Ebook Download A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet
Downloading the book A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet in this site lists can offer you much more benefits. It will show you the most effective book collections and finished collections. So many books can be discovered in this internet site. So, this is not only this A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet However, this book is described review since it is an impressive publication to offer you a lot more possibility to get encounters and also thoughts. This is basic, check out the soft data of the book A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet and you get it.
A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet
Ebook Download A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet
A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet. Someday, you will uncover a new experience and also knowledge by investing even more cash. But when? Do you think that you should acquire those all demands when having much money? Why don't you attempt to obtain something straightforward at first? That's something that will lead you to recognize more regarding the world, journey, some places, history, home entertainment, and also more? It is your very own time to continue reviewing habit. Among the e-books you could enjoy now is A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet below.
Why ought to be book A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet Book is among the very easy sources to try to find. By getting the writer as well as motif to obtain, you can locate a lot of titles that offer their data to obtain. As this A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet, the inspiring publication A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet will provide you exactly what you should cover the work target date. And why should remain in this web site? We will ask first, have you much more times to go with shopping the books as well as hunt for the referred book A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet in publication shop? Lots of people might not have sufficient time to locate it.
Hence, this site offers for you to cover your issue. We reveal you some referred books A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet in all types and also motifs. From common writer to the renowned one, they are all covered to supply in this site. This A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet is you're searched for book; you just need to visit the web link page to display in this web site and afterwards choose downloading and install. It will certainly not take many times to obtain one book A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet It will certainly rely on your internet connection. Merely purchase and download and install the soft data of this book A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet
It is so very easy, isn't it? Why do not you try it? In this site, you can also discover various other titles of the A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet book collections that could have the ability to aid you finding the best solution of your task. Reading this book A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet in soft file will also alleviate you to obtain the resource quickly. You might not bring for those publications to someplace you go. Only with the gizmo that consistently be with your almost everywhere, you can read this publication A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet So, it will certainly be so swiftly to finish reading this A History Of Chinese Civilization, By Jacques Gernet
When published in 1982, this translation of Professor Jacques Gernet's masterly survey of the history and culture of China was immediately welcomed by critics and readers. This revised and updated edition includes a detailed chronology that has been updated through 1993, a new bibliography, and an expanded index that includes Chinese characters.
- Sales Rank: #849842 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Cambridge University Press
- Published on: 1996-05-31
- Original language: French
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.98" h x 1.65" w x 5.98" l, 2.37 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 832 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
Review
"If one could have only one book on China's history, this would be it." Booklist
"This is the most detailed and comprehensive one-volume survey of China's social, economic, and intellectual history....This should be in the reference collection of every serious library." Library Journal
"...an excellent book which should be of interest to both professional and general readers who study or enjoy the history of China." Asian Thought & Society
Language Notes
Text: English
Original Language: French
From the Back Cover
When published in 1982, this translation of Professor Jacques Gernet's masterly survey of the history and culture of China was immediately welcomed by critics and readers. This revised and updated edition makes it more useful for students and for the general reader concerned with the broad sweep of China's past. Written with an elegant and flowing narrative, the essential virtue of Jacques Gernet's book is to see the history of Chinese civilization as a whole. Yet within the synthesis of the trends - social, political, religious, scientific, artistic - that make up China's past and present, the author never loses sight of the telling detail that brings history to life. A History of Chinese Civilization is illustrated by a wide range of photographs, many maps, line drawings and tables. A detailed and updated chronological table and full bibliography complement the text and the expanded index now includes Chinese characters.
Most helpful customer reviews
29 of 29 people found the following review helpful.
An important book for understanding modern China
By David Oldacre
My main interest in history is to understand the development of civilization from earliest times, and since I had been concentrating mainly on the Middle East and Egypt, I realized I had to know more about the eastern civilizations of India and China. After rereading China's Imperial Past by Charles O Hucker (ISBN 0804708878 which was published in 1975), I searched for later books on the same subject, which would hopefully provide more details about the development of Chinese civilization. I liked the reviews of this book, and so I purchased it.
Professor Gernet certainly provides a very detailed review of Chinese civilization from earliest times to the present day, with a helpful introductory chapter, many useful maps and summary tables, a long Chronological table, many interesting plates and photographs, and an extensive bibliography and index, all of which I found to be essential for obtaining an understanding of what I was reading. This 800 page book is in 11 parts chronologically arranged by dynasty and comprises 32 chapters in all.
I found one of the most enjoyable features of the book to be Professor Gernet's admiration for of the achievements of the people of China over the past 2000 years, and in particular, his description of the continuity and improvements which have occurred to political administration, technological developments, and political and philosophical thought despite the many political upheavals and diverse origins of successive dynasties. What I also found very appealing were his deep sympathies to their enormous sufferings particularly in the last 150 years
This book generally covers the same topics as Professor Hucker's book does for the period up to 1850 and they are usually quite consistent in their descriptions of events. While both books are strong on the subjects of literature, philosophy and art, I found that Professor Gernet was the better on the subjects of social and economic development and that Professor Hucker was much easier to follow on the essential threads of political history, even though Professor Gernet provides rather more detail. However, whereas Professor Hucker ends his book in 1850, Professor Gernet devotes the final chapters of his book (150 pages) to the consequences of the economic and social decline of China from 1800 onwards, which resulted in the massive rebellions of the period 1850-1875, the takeover of China by the nations of the West and Japan, and the establishment of the People's Republic of China
While this was not a reason I purchased this book, I did find it particularly helpful in understanding the reason for the success of Chinese Communist Party in founding the People's Republic of China. The final chapter of the book which summarizes the main events of the period up to 1992, went a very long way in helping me understand the behaviour and logic of the leaders of the PRC, and the book as a whole clearly demonstrated to me that a good knowledge of the past history of a country is essential in understanding its attitude and behaviour in modern times.
Due to the sparseness of available records and publication of archaeological data the coverage of the very early period to the end of the Warring States period was disappointingly brief. But the level of detail certainly picks up from the time of the formation of the first centralized state in 221BC. The most interesting sections for me were those covering the events of the T'ang, the Sung, and the Manchu dynasties and I now have a much better understanding of the involvement of China's rulers with Central and South East Asia, Korea and Japan. I was, however, disappointed in the section on the Y�an (Mongol) dynasty and had to supplement my reading of this period with the book on the Mongol invasion of Europe by James Chambers, and what I could find on the Internet
I have to say that I found this book very difficult to follow at times, not just because of the multitude of unfamiliar places, large number of people, and events, but because the book was organized by subject matter rather than chronological order. I also got the distinct impression that some parts of the book had been rather hurriedly put together from a collection of notes which were not always consistent in the dates or particular order of significant events. On many occasions I became confused as to what was the cause and what was the effect! As a result, I found it necessary to make extensive notes on people, places, events, and philosophical thought in order to fully understand what I was reading. Consequently it took me all of 9 months to complete the reading of the book which was considerably longer than I had planned.
But and notwithstanding my personal disappointments it was certainly it worth the effort. While I found it to be harder to read than Professor Hucker's book I found it to have significantly additional information on China, and the extensive bibliography will be very useful for my continuing studies on the Bronze Age civilizations of China and Central Asia I am glad I persevered to the end, and I do recommend it to other readers.
103 of 106 people found the following review helpful.
Has its strengths and weaknesses, but look at the price!
By A Customer
If you compare this book to its obvious competitors (e.g. Valerie Hansen's Open Empire, Schirokauer's Brief History of Chinese Civilization), you have to be amazed at the relatively low list price--especially considering that the publisher, Cambridge University Press, is not famous for selling cheap books. If you can buy only one textbook history of China, this one is worth considering for that reason alone.
Students tend to have the same complaints about Gernet's book year after year (I've used this book many times in an undergraduate survey of Chinese history): it is too long and confusing, without emphasizing what is "important" and what isn't. Other reviewers on this page have similar concerns: the book isn't organized emperor-by-emperor; rather, it tends to focus topically on themes that cover several emperors' reigns, sometimes whole centuries. But weigh that against the major criticism of the book by professional historians, who argue, on the contrary, that the book is arranged only too rigidly according to a periodization imposed from Western history (ancient, medieval, modern, etc.). There isn't enough space here to get involved in these theoretical issues, but it should be clear that Gernet is to be lauded, not derided, for his courage to depart from the old fashioned year-by-year, emperor-by-emperor approach.
This is especially evident in his section on the Six Dynasties (or Northern and Southern Dynasties), which is probably the best succinct account of the period in any Western language. Instead of tediously relating events and dates for this chaotic period, Gernet reveals the underlying socioeconomic forces that dictated the pattern of history in the north and south over the course of this long and complex period. (He happens to be one of the foremost economic historians of China, and is clearly in his element with this kind of historiography.) I believe readers come away with a richer understanding of the Six Dynasties because of Gernet's focus.
Finally, the complaints about Wade-Giles Romanization are unfair and uninformed. When this book first appeared, before the Library of Congress and other major libraries switched to Pinyin, virtually all Chinese books were catalogued according to Wade-Giles, so it made much more sense to write a textbook using that Romanization system than Pinyin. Today, of course, Pinyin would be preferable. But it's not the case that Pinyin is more precise. Both are acceptable Romanization schemes for Mandarin Chinese, and both--assuming one has mastered the principles--indicate the correct sounds efficiently and unambiguously. Criticizing a book about China on the basis of its Romanization system is a bit like judging a book by its cover.
32 of 36 people found the following review helpful.
An Excellent Resource, however . . .
By Guo Zicheng
This book is an excellent resource for anyone, whether scholar or layman, who needs a quick reference guide to different periods in Chinese history. However, the appendices, which are an improvement from earlier editions, still leave room for improvement. For instance, not all proper names used in the text are listed in the Chinese character glossary. It would also be helpful to provide a Chinese character glossary for proper nouns that, although not of Chinese origin, appear extensively in Chinese texts. For example, it would have been interesting to know the Chinese equivalent of the ethnic group "Sogdian", or the Chinese name of Matteo Ricci. In addition, the bibliography could be further enlarged by including lists of contemporary Chinese and even Japanese works.
The book is not only useful for readers who are unfamiliar with the Chinese language. It is an excellent supplementary resource as well for readers whose first language is Chinese. Most Chinese language historical works suffer from one or more of the following faults: extensive use of classical Chinese materials which, while extremely useful, are often not properly annotated or translated (into vernacular Chinese), leaving readers with inadequate command of the classics at a loss; over-reliance on Chinese language resources at the expense of sources in Manchurian, Mongolian and other languages that have had prominence in different periods of Chinese history; and (especially in the case of the PRC) oftentimes a lack of objectivity, especially in the need to fit China's history into a Marxian straitjacket (so that, e.g., 2,000 years of imperial rule are described as "feudalism"). Gernet's work avoids these pitfalls.
See all 12 customer reviews...
A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet PDF
A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet EPub
A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet Doc
A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet iBooks
A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet rtf
A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet Mobipocket
A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet Kindle
A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet PDF
A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet PDF
A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet PDF
A History of Chinese Civilization, by Jacques Gernet PDF
