When China Rules the World

I have mainly used three general histories of China, though others have been published more recently. The best is John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), but I also found Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, 2nd edn (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), and Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), very useful. Julia Lovell, The Great Wall: China against the World 1000 BC-AD 2000 (London: Atlantic Books, 2006), is a highly readable account of the Wall as a metaphor for the long process of China’s expansion, while Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), is a formidable account of the huge expansion of Chinese territory that took place under the Qing dynasty. Edward L. Dreyer, Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405-1433 (New York: Pearson Longman, 2007), examines one of the most remarkable achievements in Chinese history. Although Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years (London: Vintage, 1998), only has a little about China, in a few short pages he demonstrates just how untypical Chinese civilization is in the broader global story.

There are many books that deal with Europe’s rise and the failure of China to industrialize from the end of the eighteenth century. Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000), and R. Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2000), have been amongst the most prominent recently in arguing that Europe’s rise was largely a consequence of contingent factors; Pomeranz’s book has become a key book in this context. Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973), still remains essential reading for those seeking an explanation of why China lost out on industralization. I also found C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), by taking a global frame of reference, useful in arriving at a broader picture.

Göran Therborn, European Modernity and Beyond: The Trajectory of European Societies, 1945-2000 (London: Sage, 1995), offers a powerful argument on the exceptionalism of European modernity. Deepak Lal, Unintended Consequences (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), raises interesting questions concerning long-running cultural differences between diverse peoples and civilizations and what lies behind them. There is one outstanding book on the nature of Japanese culture, and that is Ruth Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (London: Secker and Warburg, 1947), which, though written over sixty years ago, remains a classic on how to analyse cultural difference. Kosaku Yoshino, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary Japan (London: Routledge, 1992), offers interesting insights into Japanese identity, while Michio Morishima, Why Has Japan ‘Succeeded’: Western Technology and the Japanese Ethos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), is an excellent general history.