China and Historical Capitalism: Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge

by Timothy Brook (Editor), Gregory Blue (Editor)

Overview

Until recently, capitalism has been regarded as unique to Europe and as an organic outgrowth of Western civilization. By examining China in these Eurocentric terms, China has been perceived, by Westerners and Asians alike, to be a failed version of the West. The aim of this collaborative project is to examine how the experience of capitalism as a European social formation, and as a world system, has shaped knowledge of China. In addition the volume seeks to establish new foundations on which a theory of Chinese society might be built.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521640299
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/10/1999
Series:	Studies in Modern Capitalism
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.26(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.98(d)

About the Author

Timothy Brook is a historian of China since the fourteenth century. He is currently Professor of Chinese History in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia, where he holds the Republic of China Chair at the Institute for Asian Research. Previous appointments include Mactaggart Fellow at the University of Alberta, Professor of History at the University of Toronto and Stanford University, and Shaw Professor of Chinese at the University of Oxford, from 2007 to 2009. He has published five books on the Ming dynasty, three on China in the twentieth century, and one on global history. He was also the General Editor of the six-volume History of Imperial China. His most widely read and translated book is Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global Age, awarded the Mark Lynton Prize from the Columbia School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, and the Prix Auguste Pavie from the Académie des Sciences d'Outre-mer.

Table of Contents

Introduction Gregory Blue and Timothy Brook; 1. The West, capitalism and the modern world-system Immanuel Wallerstein; 2. China and Western social thought Gregory Blue; 3. Capitalism and the writing of modern history in China Timothy Brook; 4. Toward a critical history of non-Western technology Francesca Bray; 5. The political economy of agrarian Empire and its modern legacy R. Bin Wong; Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

"This is an interesting, clearly written, thoroughly researched and well-documented study." International Journal

From the Publisher