Hmm... inscrutable china? If you wanted one comprehensive book to understand Chinese history and culture without being too euro-centric what would it be? Is there such a book published in English? The best I have found would be Jonathan Spences’s, Search for Modern China (2nd ed). Instead of making the beginning of modern Chinese history the arrival of the white man__everything before, then everything after__Spence takes a wider view marking the beginning of modern China from the fall of the Ming Dynasty. This relegates the appearance of Westerners to just another event along China’s long historical scale. Not to say that Spence down plays the role of Western contact, it’s just that he presents it within the context of China’s long history. As a result we see Western/Chinese contact in a clearer perspective. The reader better understands why the Chinese view Westerners as they do. Some obvious reasons: imposition of unfair treaties, cultural interference, etc. Spence does a nice job of rounding this all out and providing just the right details in a book that must have been a labor of love. Spense’s prose is very readable and the book reads more like an interesting story than a historical textbook. And this is not a textbook, it is for the general reader, so don’t be put off by its size, 992 pages. Yips, but it goes fast. Spence shows a deep familiarity with Chinese politics, art, and society and deftly glances over areas of Chinese history that might prove a tangle of complexity to a Western reader not familiar with Chinese places and names. The down side: the treatment of the Cultural Revolution seem to me to deserve more explanation as well as a better analysis. And the book would have benefited from mention of alternative interpretations of Chinese history, which there are many. This aside, Spence has written one of the finest single volume histories of China for the general reader, it’s a great read and an interesting way to learn.
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