Search results for ""author peter zarrow""

From 1885–1924, China underwent a period of acute political struggle and cultural change, brought on by a radical change in thought: after over 2,000 years of monarchical rule, the Chinese people stopped believing in the emperor. These forty years saw the collapse of Confucian political orthodoxy and the struggle among competing definitions of modern citizenship and the state. What made it possible to suddenly imagine a world without the emperor? After Empire traces the formation of the modern Chinese idea of the state through the radical reform programs of the late Qing (1885–1911), the Revolution of 1911, and the first years of the Republic through the final expulsion of the last emperor of the Qing from the Forbidden City in 1924. It contributes to longstanding debates on modern Chinese nationalism by highlighting the evolving ideas of major political thinkers and the views reflected in the general political culture. Zarrow uses a wide range of sources to show how "statism" became a hegemonic discourse that continues to shape China today. Essential to this process were the notions of citizenship and sovereignty, which were consciously adopted and modified from Western discourses on legal theory and international state practices on the basis of Chinese needs and understandings. This text provides fresh interpretations and keen insights into China's pivotal transition from dynasty to republic.

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From 1885–1924, China underwent a period of acute political struggle and cultural change, brought on by a radical change in thought: after over 2,000 years of monarchical rule, the Chinese people stopped believing in the emperor. These forty years saw the collapse of Confucian political orthodoxy and the struggle among competing definitions of modern citizenship and the state. What made it possible to suddenly imagine a world without the emperor? After Empire traces the formation of the modern Chinese idea of the state through the radical reform programs of the late Qing (1885–1911), the Revolution of 1911, and the first years of the Republic through the final expulsion of the last emperor of the Qing from the Forbidden City in 1924. It contributes to longstanding debates on modern Chinese nationalism by highlighting the evolving ideas of major political thinkers and the views reflected in the general political culture. Zarrow uses a wide range of sources to show how "statism" became a hegemonic discourse that continues to shape China today. Essential to this process were the notions of citizenship and sovereignty, which were consciously adopted and modified from Western discourses on legal theory and international state practices on the basis of Chinese needs and understandings. This text provides fresh interpretations and keen insights into China's pivotal transition from dynasty to republic.

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Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold's Roman Civilization is a classic. Originally published by Columbia University Press in 1955, the authors have undertaken another revision which takes into account recent work in the field. These volumes consist of selected primary documents from ancient Rome, covering a range of over 1,000 years of Roman culture, from the foundation of the city to its sacking by the Goths.The selections cover a broad spectrum of Roman civilization, including literature, philosophy, religion, education, politics, military affairs, and economics. These English translations of literary, inscriptional, and papyrological sources, many of which are available nowhere else, create a mosaic of the brilliance, the beauty, and the power of Rome.

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'China's first iconic modern intellectual. His lucid and prolific writings, touching on all major concerns in his own time and anticipating many in the future, inspired several generations of thinkers' Pankaj Mishra'A country does not become corrupt and weak overnight. Rather, we are now reaping the evil harvest of what previous generations sowed.'The power, anger and fluency of Liang Qichao's writings make him one of the towering figures in modern Chinese literature. He saw his great, almost unmanageable task as an attempt to write China into the new era - to provide an ancient country, devastated by civil war and foreign predators, with the intellectual equipment to renew itself.Liang said that he wrote from an 'ice-drinker's studio', implying that underneath his dispassionate, disabused and rational tone lay an ardour and passion which only ice could cool. China could only recover through a clear-sighted, informed understanding of its enemies - and by engaging in a thorough-going self-critique. Liang did not propose aping the West but taking only what China needed to 'renew the people' and create 'new citizens'. Then China would be able to expel its invaders, reform its society and become a great power once more.This selection of pieces shows Liang's extraordinary range and the burning sense of mission which drove him on, attempting to galvanize and refresh an entire nation. Blending together Confucianism, Buddhism and the Western Enlightenment, Liang's ideas about nation, democracy, and morality had a profound impact on Chinese visions of the political order, though the China that eventually emerged from the further disasters of the 1930s and 1940s would be a very different one.

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