Chinese history books

While researching Maoism, China expert Julia Lovell battled against two incorrect assumptions: “firstly that Maoism is a story of China; and secondly that Maoism is a story of the past.” Here she recommends five books for coming to grips with the global, still-relevant impact of Maoism.

From the Han dynasty to the time of Marco Polo, the routes connecting Asia, Africa and Europe—now known as the Silk Road—were responsible for enormous amounts of global trade. Yale historian Valerie Hansen, author of The Silk Road: A New History, introduces us to its rich history: “one of the reasons the Silk Road is a misnomer is that silk was not the main good moving along.”

Countries do have to come to terms with their own history, and it's unhealthy that China has not yet come to terms with the Cultural Revolution, argues the West's leading scholar of the period, Roderick MacFarquhar. He chooses the best five books on the Cultural Revolution.

In October 1911, China’s last imperial dynasty fell. The legacy of that revolution remains deeply ambiguous in today’s People’s Republic. China scholar Rana Mitter tells us about the country’s tumultuous changes from 1911 to the present day.

The 19th century opium war marked the clash of the world’s great empires of the age – Britain and China. Historian Julia Lovell says its legacy of Chinese humiliation is still felt keenly in Beijing.

China has had close political and cultural relations with Korea for centuries and the history of that relationship can shed light on China's approach to international relations more broadly—including in its imperial past. Yale historian Odd Arne Westad recommends the best books on China, Korea and the relationship between them.

Discussions about Tibet are often reduced to arguments about China's right to run it. Tibetologist Robbie Barnett says this obscures a much more subtle debate about what it means to be Tibetan in modern Tibetan society.

In contrast to Eastern Europe, the 1989 protests in China did not lead to the overthrow of the Communist Party. But if China's leaders chose the right course on June 4th, 1989, why are they still frightened to come to terms with it? Sinologist and historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom picks the best books to understand events at Beijing's Tiananmen Square and around China on that hot summer night.