Historical Dictionary of Modern China (1800-1949)

摘要

The inexorable expansion of the Scarecrow Press series of historical dictionaries continues unabated. Its format will be familiar to reference librarians with appropriate interests. The present volume comprises about 660 articles, varying in length from 100 to 1000 words, on the people, places, parties, movements, theories, treaties, rebellions and wars that influenced the history of China during one of the most turbulent periods of its long history, one that Arnold Toynbee would have called a "Time of Troubles" in Chinese civilisation. At the beginning of the period, the Qing Empire was one of the world's greatest powers, still expanding, and scarcely affected by external forces. But the rapid advance of western technical superiority was soon to put an end to that "splendid isolation", and the rest of the period was dominated both by foreign intervention and by the struggles (often violent and extensive) to find an adequate Chinese response, which were eventually to be resolved (or so it appeared) by the Communist takeover. By then, major civil or foreign wars had occupied 50 of the previous 150 years.