Today China closely follows the United States as the world's leading economic power. Yet a hundred years earlier, China was known as 'the poor man of Asia' and teetering at the edge of political collapse. We start our module with the Qing dynasty's collapse in 1911 which saw the end of two millennia of imperial rule and a repudiation of core Chinese traditions. The young Chinese republic experimented with different modes of politics and culture, and the Nanjing decade saw the Nationalists attempt to assert monolithic party rule over the country, while the Communists were pushed to the margins. Japan's aggression in China destabilized domestic politics and arguably helped propel the Communists to power in 1949. Under Mao Zedong's helm, the Communist party aimed to create a new collective society but instead brought the entire country through massive and devastating upheaval: the Great Leap Forward (Famine) which saw the unnecessary deaths of sixty million Chinese and the Cultural Revolution irreversibly the structures and artifacts of old Chinese culture. After Mao's death in 1976, the country started to repair itself from decades of tumult, embracing the global economy and 'capitalism with Chinese characteristics'.
While temporally, our module is structured by the political events of modern China, we will explore persistent intellectual, cultural, and social themes in Chinese history. In what ways does China's search for modernity draw on its historical past? During the Cultural Revolution 'destruction before construction' captured the widespread casting aside the old culture before the new society could be constructed. The emphasis in our module will be on analysis of primary sources in translation and to understand the Chinese experience through the writings of those who lived it, as well as exploration of the debates and controversies surrounding the historical writing and memory of China's modern past.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
analyse and critically appraise key events and historical processes relevant to the subject under scrutiny
analyse and critically evaluate a wide range of relevant primary source material
critically evaluate the historiographical context and trends of the subject under exploration
summarise, synthesise and evaluate the subject material in a sophisticated written form
