A Note on Further Reading for the Non-Chinese Reader

Historians build monuments, and the best way to stay grounded and view these paper edifices from a critical distance is full immersion in primary sources. There are numerous and often very helpful sources on republican China available in English to the non-specialist reader, including sociological surveys, trade reports, travel literature and memoirs. A few used in this study are Olga Lang, Chinese Family and Society, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946; M. B. Treudley, The Men and Women of Chung Ho Ch’ang, Taipei: Orient Cultural Service, 1971; John L. Buck, Land Utilization in China, Nanjing: University of Nanking, 1937; Sidney D. Gamble, North China Villages: Social, Political, and Economic Activities before 1933, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963; Gerald Yorke, China Changes, London: Jonathan Cape, 1935; Rudolph Löwenthal, The Religious Periodical Press in China, Beijing: Synodal Commission in China, 1940. Given the cosmopolitan nature of republican China, there are also many excellent sources in English written by Chinese individuals, two examples used in this book being F. T. Cheng, East and West: Episodes in a Sixty Years’ Journey, London: Hutchinson, 1951 and James Hsioung Lee, A Half-Century of Memories, Hong Kong: South China Photo-Process Printing Co., n.d., 1960s.

In order to contextualise these primary sources, the non-specialist may wish to consult a general history of modern China, and I recommend Jack Gray, Rebellions and Revolutions: China from the 1800s to the 1980s, Oxford University Press, 1990, which is provocative yet systematic on the period up to 1949. More specifically on the cosmopolitan aspects of modern China, Jerome Ch’en, China and the West: Society and Culture, 1815–1937, London: Hutchinson, 1979, has aged gracefully thanks to firm anchoring in primary material and will repay close reading. Two articles are closely related to some of the themes explored in this book and deserve special mention, namely William C. Kirby, ‘The internationalization of China: Foreign relations at home and abroad’, China Quarterly, no. 150 (June 1997), pp. 433–58 and Philip C. C. Huang, ‘Biculturality in modern China and in Chinese studies’, Modern China, 26, no. 1 (Jan. 2000), pp. 3–31; pioneering was Ramon H. Myers and Thomas A. Metzger, ‘Sinological shadows: The state of modern China studies in the United States’, Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 4 (July 1980), pp. 1–34.

It is not the intention here to list an exhaustive bibliography on the many topics broached in this book, but merely to provide the reader with an introduction to the more critical literature in the field, which implies that many of the usual suspects do not get a mention (although any recent textbook on the history of modern China, for instance Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China, New York: W. W. Norton, 1999, second edition, will provide a general bibliography). Essential on the ‘warlords’ is the work of Arthur Waldron, ‘The warlord: Twentieth-century Chinese understandings of violence, militarism, and imperialism’, The American Historical Review, 96, no. 4 (Oct. 1991), pp. 1073–100, Arthur Waldron, ‘Warlordism versus federalism: The revival of a debate?’, The China Quarterly, no. 121 (March 1990), pp. 116–28, and Arthur Waldron, From War to Nationalism: China’s Turning Point, 1924–1925, Cambridge University Press, 1995, while useful insights on federalism are offered in Jean Chesneaux, ‘The federalist movement in China, 1920–1923’ in Jack Gray (ed.), Modern China’s Search for a Political Form, Oxford University Press, 1969 and Leslie H. Dingyan Chen, Chen Jiongming and the Federalist Movement: Regional Leadership and Nation Building in Early Republican China, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. Particularly helpful is R. Keith Schoppa, ‘Province and nation: The Chekiang Provincial Autonomy Movement, 1917–1927’, Journal of Asian Studies, 36, no. 4 (Aug. 1977), pp. 661–74. Besides the Ministry of Justice, analysed in Frank Dikötter, Crime, Punishment and the Prison in Modern China, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002, there is no other detailed study of any one government institution throughout the first half of the twentieth century, although a number of ministries are presented in Julia C. Strauss, Strong Institutions in Weak Polities: State Building in Republican China, 1927–1940, Oxford University Press, 1998. On elections and democracy from 1902 to 1949 see Roger R. Thompson, ‘The lessons of defeat: Transforming the Qing state after the Boxer War’, Modern Asian Studies, 37, no. 4 (Oct. 2003), pp 769–73; Mark Elvin, ‘The gentry democracy in Chinese Shanghai, 1905–1914’ in Jack Gray (ed.), Modern China’s Search for a Political Form, Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 41–66; John H. Fincher, Chinese Democracy: The Self-Government Movement in Local, Provincial and National Politics, 1905–1914, London: Croom Helm, 1981; Andrew J. Nathan, Chinese Democracy, New York: Knopf, 1985; Marina Svensson, Debating Human Rights in China: A Conceptual and Political History, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002; Roger R. Thompson, China’s Local Councils in the Age of Constitutional Reform, 1898–1911, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995; and on oppositional politics one should read Roger B. Jeans (ed.), Roads Not Taken: The Struggle of Opposition Parties in Twentieth-Century China, Boulder: Westview Press, 1992; Eugene Lubot, Liberalism in an Illiberal Age: New Culture Liberals in Republican China, 1919–1937, Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1982; Louise Edwards, Gender, Politics and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage in China, Stanford University Press, 2008; Edmund S. K. Fung, In Search of Chinese Democracy: Civil Opposition in Nationalist China, 1929–1949, Cambridge University Press, 2000; and William C. Kirby (ed.), Realms of Freedom in Modern China, Stanford University Press, 2004. On local activism see Mary B. Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China, Zhejiang Province, 1865–1911, Stanford University Press, 1986; William T. Rowe, Hankow: Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, Stanford University Press, 1989; David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989; Robert J. Culp, ‘Elite association and local politics in republican China: Educational institutions in Jiashan and Lanqi Counties, Zhejiang, 1911–1937’, Modern China, 20, no. 4 (Oct. 1994), pp. 446–77; and the overview by Mary B. Rankin, ‘State and society in early republican politics, 1912–18’, China Quarterly, no. 150 (June 1997), pp. 260–81.

On overseas Chinese, an elegant introduction is offered by Wang Gungwu, The Chinese Overseas: From Earthbound China to the Quest for Autonomy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000; see also the superb essay by Mark Ravinder Frost, ‘Transcultural diaspora: The Straits Chinese in Singapore, 1819–1918’, Working Paper Series no. 10, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 2003. Ng Lun Ngai-Ha, ‘The role of Hong Kong educated Chinese in the shaping of modern China’, Modern Asian Studies, 17, no. 1 (1983), pp. 137–63; John M. Carroll, Edge of Empires: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005; and Kingsley Bolton, Chinese Englishes: A Sociolinguistic History, Cambridge University Press, 2003, are all highly original. On foreigners, essential are James C. Thomson, While China Faced West: American Reformers in Nationalist China, 1928–1937, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969; Albert Feuerwerker, The Foreign Establishment in China in the Early Twentieth Century, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1976; Nicholas R. Clifford, Spoilt Children of Empire: Westerners in Shanghai and the Chinese Revolution of the 1920s, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1991; Frances Wood, No Dogs and Not Many Chinese: Treaty Port Life in China, 1843–1943, London: John Murray, 1998; and Guy Brossollet, Les Français de Shanghai, 1849–1949, Paris: Belin, 1999.

Diplomacy is understudied, but a superb essay is William C. Kirby, ‘The internationalization of China: Foreign relations at home and abroad’, China Quarterly, no. 150 (June 1997), pp. 433–58; see also Pao-Chin Chu, V. K. Wellington Koo: A Case Study of China’s Diplomat and Diplomacy of Nationalism, 1912–1966, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1981; Stephen G. Craft, V. K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004; and Xu Guoqi, China and the Great War: China’s Pursuit of a New National Identity and Internationalization, Cambridge University Press, 2005. On returned students and the academic community one should start with E-tu Zen Sun, ‘The growth of the academic community, 1912–1949’ in John K. Fairbank and Albert Feuerwerker (eds.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 13, part 2, pp. 361–420; Jerome Ch’en has written some magnificent pages on the returned students in his China and the West: Society and Culture, 1815–1937, London: Hutchinson, 1979. On schools, see the pioneering work of Elizabeth VanderVen, ‘Village-state cooperation: Modern community schools and their funding, Haicheng County, Fengtian, 1905–1931’, Modern China, 31, no. 2 (April 2005), pp. 204–35. Religion can be explored through the work of Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, New York: Harper, 1945; Holmes Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968; Chan Wing-tsit, Religious Trends in Modern China, New York: Octagon Books, 1969; Norman Howard Cliff, ‘The life and theology of Watchman Nee, including a study of the Little Flock Movement which he founded’, MPhil dissertation, London: Open University, 1983; Daniel H. Bays, ‘Indigenous Protestant churches in China’ in Steven Kaplan (ed.), Indigenous Responses to Western Christianity, New York University Press, 1995, pp. 124–43; and Francesca Tarocco, ‘Attuning the Dharma: The cultural practices of modern Chinese Buddhists’, doctoral dissertation, University of London, 2004. For a general introduction to art in republican China, albeit limited to Shanghai, see Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Ken Lum and Zheng Shengtian (eds.), Shanghai Modern, 1919–1945, Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2004. On cinema one will benefit from Fu Poshek, Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: The Politics of Chinese Cinemas, Stanford University Press, 2003 and Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896–1937, University of Chicago Press, 2005, while popular music is approached by Jonathan Stock, ‘Reconsidering the past: Zhou Xuan and the rehabilitation of early twentieth-century popular music’, Asian Music, 26, no. 2 (Spring 1995), pp. 119–35, and Andrew F. Jones, Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age, Durham: Duke University Press, 2001; on classical music see Sheila Melvin and Jindong Cai, Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese, New York: Algora Publishing, 2004. On China’s preeminent photographer consult Edwin Kin-keung Lai, ‘The life and art photography of Lang Jingshan (1892–1995)’, doctoral dissertation, University of Hong Kong, 2000, and on vernacular photography see Frank Dikötter, Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China, New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, Chapter 10.

The best introduction to the complex literature on economic history is Philip Richardson, Economic Change in China, c. 1800–1950, Cambridge University Press, 1999. Other superb contributions include Yen-p’ing Hao, The Commercial Revolution in Nineteenth-Century China: The Rise of Sino-Western Mercantile Capitalism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986; Loren Brandt, Commercialization and Agricultural Development: Central and Eastern China, 1870–1937, Cambridge University Press, 1989; David Faure, The Rural Economy of Pre-liberation China: Trade Expansion and Peasant Livelihood in Jiangsu and Guangdong, 1870 to 1937, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989; Thomas Rawski, Economic Growth in Prewar China, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989; David Faure, China and Capitalism: A History of Business Enterprise in Modern China, Hong Kong University Press, 2006. As these titles show, there is a considerable body of work on the quantitative changes in the republican economy, although research on qualitative aspects remains sparse; however, see Frank Dikötter, Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.