Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia

Merle Goldman, Andrew Gordon, Merle Goldman, Andrew Gordon

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780674000988, 9780674000971
• eBook ISBN: 9780674273092
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asiaaddresses provocative themes concerning the experience of particular nations and of East Asia as a whole. It explores the turbulent process of integrating Asian societies and political systems into a global order dominated by the West over the past two centuries.

The authors show that important changes were already underway before the western advance, which had their own internal logic and staying power. They describe how people in China, Japan, and Korea redefined and defended indigenous "traditions" even as they disagreed over what these traditions were and how to transform them. They make it clear that nationalism was a powerful motivating force in the modern development of these countries, but they stress that a wide variety of nationalisms emerged and collided in the dramatic history of modern Asia.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Maps
• Chapter 1. The Foreign Impact on East Asia
• Chapter 2. Social and Political Change in Nineteenth-Century China
• Chapter 3. Visions of the Future in Meiji Japan
• Chapter 4. Korea’s Transition to Modernity: A Will to Greatness
• Chapter 5. State and Society in Interwar Japan
• Chapter 6. China in the Early Twentieth Century: Tasks for a New World
• Chapter 7. The Nationalist Regime and the Chinese Party-State, 1928–1958
• Chapter 8. The Search for Social Cohesion in China, 1921–1958
• Chapter 9. Society and Politics from Transwar through Postwar Japan
• Chapter 10. Searching for the Appropriate Model for the People’s Republic of China
• Chronologies
• Notes
• Contributors
• Index