Ch’ao-ting. Key Economic Areas in Chinese History: As Revealed in the Development of Public Works for Water-Control. New York: A. M. Kelley, 1970.
Represents an early and influential study of China as a “hydraulic empire” of Oriental despotism from the Qin to the Qing.

Chao, Kang. Man and Land in Chinese History: An Economic Analysis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986.
Contains a new version of the Malthusian explanation of China’s long-term demography, in which the Song was a period of demographic leap forward.
Hui, Victoria Tin-bor. War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511614545Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues against idea of uniqueness of the modern western state system by juxtaposing it with periods in ancient China that knew systems of sovereign states. Discusses why China and Europe shared similar processes like war making, centralized bureaucratization, expansion of trade, and emergence of citizen rights, but with diverging outcomes.

BIOGRAPHIES
MING-EARLY QING SCHOLARS
Berling, Judith A. The Syncretic Religion of Lin Chao-en. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. A critical examination of the syncretic tendencies in the late Ming toward creatively amalgamating the “three teachings” (sanjiao) of Confucian, Buddhism, and Daoism by studying Lin Zhao’en (1517–1598), whose works and endeavors, while using Daoism as the main point of departure and reference, were devoted to propagating a Way of salvation that was open to all.
Black, Allison Harley. Man and Nature in the Philosophical Thought of Wang Fu-chih. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989. A thorough exploration of the multidimensional thought of Wang Fuzhi (1619–1692)—cosmology, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and literary theory—in terms of some underpinning conventions of Neo-Confucian philosophizing, especially parallel modes of thinking, revealing how Wang sought to reconstruct and renew the old tradition.
Chang, Chun-shu, and Shelly Hsueh-lun Chang. Crisis and Transformation in Seventeenth-Century China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. Through examining in detail the life and works of Li Yü (1611–1680), this book reveals the broader social changes that occurred in late imperial China: commercial-industrial growth and urbanization, population increase, and science and technology, as well as the resulting shifts in attitudes toward wealth, consumption, and sexuality, all of which molded a new literati culture.
Ch’ien, Edward T. Chiao Hung and the Restructuring of Neo-Confucianism in the Late Ming. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. An astute study of syncretism in the late Ming, showing how Jiao Hong (1540–1620), a Neo-Confucian scholar, imaginatively and creatively blended the “three teachings” (sanjiao) of Confucian, Buddhism and Daoism.
Handlin, Joanna F. Action in Late Ming Thought: The Reorientation of Lü K’un and Other Scholar-Officials. Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983. A study of the thoughts of Lü K’un (1536–1618) as a window to the new intellectual outlook of the 16th and 17th centuries, revealing its orientation toward practical statecraft and its corresponding withdrawal from metaphysical speculation and moral introspection, a pattern of thinking that was shared by other scholar-officials, whom the book also examines in relation to Lü.
Jami, Catherine, Peter M. Engelfriet, and Gregory Blue, eds. Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China: The Cross-Cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562–1633). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2001. A rich volume, built on both Chinese and Western primary sources, that reveals the various aspects of the complex life and thought of Xu Guangqi, an important Ming official, and one of the first Chinese converts to Christianity. An early champion of Western science, Xu Guangqi collaborated with Matteo Ricci, the pioneering Jesuit missionary, to translate Western scientific works. He also introduced a major calendar reform and adopted Western weapons.
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Lee, Pauline C. Li Zhi, Confucianism, and the Virtue of Desire. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014. A revisionist study of Li Zhi, the late Ming figure commonly regarded as a relativist and iconoclast whose contributions was generally seen to be negative and destructive in the sense of being a persistent and trenchant critic of the establishment and stale moral learning of the Cheng-Zhu school. Lee argues that Li, in fact, propounded a systemic and positive moral ethics that sought to restore moral and political order in the world.
Peterson, Willard J. Bitter Gourd: Fang I-chih and the Impetus for Intellectual Change. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1979. Interweaving translations of the writings of Fang Yizhi (1611–1671) and expositions of their meanings and significance in terms of the intellectual trends in late imperial China, this book shows how changed perceptions of the social and political worlds, including the roles and place of a xuezhe (scholar) and wenren (man of letters), contributed to the shaping and germination of the new modes of learning that began to claim ascendancy in the 1630s.
Yü, Chün-fang. The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Using the works and ideas of the Buddhist monk and thinker, Zhuhong (1535–1615), as evidence, the author reveals the intellectual phenomenon of syncretism in the late Ming, during which time the “three teachings” (sanjiao) of Confucian, Buddhism and Daoism cross-fertilized.
QING
Birdwhistell, Anne. Li Yong (1627–1705) and Epistemological Dimensions of Confucian Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. A systematic study of Li Yong’s thought, with a view to showing how Confucian philosophy gained meaning and poignancy by referring to particular sociohistorical contexts, especially with regard to learning and teaching that sought to transform the self, society, and state.
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Cheng, Chung-ying. Tai Chen’s Inquiry into Goodness: A Translation of the Yuan Shan with an Introductory Essay. Honolulu, Hawaii: East-West Center Press, 1971. A competent translation of the Yuan Shan (Inquiry into goodness), the treatise by Dai Zhen (1724–1777), together with a lengthy (53 pp.) introduction on Dai’s philosophical and metaphysical ideas, locating them in the larger context of meta-ethical thinking in the Confucian tradition.
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Chin, Ann-ping, and Mansfield Freeman. Tai Chen on Mencius: Explorations in Words and Meanings: A Translation of the Meng-tzu tzu-i-shu-cheng. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1990. An excellent translation of the Mengzi ziyi shuzheng (An evidential study of the meaning of the terms in the Mengzi), the treatise by Dai Zhen (1724–1777), together with two introductions by the translators: one on Dai’s life and time, and the other on his thought.
Ng, On-cho. Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing: Li Guangdi (1642–1718) and Qing Learning. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. A detailed examination of the thoughts of Li Guangdi, a keeper of the Cheng-Zhu flame and high-ranking official in the court of the Kanxi emperor, this book revisits the nature of the Ming-Qing intellectual transition by identifying its philosophical roots and reassesses the role and place of Cheng-Zhu learning in late imperial Chinese thought.
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Rowe, William T. Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. Through Chen Hongmou’s life (1696–1771), the book engages some larger issues in 18th-century China: self-perception of the scholar-officials, ameliorative efforts to save the world, tensions between Confucian moral teachings and practical statecraft, the state versus local communities, and the prerogatives of the sociopolitical collectivities versus the imperatives of the individual. Suggests that the Qing answers to these questions conditioned China’s later responses to many problems.
QING POLITICAL FIGURES
Elliott, Mark C. Emperor Qianlong: Son of Heaven, Man of the World. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. Biography of the Qianlong emperor in the Longman Library of World Biography series. Written for a more general audience but still important to get a glimpse into the life and work of one of the leading emperors; also a good supplement to the self-portrait of the Kangxi emperor.
Spence, Jonathan D. Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K’ang-hsi. New York: Knopf, 1974. A fascinating example of the author's’ long-time endeavor to explore the thinking and emotions of individuals in China as far as possible in their own words. Cannot take the place of a biography but still worth exploring. Paperback edition: New York: Vintage, 1975.
Jami, Katherine. The Emperor’s New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority During the Kangxi Reign (1662–1722). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Details of how the Kangxi emperor studied mathematics out of interest but also introducing Western learning as part of the effort to legitimize Manchu rulership over China and the intellectual elite. Includes lecture notes, letters, and missionary reports to Europe and consciously builds on new ways to look at science and the interchange of knowledge. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199601400.001.0001
Rowe, William T. Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Chen Hongmou 陈宏谋 (b. 1696–d. 1771) was among the leading provincial administrators of the 18th century also serving in high office in the capital. Using the biographical approach, the author gives the reader a rich view of the development in administrative thinking on various aspects of society and economy and the roles of individuals and the state to make local societies work.
Chan, David B. The Usurpation of the Prince of Yen, 1398–1402. Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center: Occasional Series. San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1976. Although slightly dated, the most detailed English-language account of the Yongle’s usurpation of power.
Lo, Jung-pang. “Intervention in Vietnam: A Case Study of the Foreign Policy of the Early Ming Government.” Tsinghua Journal of Chinese Studies 8.1–2 (1970): 154–182. An examination of the early-15th-century Ming intervention in Annam (Vietnam), in the context of foreign policy and geopolitical calculation. Lo is especially interested in the interplay of changing styles of rulership and foreign policy.
Tsai, Shih-shan Henry. Perpetual Happiness: The Ming Emperor Yongle. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2001. The only full-length English-language biography of a Ming emperor. Tsai’s account is highly readable and is based on primary-source research.
Dreyer, Edward L. Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405–1433. Library of World Biography. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007. The most comprehensive English-language account of Zheng He and his voyages. The appendix includes translations of Zheng He’s biography from the Official History of the Ming Dynasty and several inscriptions commissioned in Zheng He’s name. The “Notes on Sources” section at the end of the book is a convenient guide to past scholarship.
Chu, Hung-lam. “The Debate over Recognition of Wang Yang-ming.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 48.1 (1988): 47–70. Chu analyzes the posthumous debates that raged around whether Wang Yangming merited incorporation into the official state cult of Confucian worthies. He argues that by late in the 16th century, Wang had become valued as a successful official as much as for any of his philosophical musings. Available online by subscription. DOI: 10.2307/2719272
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Shin, Leo. “The Last Campaigns of Wang Yangming.” T’oung Pao 2d ser. 92.1–3 (2006): 101–128. Shin looks at the final military campaigns of Wang Yangming, in the context of how contemporary cultural constructs of self (China) and Other (southwestern aboriginal groups) related to administrative policies of assimilation and separation. Available online for purchase or by subscription. DOI: 10.1163/156853206778553225
Tu Wei-ming. Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang Yang-ming’s Youth (1472–1509). Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. An early biography that traces Wang Yangming’s growth into a Confucian sage.
Bickers, Robert. Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai. London: Allen Lane, 2003. The biography of Richard Maurice Tinkler, an ordinary Briton living at the geographic and social margins of the British Empire. Also an illuminating account of the Shanghai Municipal Police as an organizational mechanism of imperialism.
Xiong, Victor Cunrui. Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty: His Life, Times, and Legacy. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. This study of the much-maligned second—and effectively, last—emperor of the Sui paints a complicated picture of an emperor who, though a philanderer and oppressive ruler, was at the same time an innovative reformer.
Liu, James T. C. Reform in Sung China: Wang An-shih (1021–1086) and His New Policies. Harvard East Asian Studies 3. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959. An early and still-useful study of the New policies of Wang Anshi. In this brief volume (156 pp.), Liu argues that the bitterly fought political battles that surrounded the reforms reflected the particular types of officials who contested them.
Chen, Jo-shui. Liu Tsung-yūan and Intellectual Change in T’ang China, 773–819. Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature, and Institutions. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511571411Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An intellectual biography of one of the major Confucian thinkers of the mid-Tang that also provides an informative window into the society and intellectual climate of the early 9th century.
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Chiu-Duke, Josephine. To Rebuild the Empire: Lu Chih’s Confucian Pragmatist Approach to the Mid-T’ang Predicament. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000.
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A study of the life of the Tang chief councilor Lu Zhi (b. 754–d. 805) and his political thought and statecraft. Chiu-Duke situates Lu within a tradition of Confucian pragmatism characterized by a willingness to combine Confucian principles with practical flexibility.
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Hartman, Charles. Han Yü and the T’ang Search for Unity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
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This study of Han Yü (b. 768–d. 824), one of the intellectual giants of the early 9th century, addresses issues fundamental to our understanding of Tang thought, among them how unity in thought, culture, and politics might be achieved. Hartman argues that Han’s thought provided the philosophical underpinnings for Song Neo-Confucianism.
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Ji, Xiao-bin. Politics and Conservatism in Northern Song China: The Career and Thought of Sima Guang (A.D. 1019–1086). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005. A biographical treatment of one of China’s greatest historians, who also happened to be an outspoken political and, for a period, chief councilor during the factional struggles of the late 11th century.
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Liu, James T. C. Ou-yang Hsiu: An Eleventh-Century Neo-Confucianist. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967. A short but eminently readable and well-researched biography of one of the leading scholarly officials and literary stylists in an era known for its outstanding men of letters.
Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland. Utilitarian Confucianism: Ch’en Liang’s Challenge to Chu Hsi. Harvard East Asian Monograph 101. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1982. A study of Chen Liang (b. 1143–d. 1194), a Confucian thinker whose distinctive voice—characterized by Tillman as “utilitarian”—contrasted sharply with Zhu Xi. As the title suggests, the book focuses on debates between the two philosophers.
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Tillman, Hoyt Cleveland. Confucian Discourse and Chu Hsi’s Ascendancy. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1992. An innovative approach to the ascendance of the Daoxue Confucianism of Zhu Xi (b. 1130–d. 1200) and his followers. Rather than accepting the traditional teleological history of this school, Tillman describes a “fellowship” of committed disciples who were able to persevere over their rivals in gaining broad acceptance for Zhu’s thought.
Rossabi, Morris. Khubilai Khan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. This is the first and only English-language biography of Khubilai, the founder of the Yuan dynasty. Rossabi effectively challenges contemporaneous Chinese accounts that give pride of place to Chinese advisors at the expense of Mongols, Persians, and other non-Chinese actors.
Mote, Frederick W. The Poet Kao Ch’i, 1336–1374. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962. Integrating historical writings and poetry, Mote analyzes a young poet’s (Gao Qi [Kao Ch’i]) response to the uncertainty and violence of his day. Although Mote’s handling of Mongol rule is not persuasive, he does succeed very well in conveying the sensibilities of an elite male in a chaotic time.
Chan Lau Kit-ching. Anglo-Chinese Diplomacy 1906–1920: In the Careers of Sir John Jordan and Yüan Shih-k’ai. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1978. Details with clarity the interaction between Sir John Jordan, British minister to China (1906–1920), and Yüan Shih-k’ai, the first president of the Republic of China. Throws light on the Beijing government’s (North China) financial, political, and military relations with Britain, Japan, Germany, Russia, the United States, and other countries.
Wilbur, C. Martin. Sun Yat-sen: Frustrated Patriot. New York: Columbia University, 1976. Traces the fundraising efforts among overseas Chinese and foreign supporters by Sun Yat-sen—the founding father of the Nationalist Party and the Republic of China. Mostly focusing on Sun’s relations with Soviet Russia, also looks into his perennial failure in securing aid from American, British, French, and German leaders.
Spence, Jonathan D. God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. A gripping narrative of the revolutionary career of Hong Xiuquan. The author’s probe into the mind of the millenarian leader is based largely on newly discovered texts in the British Museum (now British Library). A great read for students and scholars alike.
Wright, Stanley F. Hart and the Chinese Customs. Belfast: William Mullan & Son, 1950. Robert Hart was the inspector general of the Chinese Customs Service from 1863 to 1908. The Customs Service more than just administered the tariffs on import-export trade, it also managed harbor and navigational facilities and worked on behalf of the Chinese government in various defense and modernization enterprises. Hart’s career brings into focus the nature of the service performed by a foreigner in the employ of the Chinese government.

Hsia, R. Po-chia. A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci, 1552–1610. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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A sound, fresh, and readable biography. Hsia uses new European and Chinese sources to tell the story of Ricci’s training in Europe and Asia, his achievements in China, his contentious debates with Buddhists, and his Sino-Christian synthesis.
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Lippiello, Tiziana, and Roman Malek. Scholar from the West: Giulio Aleni S.J. (1582–1649) and the Dialogue between Christianity and China. Sankt Augustin, Germany: Monumenta Serica Institute, 1997.
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Articles explore the European and Chinese background, Aleni’s biography, contributions to Chinese scientific knowledge, his dialogue with Chinese colleagues, his mission strategies and experience, his writings and translations, and comparisons with the life and works of Ricci.
Chaves, Jonathan. Singing of the Source: Nature and God in the Poetry of the Chinese Painter Wu Li. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993.
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Wu Li (b. 1632–d. 1718), a well-known early Qing painter, was one of the first Chinese Jesuit priests. His poetry was conventional in form but experimental in creating Chinese Christian images and content. Chaves implies that Christianity was culturally compatible with Chinese thought.
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Jami, Catherine, Peter M. Engelfriet, and Gregory Blue, eds. Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China: The Cross-Cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562–1633). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2001.
Papers on Ricci’s most important convert, Xu Guangqi 徐光啟 (b. 1562–d. 1633), a Ming dynasty high official. Xu argued that Christianity was a way of “complementing Confucianism” (bu Ru 补儒) with “practical studies” (astronomy, Euclid’s mathematics, agriculture, military technology, army reform) and dismissed Buddhism as mere “Emptiness and Non-Being.”
King, Gail. “Candida Xu and the Growth of Christianity in China in the Seventeenth Century.” Monumenta Serica 46 (1998): 49–66.
Candida Xu (b. 1607–d. 1680), the granddaughter of Xu Guangqi, was the most influential Chinese Christian woman of the 17th century. She financed the work of missionaries and sponsored construction of churches.
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Liu, Yu. “The Spiritual Journey of an Independent Thinker: The Conversion of Li Zhizao to Catholicism.” Journal of World History 22.3 (2011): 433–453. Li Zhizao 李之藻 (b. 1565–d. 1630) was one of Ricci’s prime collaborators but did not convert to Christianity until the end of his life. Liu explores why Li finally agreed to receive baptism in 1610 and explains that his logically deduced theistic belief included both Confucianism and Christianity. DOI: 10.1353/jwh.2011.0065
Spence, Jonathan D. The Question of Hu. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. John Hu, a young Chinese Catholic, was brought in 1722 to France for seminary training but his quest ended with confinement in a mental asylum.
Standaert, Nicolas. Yang Tingyun, Confucian and Christian in Late Ming China: His Life and Thought. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1988. Yang Tingyun 杨廷筠 (b. 1557–d. 1627) was one of Ricci’s three prime converts. Standaert argues that Catholicism in the Peoples Republic reinforced Yang’s Confucian beliefs rather than diluting them.
Reilly, Thomas H. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: Rebellion and the Blasphemy of Empire. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004. Hong Xiuchuan aimed to abolish the imperial order, establish theocratic rule, and restore the religion of the Old Testament, which he saw as the ancient Chinese religion which Confucius had destroyed. Hong was a monotheist theologian who did not recognize the Trinity; ignored incarnation, salvation, transcendence, or resurrection; did not use the Cross; drew from Daoist and Buddhist apocalyptic prophecies of a millennial messiah.
Lutz, Jessie Gregory, and Rolland Ray Lutz. Hakka Chinese Confront Protestant Christianity, 1850–1900: With the Autobiographies of Eight Hakka Christians, and Commentary. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. Translates autobiographies of Chinese evangelists who were recruited by Karl Gützlaff and Theodor Hamberg and their early converts among Hakka Chinese in inland Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Fujian.
Chu, Sin-Jan. Wu Leichuan: A Confucian-Christian in Republican China. New York: Peter Lang, 1995. Wu Leichuan 吴雷川 (b. 1870–d. 1944) was a Confucian scholar who passed the highest level of the imperial examinations, then became a Christian who debated the meaning of his faith in an imperiled China. In the 1920s he became the first Chinese to head Yenching University.
Hayford, Charles W. To the People: James Yen and Village China. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Yen worked with the International Y during World War I, organized nationwide YMCA literacy campaigns in the 1920s, and then the Rural Reconstruction Movement of the 1920s and 1930s. The Movement was not Christian, but Yen’s nationalism and Christian ideals led him to the countryside to find an alternative to communist revolution.
Kinnear, Angus I. Against the Tide: Story of Watchman Nee. Rev. ed. East Sussex, UK: Kingsway, 1990 Watchman Nee (Ni Tuosheng 倪柝聲) (b. 1903–d. 1972), was born into a Fuzhou Christian family. From the 1920s his Local Church (Difang jiaohui) or Little Flock (Xiaoqun) movement appealed to city middle-class professionals and was second only to the True Jesus Church among independent Protestants. Nee was arrested in 1952, ostensibly for economic crimes, and died in prison two decades later.
Wu, Silas H. L. Dora Yu and Christian Revival in 20th-Century China. Boston: Pishon River, 2002. Dora Yu (Yu Cidu 余慈度) (b. 1873–d. 1933) first practiced medicine, but in 1910 found her métier as China’s first woman travelling evangelist.
Wickeri, Philip L. Reconstructing Christianity in China: K.H. Ting and the Chinese Church. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007. Wickeri draws on his friendship with Ting and his associates to write a sympathetic but candid biography, including Ting’s study in North America, work in occupied Shanghai, return to the PRC in 1951, and establishing the TSPM. He then deals with the repression during the 1950s and Cultural Revolution, and the ups and downs in the reform era and 1989.
Mariani, Paul Philip. Church Militant: Bishop Kung and Catholic Resistance in Communist Shanghai. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Shanghai’s well-established Catholic community was a key center of autonomy. Bishop Kung (Gong Pinmei 龚品梅) (b. 1901–d. 2000) organized resistance to the Party’s goal of eliminating the Catholic Church. DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674063174
Shemo, Connie Anne. The Chinese Medical Ministries of Kang Cheng and Shi Meiyu, 1872–1937: On a Cross-Cultural Frontier of Gender, Race, and Nation. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2011. The two friends Kang Cheng (Kang Aide or Ida Kahn) (b. 1873–d. 1931) and Shi Meiyu (Mary Stone) (b. 1873–d. 1954) were raised bilingual and, as Christians, graduated from American medical school together and then returned to China. In 1920 Shi left the Methodist mission because it separated social service from evangelism. She then organized the Bethel Band, which attracted John Sung and many others.
Chang, Jung, and Jon Halliday. Mao: The Unknown Story. London: Vintage, 2007. A controversial study of Mao, his policies, and his personal life. Based on Western and especially extensive Chinese source material as well as interviews with many of Mao’s associates in China and with people outside China who had significant dealings or contact with him, the book purports to cast new and revealing light on nearly every episode in Mao’s life.
Goodman, David S. G. Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese Revolution. London: Routledge, 1994. A political biography of Deng Xiaoping, drawing on the substantial documentary sources that became available from China after 1989.  Lively, accessible account that considers the sources of Deng’s power and that is not afraid to attempt evaluations. The bibliographic chapter on Deng’s writing, speeches, and so on is particularly useful. DOI: 10.4324/9780203296684
Vogel, Ezra F. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. A monumental study of the complex life of Deng Xiaoping and his immense importance for China’s modern transformation and its opening to the outside world. Uses a vast number of source materials, including Chinese government and party documents, oral interviews with Chinese and foreign officials who interacted with Deng, periodicals, newspapers, and an impressive range of Chinese publications. DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674062832
vans, Richard. Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China. Rev. ed. London: Penguin, 1995. Based mostly but not exclusively on English-language sources, this knowledgeable study gives attention to all aspects of Deng’s career. Evans was the British ambassador to Beijing when the agreement that ended 150 years of colonial rule in Hong Kong was finalized. Largely sympathetic to Deng. A good introduction also of interest to specialists.
Yang, Benjamin. Deng: A Political Biography. Armonk, NY, and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1998. Chatty, informal style, but based on considerable scholarship. The author visited places where Deng had lived and conducted many interviews. Provides good detail on Deng’s childhood and family background. Portrays Deng as an ordinary though resourceful person who achieved extraordinary things.
Kampen, Thomas. Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and the Evolution of the Chinese Communist Leadership. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2000. An important study of leadership relations in the period 1930–1945 that exposes much of the accepted wisdom as having been based on Maoist rewriting of history.



Naquin, Susan. Shantung Rebellion: The Wang Lun Uprising of 1774. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981. Among the first notable rebellions in the Chinese heartland of the Qing Empire, this millenarian-inspired uprising was initially a threat to the local society but was no match for a more concerted employment of Qing forces. Based on rebel depositions, it is equally important as a case study of the White Lotus sect in a society that was not ready to challenge the authorities on a large scale.
Ownby, David. Brotherhoods and Secret Societies in Early and Mid-Qing China: The Formation of a Tradition. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. A study of secret societies, or brotherhoods, and their role in society, by some officials seen as a substitute family or lineages. Focus is on the Tiandihui, Heaven and Earth Society, in the late 18th century, revealed to be more a tradition than an association that could threaten social stability.


WARRRING STATES
Hansen, Chad. A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought: A Philosophical Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. As well as including a chapter devoted to discussing the School of Names, this book as a whole is relevant to the topic as it explains how the ideas focused on by the school can be framed within the broader context of pre-Qin thought.
Watson, Burton. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1968. Influential complete translation of the received text of the Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), including all passages that make reference to Hui Shi.
Graham, A. C. Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2003a. Originally published in 1978. Includes an appendix proposing an interpretation of the “pointing at things treatise” of the Gongsun Longzi in light of the Mohist canons. Graham’s comprehensive bibliography from the 1978 edition is supplemented by a further bibliography of post-1978 works and critical introduction by Chris Fraser in this edition.
Graham, A. C. “The Sharpening of Rational Debate: The Sophists.” In Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. By A. C. Graham, 75–95. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 2003b. Useful discussion of the key issues acknowledging the influence of Hansen’s mass-noun hypothesis in its interpretation of the Gongsun Longzi. Suggests that passages such as the white horse discussion are a “relentlessly logical” form of sophistry. Includes a complete translation of the emended text of those parts of the Gongsun Longzi that Graham sees as genuine.
Hansen, Chad. Language and Logic in Ancient China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983. In addition to a chapter directly addressing the White Horse Dialogue, this influential book also outlines Hansen’s “mass-noun hypothesis” as well as discussing background theories of language in early China and the philosophy of language of the later Mohists. The “mass-noun” proposal was somewhat controversial and sparked much further research on the ontology of terms in classical Chinese.
Smith, Kidder. “Sima Tan and the Invention of Daoism, ‘Legalism,’ Et Cetera.” Journal of Asian Studies 62.1 (2003): 129–156. Analysis of the origins and reasoning behind the early classifications of schools of thought attributed to Sima Tan, including the “School of Names,” as well as their political significance. Available online for purchase or by subscription. DOI: 10.2307/3096138













PRE-HAN
Li, Wai-yee. The Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007. In this study of the Zuozhuan 左傳, the author addresses the structure and narrative of this complex text and advocates an approach that takes into account its multilayered character.
Mittag, Achim. “The Qin Bamboo Annals of Shuhuidi: A Random Note from the Perspective of Chinese Historiography.” Monumenta Serica 51 (2003): 543–570. Deals with the Zuozhuan and Guoyu 國語 as examples of a form of historiography typical of the Confucian history-writing in the 4th century BCE.
Schaberg, David. A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2001. Studies the formation of early historiography in the Zuozhuan and the Guoyu. The author treats both works as a means to express judgments on people and events; he thus opens new perspectives on our understanding of them as mere records of the Chunqiu period (770–476 BCE).
Blänsdorf, Catharina, Erwin Emmerling, and Michael Petzet, eds. The Terracotta Army of the First Chinese Emperor Qin Shihuang. Munich: Bayerischen Landesamtes fur Denkmalpflege, 2001. The book comprises twenty-one essays in three versions—Chinese, English and German—regarding the First Emperor Qin Shihuang 秦始皇陵兵马俑. Apart from several papers focusing on the terracotta warriors from archaeological and historical perspectives, a number of essays concentrate on the colors used to decorate the terracotta army and include the results of long-term collaborative research on the pigments, painting techniques, binding agents, and conservation methods employed.
Ciarla, Roberto, ed. The Eternal Army: The Terracotta Soldiers of the First Emperor. Vercelli, Italy: White Star, 2005. This lavish volume, comprising 287 pages with impressive photos and illustrations, places the Qin First Emperor and his terracotta army in its historical, archaeological, and artistic context to trace the roots of Qin’s political, cultural, and philosophical innovations. The essays in this book provide an introduction to the period before Qin’s unification, and also investigate the character Qin Shihuang, while studying individual terracotta warriors as well as the vast tomb complex.
Cotterell, Arthur. The First Emperor of China. London: Penguin, 1989. First published by Macmillan in 1981, this was a new edition of the first major illustrated book documenting the discovery at Mount Li. It remains an excellent guide in English for the general reader, despite the omission of recent finds. The archaeological discovery, historical context, and the Qin Empire are all well covered. Featuring an introduction by Yang Chen Ching, curator of the Museum of Warrior and Horse Figures from the Tomb of Ch’in Shih-huang-ti.
Portal, Jane, ed. The First Emperor - China’s Terracotta Army. London: British Museum, 2007. A catalogue written for the First Emperor’s Exhibition at the British Museum in 2007. The 120 exhibits included the then-newly discovered Terracotta Acrobats, Bronze Birds, Stone Armor, and construction materials in addition to the terracotta warriors. This edited volume is not only well illustrated, but also contains essays with in-depth research on the terracotta warriors and the recent archaeological discoveries from the whole tomb complex.
Hong Kong Museum of History. The Majesty of All under Heaven: The Eternal Realm of China’s First Emperor. Hong Kong: Leisure and Cultural Services Department, 2012. This catalogue, both in Chinese and English, was published to accompany an exhibition in the Hong Kong Museum of History. The exhibition studies the development of the Qin from a tribe to a state and then to an empire. This catalogue offers a new perspective using 120 exhibits drawn from across Shaanxi.
Khayutina, Maria, ed. Qin: The Eternal Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors. Zurich: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2013. This informative catalogue was published both in English and German. It comprises the illustrations of 120 sets of exhibits that were selected from the Emperor Qin Shihuang’s tomb complex and other Qin sites, and displayed in an exhibition in Switzerland in 2013.
Liu, Yang, and Edmund Capon. The First Emperor - China’s Entombed Warriors. Sydney, Australia: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2010. A catalogue and introduction of the exhibition held in the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2010. It includes four papers, integrated with the exhibits, written by experts focusing on Qin history, the First Emperor’s achievements, and the terracotta warriors in his tomb complex.
Dawson, Raymond, trans. The First Emperor: Selections from the Historical Records. New York: Oxford, 2007. This translation tells an extraordinary story about the First Emperor that was written in Shiji 史记 (The Historical Records) by Sima Qian, the Grand Historiographer of the Han Dynasty. Sima Qian recounts the construction of the First Emperor’s magnificent tomb, but without mentioning the terracotta warriors. Raymond Dawson’s fluent translation captures Sima Qian’s lively and vivid style.
Knoblock, John, and Jeffrey Riegel. The Annals of Lü Buwei: A Complete Translation and Study. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. This is the first complete English translation of Lüshi chunqiu (吕氏春秋), compiled in 239 BC under the patronage of Lü Buwei, Chancellor to the King of the state of Qin (later to be Emperor Qin Shihuang). It provides us not only with a marvelous annotated translation of the complete extant text, but also extensive notes and appendices.
Li, Yuning, ed. The First Emperor of China. White Plains, NY: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1975. The essays included here were written during the Maoist era, and give a sense of the context in which the excavations were undertaken. If archaeologists had not theorized at the time that the pottery fragments of figures that had turned up might be connected to Qin Shihuang’s mausoleum almost a mile away, it is doubtful that the preliminary investigation of the site would have been undertaken. Also, the translation of the chapter from Sima Qian’s Shiji is very useful.
Pines, Yuri, Gideon Shelach, Lothar von Falkenhausen, and Robin D. S. Yates, eds. Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin Revisited. Papers originally presented at a conference held at the Institute for Advanced Study, Hebrew University of Jersualem in December, 2008. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. A truly outstanding work on the Qin state and Qin empire, comprising 332 pages. The most important aspect of this book is its integration of the archaeological material with paleographic sources, providing a novel interpretation of the nature and legacy of the Qin. It is an invaluable source for scholars of Qin history and archaeology.
Fu, Tianchou. The Underground Terracotta Army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Beijing: New World, 1985. The text is by a noted art historian, and the introduction is by Sidney Shapiro, who was at the time editor of the magazine China Reconstructs. The fine photographs are especially noteworthy for scenes of the early stages of the excavations.
Wood, Frances. China’s First Emperor and his Terracotta Warriors. New York: St. Martin’s, 2008. Historically based research on the terracotta warriors written by a Western scholar. This book describes the Emperor Qin Shihuang’s life and relates the historical arguments about the real founder of China. Qin Shihuangdi’s military achievements are reflected in the astonishing terracotta warriors, and how his political changes were absorbed by China’s later society is also discussed.
Xu, Weimin. Travel Through the Middle Kingdom: Emperor Qin and his Terracotta Warriors. New York: Better Link, 2006. This charming book may be overlooked as simply a popular book, but its illustrations, informative text, well-rendered maps, and technical vocabulary in English make it well worth consulting.
Yuan, Zhongyi. China’s Terracotta Army and the First Emperor’s Mausoleum: The Art and Culture of Qin Shihuang’s Underground Palace. Paramus, NJ: Homa & Sekey, 2011. An English summary by a leading archaeologist, drawing on his years of research on the terracotta warriors but written for the general public.
Zhang, Wenli. The Qin Terracotta Army:Ttreasures of Lintong. London: Scala, 1996. An introduction to the terracotta warriors discovered in Lintong, China and an historical background to the Qin Dynasty.
Yates, Robin. “The Horse in Early Chinese Military History.” Presented at the 3rd International Conference on Sinology held in Taipei, Taiwan, 2000. In Junshi zuzhi yu zhanzheng (军事组织与战争). Edited by Huang Ko-Wu, 1–78. Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiushuo, 2002. The author clearly demonstrated that the riding of horses was first developed in East Asia by steppe-dwellers in the northeastern regions of modern China. The cavalry played crucial roles in the military campaigns of Qin unification, judging by the numbers of cavalry horses in the pits of the terracotta warriors.
Yates, Robin. “The Rise of Qin and the Military Conquest of the Warring States.” In The First Emperor - China’s Terracotta Army. Edited by Jane Portal, 30–57. London: British Museum, 2007. Integrates archaeological data with historical documents to argue that the Qin conquered the other states during the Warring States Period and unified China with its military success largely due to the development of crossbow triggers and cavalry.
Smart, William M. “Early Science in China.” Nature, supp. 186.4718 (1960): 36–37. Discerning review of Volume 3, on mathematics and astronomy (1959), by a distinguished British astronomer. DOI: 10.1038/186036a0
Thackray, Arnold, Lynn White Jr., and Jonathan D. Spence. “Science in China.” In Special Issue: Sarton, Science, and History. Isis 75.1 (1984): 171–189. Introduction by Thackray (editor of the journal) and perceptive essay reviews of Science and Civilisation in China by White and Spence. DOI: 10.1086/353442
Bodde, Derk. Chinese Thought, Society, and Science: The Intellectual and Social Background of Science and Technology in Pre-modern China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1991. Originally intended as a contribution to Science and Civilisation in China but withdrawn on account of the author’s unwillingness to use primary sources after 300 BC.
Chan, Wing-tsit (Chen Rongjie). “Neo-Confucianism and Chinese Scientific Thought.” Philosophy East and West 6.4 (1957): 309–332. A detailed, nuanced critique of Needham’s argument that Neo-Confucianism was a hindrance to the growth of modern science. DOI: 10.2307/1397477
Bodde, Derk. “The Attitude toward Science and Scientific Method in Ancient China.” T’ien Hsia Monthly 2 (1936): 139–160. Argues that the classical Chinese language was unsuited for scientific writing, but without examining scientific writing.
Barnhart, Richard, “Alexander in China? Questions for Chinese Archaeology.” In New Perspectives on China’s Past: Chinese Archaeology in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Xiaoneng Yang, 329–345. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. The author attempts to explain the sudden appearance of so many elements in the mausoleum of Qin Shihuangdi. It calls attention to the monumental mound of King Mausolus (r. 377–353 BC) from whose name our word for mausoleum derives, at Caria at Halicarnassus (now Bodrum) in Turkey. A satrap of Achaemenid Persia and an admirer of Greek art and culture, his mausoleum was built some 125 years before that of the Qin emperor.
Capon, Edmund. “The First Emperor’s Army: Realism, Naturalism, Symbolism.” In China’s Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor’s Legacy. Edited by Yang Liu, 203–209. Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Art, 2012. A deeply considered paper about the detail depicted on the terracotta figures as being revolutionary in terms of realism in early Chinese art, and the symbolic value of their role as guardians of tomb for Qin Shihuangdi’s afterlife. It is a unique buried army, and China has seen nothing like it before or since.
Kesner, Ladislav. “Likeness of No One: (Re)presenting the First Emperor’s Army.” Art Bulletin 77.1 (1995): 115–132. This article addresses the remarkable verisimilitude of the figures and the whole range of related issues that arise from this level of realism, which seemed to appear from nowhere and was not seen again for many more centuries in China. DOI: 10.2307/3046084
Li Xiuzhen, Andrew Bevan, and Marcos Martinón-Torres et al. “Crossbows and Imperial Craft Organisation: the Bronze Triggers of China’s Terracotta Army.” Antiquity 88.339 (2014): 126–140. Pioneer research using typological, metrical, statistical, and spatial analysis to study the crafts organisation employed in the Qin weapons production and the arrangement of these weapons within the pit. Reveals that these crossbow triggers were produced in batches and these separate batches were possibly stored in an arsenal before being placed to equip the terracotta crossbowmen in the pit.
Chang, Kwang-chih. Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983. A short but inspiring collection of essays discussing the relationship between early Chinese art and ritual activities and the establishment of political authority; thus, important to the understanding of the relationship between early state and religion
Eno, Robert. “Shang State Religion and the Pantheon of the Oracle Texts.” In Early Chinese Religion, Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC–220 AD). Edited by John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski, 41–102. Handbuch der Orientalistik 4. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009. Provides an up-to-date survey of Shang state religion, on the basis of oracle bone inscriptions, but cautions that when interpreting Shang evidence one should not inject cultural features typical of later times into the picture.
Keightley, David N. “The Religious Commitment: Shang Theology and the Genesis of Chinese Political Culture.” In Special Issue: Current Perspectives in the Study of Chinese Religions. History of Religions 17.3–4 (1978): 211–225. The author holds that Shang religion was inextricably involved in the genesis and legitimation of the Shang state. Of interest is his discussion of the bureaucratic logic of Shang religion, which suggests a relationship between Shang religious belief and the genesis of the bureaucratic state. Available online by subscription. DOI: 10.1086/462791
Nadeau, Randall Laird, ed. The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions. Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Religion. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. A handbook that gives concise, topical treatment of Chinese religion, including its historical development and different religious traditions, as well as some critical terms such as sacred text, ritual, divinity, divination, gender, asceticism, etc. DOI: 10.1002/9781444361995
Granet, Marcel. The Religion of the Chinese People. Translated, edited, and introduced by Maurice Freedman. Explorations in Interpretive Sociology. Oxford: Blackwell, 1975. Translation of La religion des Chinois (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1922). A very influential work that employs Durkheimian social theory in interpreting ancient Chinese religious life.
Kominami Ichirô. “Rituals for the Earth.” In Early Chinese Religion, Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC–220 AD). Edited by John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski, 201–234. Handbuch der Orientalistik 4. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009. Discusses rituals of the “earth”-she, from the court to the local society, and the myth about the clod of earth that grows spontaneously.
Yu, Anthony C. State and Religion in China: Historical and Textual Perspectives. Chicago: Open Court, 2005.Gives an insightful discussion of some fundamental conceptions in the study of Chinese religion, such as the meaning of ancestor worship and its relationship with the concept of state religion. As the title of the book shows, the Chinese state has from the beginning been intimately involved with religious matters.
Poo, Mu-chou. In Search of Personal Welfare: A View of Ancient Chinese Religion. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. This work discusses the development of religion from the Neolithic period to the end of the Han dynasty. Its special emphasis is on the development of popular religion since the Spring and Autumn period, by using newly excavated texts such as the “Daybook.”

Falkenhausen, Lothar von. “Reflections on the Political Role of Spirit Mediums in Early China: The wu Officials in the Zhou li.” Early China 20 (1995): 279–300. Discusses wu in the Zhouli as an official position and analyzes their duties as part of the bureaucracy. Points out that the wu never performed ritual for the ancestors, unlike the shi (impersonator) during the funeral, who is exclusively devoted to the ritual for the newly deceased ancestor.

Fingarette, Herbert. Confucius: The Secular as Sacred. Religious Traditions of the World. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, 1998. A short but insightful study of Confucius as a philosopher. According to Fingarette’s interpretation, human beings, although not sacred themselves, could try to live up to the highest moral goodness, as defined by the need of a harmonious society. In that way, when a person serves society he or she becomes holy. Originally published in 1972 (New York: Harper & Row).
Eno, Robert. The Confucian Creation of Heaven: Philosophy and the Defense of Ritual Mastery. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. Discusses the origin of Confucianism (or Ruism) and how Ruism re-created or reconfirmed the concept of Heaven as a moral and ethical force, and how it evolved in the philosophy of Mencius and Xunzi.
Taylor, Rodney Leon. The Religious Dimensions of Confucianism. SUNY Series in Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. The author talks about the religious dimensions of Confucianism, in subjects such as the scripture, the saint, meditation, theodicy, etc. Although dealing mostly with neo-Confucianism, the author’s main message is clear: if we can understand the sage as the saint, then Confucianism could be regarded as a religion.
Yao, Xinzhong. An Introduction to Confucianism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000. A well-rounded introduction to Confucianism. Discusses the religious dimension of Confucianism; particularly useful is Yao’s review of the debates concerning whether or not Confucianism is a religion.
Littlejohn, Ronnie L. Daoism: An Introduction. London: I. B. Tauris, 2009. An introduction to Daoism in general. The author is of the opinion that we should not see philosophical Daoism and religious Daoism as different, but related; they should better be described as one growing from the other. Provides a useful textual analysis of Laozi and Chuangzi.
Girardot, N. J. Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism: The Theme of Chaos (Hun-tun). Hermeneutics, Studies in the History of Religions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. A study of the conception of “chaos” in early Daoism, exploring the symbolic meaning of chaos as a possibility to understand time, myth, and truth. It is aimed at discovering the mythical structure in Daoist thought and practice, which is the basis for understanding the religious dimension of Daoism.
Watson, Burton, trans. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. UNESCO Collection of Representative Works, Chinese Series: Records of Civilization, Sources and Studies 80. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 2002. A reliable translation of the text of Zhuangzi for English readers.
Allan, Sarah. The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. An in-depth study of the early myths of the ten suns and other myths related to the foundation of the Xia and Shang dynasties.
Birrell, Anne. Chinese Mythology: An Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. A good introduction to Chinese mythology. The author gives a theoretical consideration for the study of myth, discusses different approaches, suggests new directions to study, and provides an exhaustive entry-by-entry account of mythological themes and stories.
Karlgren, Bernhard. “Legends and Cults in Ancient China.” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 18 (1946): 199–365. A meticulous study of ancient Chinese sources of mythology; as a philologist, the author emphasizes the importance of dating the sources carefully before engaging in any serious study.
Lakos, William. Chinese Ancestor Worship: A Practice and Ritual Oriented Approach to Understanding Chinese Culture. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. A well-thought-out study of the meaning of ancestor worship in China. The author argues that ancestor worship and its correlates together make up a paradigm for the origination of inspiration of Chinese culture. Parts of the book deals with the ancient period.
Bodde, Derk. Festivals in Classical China: New Year and Other Annual Observances during the Han Dynasty, 206 B.C.–A.D. 220. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975. Gives an overview of festivals in early China; indispensable for an understanding of the religious life of the commoners.
Sommer, Deborah, ed. Chinese Religion: An Anthology of Sources. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. A convenient textbook for class reading. Contains material for the pre-Qin period.

Feuchtwang, Stephan. The Imperial Metaphor: Popular Religion in China. London: Routledge, 1992. An anthropological view of popular religion in China. Theoretically inspiring and instructive for the ancient period.
Field, Stephen Lee. Ancient Chinese Divination. Dimensions of Asian Spirituality. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008. A reliable general introduction to divination in China, with chapters on the origin and evolution of divination and the Zhouyi.
Waley, Arthur, ed. The Nine Songs: A Study of Shamanism in Ancient China. San Francisco: City Lights, 1973. The editor gives an introduction to shamanism in ancient China and translates one of the most important literary works in pre-Qin China, which happens to consist of descriptions of shamanic encounters with various deities.
Harper, Donald. “Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought.” In The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C. Edited by Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, 813–884. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. A survey of the various religious beliefs and activities that could be regarded as “popular religion,” such as milfoil divination, Yin-yang and Five Phases, magic and medicine, astrology, etc. DOI: 10.1017/CHOL978052147030
Kalinowski, Marc. “Diviners and Astrologers under the Eastern Zhou: Transmitted Texts and Recent Archaeological Discoveries.” In Early Chinese Religion, Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC–220 AD). Edited by John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski, 341–396. Handbuch der Orientalistik 4. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009. Summarizes materials concerning divination, portent, omens, astrology and calendar, etc., found in the traditional texts as well as the latest archaeological discoveries.







HAN
Sage, Steven F. Ancient Sichuan and the Unification of China. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Benefiting from the archaeological findings in Sanxingdui, this book fills the research gap by offering a detailed analysis of Sichuan prehistory, Ba and Shu cultures, and the influence of the Chu in the region up to the Han period. Studies of the peoples, cultures, and economies of Sichuan are also included.
Bagley, Robert, ed. Ancient Sichuan: Treasures from a Lost Civilization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. This book, reflecting the latest findings pertaining to the material culture of ancient Sichuan, thoroughly surveys bronze, jade, and stone as found at Sanxingdui and other antiquities that date to the civilization of southwestern China from the 13th century BCE through the 3rd century CE.
Clark, Anthony E. Ban Gu’s History of Early China. Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2008. Examines Ban Gu and his Hanshu, which constitutes the first truly dynastic history in that it dealt with a single dynasty only. The study portrays Ban Gu as a historical figure who served as a model for all further dynastic history-writing. Thus the author makes a strong point for the continued pursuit of historiography.
Crowell, William G. “Review of On-cho Ng and Q. Edward Wang” Mirroring the Past: The Writing and Use of History in Imperial China. Early Medieval China 12 (2006): 183–204. Primarily a book review, this text serves as an introduction to important aspects of history-writing in China up to the 10th century with a focus on the 3rd to 5th centuries.
Durrant, Stephen. The Cloudy Mirror: Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Qian. New York: State University of New York Press, 1995. This is a meticulous study of the personal, social, and literary influences that formed Sima Qian’s narrative style and thus is less concerned about the Shiji as a historical text itself.
Hardy, Grant. Worlds of Bronze and Bamboo: Sima Qian’s Conquest of History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. This work underlines the importance of the Shiji as the model for all subsequent dynastic histories in setting up sections devoted to basic annals (benji 本紀), chronological tables (biao 表), treatises (shu/zhi 書/志), and, above all, categorized biographies (liezhuan 列傳). It argues that just as the First Qin Emperor created the empire by force, so Sima Qian, through the methods he employed, determined the cornerstones of historiography.
Mansvelt Beck, B. J. The Treatises of the Later Han: Their Author, Sources, Contents and Place in Chinese Historiography. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1990. The treatises (zhi 志) of the Hou Hanshu 後漢書 (as well as those of later histories) are examined for information on administrative structures, bureaucratic procedures, astronomy, and other topics.
Mittag, Achim. “Forging Legacy: The Pact between Empire and Historiography.” In Conceiving the Empire: Rome and China Compared. Edited by Fritz-Heiner Mutschler and Achim Mittag, 143–165. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Emphasizes the role of the Shijing 詩經, Shiji, and Hanshu as important means for the propagation of imperial legitimization.
THREE KINGDOMS
Dien, Albert E. “Wei Tan and the Historiography of the Wei shu.” In Studies in Early Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History, in Honor of Richard B. Mather and Donald Holzman. Edited by Paul W. Kroll and David R. Knechtges, 399–466. Provo, UT: T’ang Studies Society, 2003. Detailed study of the Weishu commissioned by Sui Wendi (r. 581–604) to replace the work compiled by Wei Shou. The article includes Wei Tan’s 魏澹 criticism of Wei Shou’s text, an analysis of juan 3 of Wei Shou’s Weishu that most likely incorporates material from Wei Tan’s text, as well as a complete translation of Wei Tan’s biography in the Suishu.
Dien, Albert E. “Historiography of the Six Dynasties Period, 220–581.” In The Oxford History of Historical Writing. Vol. 1, Beginnings to AD 600. Edited by Andrew Feldherr and Grant Hardy, 509–534. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Provides a survey of bibliographies and their categories compiled during the period as well as descriptions of five dynastic histories, including the Sanguozhi, Hou Hanshu, Songshu, Nan Qishu, and Weishu.
Espesset, Grégoire. “Local Resistance in Early Medieval Chinese Historiography and the Problem of Religious Overinterpretation.” Medieval History Journal 17.2 (2014): 379–406. Demonstrates with a number of examples taken from the Jinshu to the Bei Qishu 北齊書 how rebellious actions have been overinterpreted as expressions of religious sentiments and advocates a stronger “historical” minded reading of premodern Chinese texts. DOI: 10.1177/0971945814544827
Farmer, J. Michael. “Qiao Zhou and the Historiography of Early Medieval Sichuan.” Early Medieval China 7 (2001): 39–77. Farmer discusses the writing of local history in the Southwest in treating Qiao Zhou 譙周 (b. c. 200–d. c. 270) and his now lost works, which are recognized as sources for Chang Qu’s 常璩 (b. c. 291–d. c. 361) Huayang guo zhi 華陽國志 (“Records of the states south of Mount Hua,” 350).
Mittag, Achim, and Ye Min. “Empire on the Brink—From the Demise of the Han Dynasty to the Fall of the Liang Dynasty: Notes on Chinese Historiography in the Wei-Jin-Nanbeichao Period.” In Conceiving the Empire: Rome and China Compared. Edited by Fritz-Heiner Mutschler and Achim Mittag, 347–369. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Depicts the influence of critical situations, such as the disunity of the empire, on the compilation of histories from the 4th to the 6th centuries. The authors affirm that despite the decline of imperial authority and the fragmentation of territory the concept of the Mandate of Heaven and thus of legitimate rule was maintained by historiographers writing about and during the period in question.
Munro, Donald J. The Concept of Man in Early China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969. Argues that Xunzi’s view on human nature is not as negative as it was traditionally understood. Rather, Xunzi’s view on unique human social organization implies his view that moral potentiality is built into human nature.
Schwartz, Benjamin I. The World of Thought in Ancient China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.
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In the chapter “Hsün-tzu: The Defense of the Faith” (pp. 290–320), Schwartz compares and contrasts Xunzi with other Chinese thinkers such as Laozi and Zhuangzi and also with non-Chinese philosophers such as Plato and Hobbes. He also presents insightful discussions on the relation between ritual (li) and righteousness (yi) as well as Xunzi’s understanding of “xin” as the rational mind.
Sato, Masayuki. The Confucian Quest for Order: The Origin and Formation of the Political Thought of Xunzi. Boston: Brill, 2003. An erudite and elaborate study of Xunzi’s political thought. It examines almost all the relevant key terms and themes in the Xunzi, makes use of strong textual evidence, and is sensitive to the various scholarly debates on relevant issues. It also situates Xunzi’s concepts in the larger pre-Qin intellectual context. See also Bibliographies, Key Issues in Xunzi’s Philosophy: Ritual, and Political Philosophy.
Hagen, Kurtis. The Philosophy of Xunzi: A Reconstruction. Chicago: Open Court, 2007. Reconstructs Xunzi’s philosophy and proposes a novel constructivist interpretation. Hagen suggests fresh ways of understanding concepts such as Dao, ritual, categories, patterns, names in the Xunzi. Hagen incorporates the results from a series of studies on Xunzi he conducted in the early 2000s.
Lee, Jang-Hee. Xunzi and Early Chinese Naturalism. New York: State University of New York Press, 2005. Argues against a naturalist reading of Xunzi’s philosophy. Particularly noteworthy is Lee’s analysis of Xunzi’s concept of xin (heart/mind) and his claim that xin is an important gateway to understanding the larger picture of Xunzi’s thought. See also Xunzi and Non-Chinese Philosophical Traditions.
Machle, Edward J. Nature and Heaven in the Xunzi: A Study of the Tian Lun. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. Argues against the then-popular naturalist reading of Xunzi’s view on heaven. It also provides a complete translation of the “Tian lun” chapter (chapter 17) of the Xunzi. See also English Translations and Tian (Heaven).
Goldin, Paul Rakita. Rituals of the Way: The Philosophy of Xunzi. Chicago: Open Court, 1999. Discussion is structured around Xunzi’s views on self-cultivation and the mind, heaven/nature, ritual and music, language, and Dao. Methodology is similar to traditional Chinese-language textual studies in that interpretation is presented in the form of commentaries on passages from the text. But its perspective and concerns are informed by contemporary philosophical discussions.
Kang Xiangge, ed. Special Issue: Reconstructing the Genealogy of Confucianism: Xunzi’s Thought and His Historical Image. Social sciences in China 35.1 (2014): 112–206. A special issue on Xunzi. Kang Xiangge provides concise overview of the reception thereof throughout Chinese intellectual history. Zhou Chicheng, Masayuki Sato, and Chenyang Li, respectively, discuss key issues in Xunzi: human nature, ritual, and qing (emotions/feelings). Wu Zhenxun examines texts on Xunzi written during the Qin to Han period. Tao interprets Xunzi in light of the Baoxun bamboo manuscript. Available online for fee or by subscription. DOI: 10.1080/02529203.2013.875653
Defoort, Carine, and Nicolas Standaert, eds. The Mozi as an Evolving Text: Different Voices in Early Chinese Thought. Studies in the History of Chinese Texts 4. Boston: Brill, 2013. Collection of studies that trace evolutions and differences within the book Mozi, more particularly the core chapters, dialogues, and opening chapters. Most papers focus on a specific number of Mozi chapters.
Lowe, Scott. Mo Tzu’s Religious Blueprint for a Chinese Utopia: The Will and the Way. Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen, 1992. A religious reading of the Mozi that is not limited to views on supernatural phenomena such as ghosts, spirits, and heaven. Based on a broad sense of “religion” in terms of “ultimate concern,” the core chapter and dialogues are interpreted in terms of the Mohist ultimate concern with the greatest possible benefit to the world and the means to realize it.
Mei, Yi-pao. Mo-tse, The Neglected Rival of Confucius. London: Arthur Probsthain, 1934. The earliest English monograph dedicated to Mozi’s life, work, school and teaching, including its methodology and ethical, political, economic, and religious thought. It gives a good overview of research on Mozi in the first part of the 20th century.
Johnston, Ian, trans. The Mozi: A Complete Translation. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2010. A complete translation accompanied by the full Chinese text and by footnotes with explanations and references to previous Chinese and Western scholarship. Although the English rendering is often no improvement upon Mei 1929 and Watson 1963, its comprehensiveness makes it very useful. The translation is preceded by a substantive introduction (see Reference Works). A reworked translation has been published as a Penguin Classic, Mo Zi: The Book of Master Mo (London: Penguin, 2013).
Knoblock, John, and Jeffrey Riegel. Mozi: A Study and Translation of the Ethical and Political Writings. Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, 2013. A careful and well-documented translation of the ethical and political chapters. It contains the Chinese text, extensive annotation, and detailed reflections on the content. The translation is preceded by a substantive introduction and followed by some appendixes (see Reference Works).
Robins, Dan. “The Moists and the Gentlemen of the World.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 35.3 (September 2008): 385–402. Argues that Mohism began as a sociopolitical movement and not as a philosophical school. Except for chapter 39, “Fei Ru,” and chapter 48, “Gongmeng,” it does not even attack the Ru. In general, Mohists reacted against the established privileges and extravagant behavior of the ruling elite, thereby provoking them to defend it and thus initiating the philosophical debate. DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6253.2008.00487.x
Behuniak, James, Jr. Mencius on Becoming Human. SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. Overview of Mencian philosophy that characterizes it within a process ontology. Beginning with an explanation of Warring States cosmology that centers on qi 氣 (“configurative energy” in his translation), Behuniak argues for a dynamic conception of xing 性 (“disposition” in his translation). He goes on to argue that Mencius sees our ethical dispositions as conditions through social relationships, rather than being strictly biological.
Shun, Kwong-loi. Mencius and Early Chinese Thought. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. The most comprehensive treatment of Mencius in English, making extensive and felicitous use of commentarial literature. In addition to providing a detailed background on the text and Mencius’s historical context, the bulk of Shun’s analysis is devoted to what he calls the “ethical attributes” (ren 仁 [“benevolence, humaneness”], li 禮 [“rites, observance of rites”], yi 義 [“propriety, righteousness”], and zhi 智 [“wisdom”]), Mencius’s debates with Gaozi, self-cultivation, and human nature.
Denecke, Wiebke. The Dynamics of Masters Literature: Early Chinese Thought from Confucius to Han Feizi. Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph 74. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Argues (in chapter 4) that Mencius is concerned with “depth” in temporal, textual, and physical senses. On the textual issue, Mencius emphasizes meaning discovered by a skilled exegete, as opposed to what may be at the “surface.” And this endeavor parallels Mencius’s desire to place himself in a long intellectual lineage and to emphasize the “inner” aspects of human nature. Read in conjunction with works listed in Human Nature (Xing 性).
Nivison, David. “Mengzi as a Philosopher of History.” In Mencius: Contexts and Interpretations. Edited by Alan K. L. Chan, 282–304. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002. Compares Mencius’s historical accounts with accounts found in other texts. Nivison argues that although Mencius promoted an “idealized” account of history, he did not engage in fabrication. The Mencian account was one of several competing accounts during the period.
Teiser, S. F. “Engulfing the Bounds of Order: The Myth of the Great Flood in Mencius.” Journal of Chinese Religions 13.1 (1985): 15–43. Analyzes flood myths linked to the sage king Yu 禹 in 3B9 and 3A4 and also water symbolism generally in the Mencius, interpreting them as symbolic of problems of order and boundaries. Teiser uses his analysis to challenge the traditional dichotomy between early Chinese “supernaturalism” and the supposed “rationalism” of the early Confucians. DOI: 10.1179/073776985805308194
Fu, Zhengyuan. China’s Legalists: The Earliest Totalitarians and Their Art of Ruling. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. The only English-language book dedicated to Legalism as a whole, written by a former Chinese political prisoner. Unfortunately does not engage with other literature on Legalism. The most interesting chapters deal with the influence of Legalism on the later imperial state and its relationship to the Marxism-Leninism of the 20th century.
Graham, A. C. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. Chicago: Open Court, 1989. Chapter 3 (“Legalism: An Amoral Science of Statecraft”), pp. 267–292, from one of most impressive scholars of Chinese philosophy in the West, provides an introduction that focuses on the amoral aspects of Legalism and the fact that the Legalists think of human nature in sociological terms.
Schwartz, Benjamin I. The World of Thought in Ancient China. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1985. Chapter 8 (“Legalism: The Behavioral Science”), pp. 321–349, is an impressive social scientific analysis of the Legalists that notes their similarity to certain 19th- and 20th-century social scientific model builders in the West. Perhaps the most insightful chapter in Schwartz’s important study of early Chinese thought.
Pines, Yuri. “Submerged by Absolute Power: The Ruler’s Predicament in the Han Feizi.” In Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Han Fei. Edited by Paul R. Goldin, 67–86. New York: Springer, 2013. Argues that Han Fei wishes to increase the power of the ruler as the only way to maintain order in the state. This can only be done when the ruler reduces his own intervention in policy-making, which, paradoxically, shifts the real source of authority from the ruler to his ministers. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-4318-2
Rubin, Vitaly. “The Theory and Practice of a Totalitarian State: Shang Yang and Legalism.” In Individual and State in Ancient China: Essays on Four Chinese Philosophers. Translated by Stephen I. Levine, 55–87. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. This overview of Shang Yang and the ideas of the book that bears his name credits him with putting forward totalitarian methods for strengthening the power of the ruler, centralizing government, and expanding resources that led the state of Qin to be a force to be reckoned with.
Vervoorn, Aat. “Taoism, Legalism and the Quest for Order in Warring States China.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 8.3 (1981): 303–324. Notes the important similarities between the thought of Zhuangzi and that of Han Fei, particularly in their search for a solid foundation for order, in determining the appropriate bases of knowledge, and in understanding the nature of the world and how humans should respond to it. DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6253.1981.tb00258.x
Creel, Herrlee G. “The Fa-chia: ‘Legalists’ or ‘Administrators’?” In What Is Taoism? And Other Studies in Chinese Cultural History. By Herrlee G. Creel, 92–120. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. Argues that while the Chinese term fajia may be useful, the term “Legalist” should be discarded. Discussion is based on an understanding of fajia as arising from Shang Yang, who emphasized penal law, and Shen Buhai, who was interested in bureaucracy and who had little or no interest in the law. First published in 1961.
Goldin, Paul R. “Persistent Misconceptions about Chinese ‘Legalism.’” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 38.1 (2011): 88–104. Argues that the term “Legalism” should be abandoned as it is not useful as a heuristic device and obscures our understanding of those thinkers who are often subsumed under this label. DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6253.2010.01629.x
Smith, Kidder. “Sima Tan and the Invention of ‘Daoism,’ ‘Legalism,’ et cetera.” Journal of Asian Studies 62.1 (2003): 129–156. Discusses how and when the term Legalism arose long after the deaths of those who are now numbered among its members and notes how none of these thinkers took themselves as belonging to a group with the others as members. DOI: 10.2307/3096138
Poo, Mu-chou. Enemies of Civilization: Attitudes toward Foreigners in Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. New York: State University of New York Press, 2005. A comparative study of cultural consciousness and civilizational assumptions about the “other” in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China, arguing that in all three civilizations, “us” and “them” are distinguished not because of biophysical differences, but in civilizational terms.
Yan Xuetong. Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power. Edited by Daniel A. Bell and Sun Zhe. Translated by Edmund Ryden. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. An ambitious attempt to rediscover and reclaim international political and philosophical thinking of pre-Qin Chinese philosophers and to revive interest in the ancient Chinese philosophical discourse on how to handle relations between states.
Di Cosmo, Nicola. Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. A major contribution to the study of China’s early foreign relations, offering a nuanced chronicle of the turbulent interactions between China and its northern nomadic neighbors both within and beyond the tribute system, from the pre-Qin period to the end of the Han dynasty. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511511967
Lewis, Mark Edward. China between Empires: The Northern and Southern Dynasties. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2009a. See especially chapter 6, “China and the Outer World” (pp. 144–169). Fills a significant gap in the studies of traditional China’s foreign relations during a period of civil war and internal division during the 5th and 6th centuries.
Wang Zhenping. Ambassadors from the Islands of Immortals: China-Japan Relations in the Han-Tang Period. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005. Based on recent archaeological findings and archival materials, offers sophisticated analysis of diplomacy between China and Japan within the framework of the tribute system in premodern Asia.
Yu Ying-shih Trade and Expansion in Han China: A Study in the Structure of Sino-barbarian Economic Relations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. An important early contribution to the study of the historically pervasive tribute system in traditional China’s trade and diplomacy during the Han dynasty, mostly with the Xiongnu.
Rossabi, Morris, ed. China among Equals: The Middle Kingdom and Its Neighbors, 10th–14th Centuries. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Makes a major claim against the conventional understanding of the tribute system as dominating traditional China’s foreign relations. Contributing chapters focus heavily on China’s trade and diplomacy during the Song dynasty.
Barfield, Thomas J. The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China, 221 BC to AD 1757. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. Offers a 2,000-year history of the nomadic tribes and states of Inner Asia: the Xiongnu, the Mongols, the Turks, the Uighurs, and others and their encounters with the Chinese Empire. Provides a non-Sinocentric view of their interactions.
Serruys, Henry. The Tribute System and Diplomatic Missions (1400–1600). Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques 14. Brussels: Institut belge des hautes études chinoises, 1967. A definitive study of the Ming’s relationship with the Mongols, on the basis of primary sources.



Spence, Jonathan D. To Change China: Western Advisers in China. New York: Penguin, 2002. In portraying a group of foreigners in China, Spence recaptures the rich tapestry of Western experiences of China for over three hundred years, from the 1620s through the 1950s. This book illuminates what Spence called the “indefinable realm” where imperialism and modernization met. First published in 1969.
Cohen, Warren I. East Asia at the Center: Four Thousand Years of Engagement with the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Offers a regional rather than Sinocentric perspective on the history of international relations in East Asia and can be used as a textbook. The first nine chapters cover the period from ancient China to the end of the Qing dynasty.
Fairbank, John King, ed. The Chinese World Order: Traditional China’s Foreign Relations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968. Pioneering work that defines the field, which conceptualizes the tribute system as consisting of a Chinese world order. It provides both an innovative analytical framework and substantive discussions of how the tribute system operates to regulate China’s relationship with its neighbors as well as the Dutch, primarily in the Ming-Qing period.
Zhang Feng. “Rethinking the ‘Tribute System’: Broadening the Conceptual Horizon of Historical East Asian Politics.” Chinese Journal of International Politics 2.4 (2009): 545–574. Offers a number of strong critiques of the prevailing conceptualization of the tribute system as inadequate and limiting in studying traditional international relations in East Asia.
Cranmer-Byng, John. “The Chinese View of Their Place in the World: An Historical Perspective.” China Quarterly 53 (January–March 1973): 67–79. An effective summary of the Fairbankian conception of the tribute system and the traditional assumptions about the centrality and superiority of Chinese civilization associated with such a conception. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
Mancall, Mark. China at the Center: 300 Years of Foreign Policy. New York: Free Press, 1984. Provides an overview of the tribute system in institutional terms and as a mentality in dominating China’s foreign relations, as well as a historical account of its collapse under the assault of Western powers. The attempt to combine a historian’s insights with the systemic approach of an international-relations scholar is not particularly successful.
Gong, Gerrit W. The Standard of “Civilization” in International Society. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984. A definitive study of how non-European countries tried to enter expanding European international society in the 19th century, by fulfilling the standard of “civilization” set by the European society of states. Individual chapters on Turkey, China, and Japan, as well as Siam entry, are instructive for comparative purposes.
Teng, Ssu-yü, and John King Fairbank, eds. China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Provides an excellent combination of commentary and documents in an analytical discussion, arranged chronologically, of Chinese elites’ understanding of the nature of the clash between China and the West in the second half of the 19th century and the attendant new ideas that led to institutional reform, political revolution, and ideological reconstruction in China. Originally published in 1954.

Wilkinson, Endymion. Chinese History: A New Manual. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2012. Chapter 22 “Education and Examinations” (pp. 292–304) of this monumental work contains a systematic introduction to the structure and curriculum of the late imperial examination system. Has also a section on primary and secondary sources. There are several editions of this manual; the 2012 version is the one you should use.
Graff, David. Medieval Chinese Warfare 300–900. New York: Routledge, 2001. The fundamental discussion of Chinese military history from 300 to 900 CE. Unparalleled in any language for its coverage and insights.
Graff, David, and Robin Higham, eds. A Military History of China. 2d ed. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012. The best general overview of Chinese military history available. Broad coverage of time and subjects, aimed at nonacademic readers.
Lorge, Peter. War, Politics and Society in Early Modern China, 900–1795. New ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. General coverage of the period from 900 to 1795. More concerned with fitting military history into the social and political history of the time than with a providing an account of the wars, campaigns, and battlefield events.