China's Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839-1923

By John King Fairbank and John K. Teng, Ssu-Yu, & Fairbank

Book Overview

The present confrontation of Communist China and the United States, on which the future of peace in Asia hinges, is merely the latest phase in a continuing historical process--the remaking of China's ancient society under the stimulus of Western contact. How does it happen that a century of foreign trade and missionary evangelism, of modern education and the training of Chinese students in Western ways, has now resulted in a seeming rejection of the West? What has been the real nature of "China's response to the West" during the past century of our contact?

This volume gives the first inside account, on so broad a scale, of how China's leaders reacted to the invasion of Western arms and goods, persons and ideas, during the three generations from the Opium War to the rise of the Kuomintang. In 28 chapters, with translations of 65 key documents, the authors trace the stages by which the scholar-officials of the Middle Kingdom were brought to recognize successively the need for Western arms to defend their country, Western technology for making arms, modern science to support technology, its application in modern industry to strengthen the nation, and all the attendant new ideas which led them eventually into great movements for institutional reform, political revolution, and ideological reconstruction.

From the famous Commissioner un's first study of Western geography during his anti-opium crusade, through the efforts of Li Hungchang and others at "self-strengthening" by industrialization, down to the critical thought of Dr. Hu Shih and the eclecticism of Sun Yat-sen in the early 20th century, the writings of China's leaders ring the changes on a central theme how to remake their heritage and create a modern nation capable of meeting the West on equal terms. The provincial viceroys, the Reformers of 1898, the Boxers in 1900, the old Empress Dowager, and the eager students studying abroad, each in their own way, all grapple with this absorbing problem. The varied Chinese responses to the West in the formative century here analyzed give us a new insight into the springs of social action among one-fifth of mankind.

The companion volume, for the research specialist, provides Notes and Sources, Bibliography, and a Glossary of Chinese names and terms, essential bases for further exploration of this new field.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674120256
• ISBN13: 9780674120259
• Release Date: December 1979
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Researchers Beware

Great book. However I was surprised to find that there are very useful footnote markers, yet no footnotes or endnotes. If you want to view the sources, then you must purchase the Researcher's Guide to "China's Response to the West". Otherwise great book to give insight into the actual issues and debates of this crucial period of Chinese history, and central issues in the Chinese debate of how to deal with the Western Challenge.

The best history book I've ever read

If you want to understand how China could fall from being the worlds most powerful nation to a third rate power in the 1930's this is the book.It just provides the documents, you can do your own analysis. Read official correspondence from the forbidden city to the Queen of England, letters between ministers demonstrating just how poorly the Chinese understood the importance of technology and industrialization.This book is enlightening.