A Great Undertaking: Mechanization and Social Change in a Late Imperial Chinese Coalmining Community

Explores the social disruption resulting from industrialization in a Chinese coalmining community at the turn of the twentieth century.

Jeff Hornibrook provides a unique, microcosmic look at the process of industrialization in one Chinese community at the turn of the twentieth century. Industrialization came late to China, but was ultimately embraced and hastened to aid the state's strategic and military interests. In Pingxiang County in the highlands of Jiangxi Province, coalmining was seas...