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Title: The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600 by Valerie Hansen ISBN: 0-393-97374-3 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: February, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $45.80 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.8 (5 reviews)
Rating: 1
Summary: a guessing game
Comment: I am very concerned with Ms. Hansen's wanton speculation. She holds a view and will make the evidence fit her view. Just because this is a 'popular' book doesn't mean the author can wing it. After nearly reading the first chapter and leafing through the book a little I can already give you the following five representative examples (among so many others):
Example 1 --
On page 8, in regard to those who would object to her using uncorroborated fiction as source material she says, "These critics argue, as a matter of faith, . . . " that literature is not necessarily reality. It seems clear she's the one with faith, allowing fiction, without any support, to stand as history. And while I agree with her when, on page 9, she says that TV scripts would make different historical material than _The Congressional Record_ (though not because the latter is factual), that does not make the former necessarily a valid source by itself.
Example 2 --
On page 27, referring to a single tortoise shell -- out of she says over 200,000, though all other Chinese and English sources I've read use the figure of more than 100,000 -- with both positive and negative inscriptions she concludes "that oracle bones may not have been edited as much as some analysts feared. The largely positive nature of the oracle bone texts, which usually record good weather or victories, suggests that even the oracle bones may have been censored, with the result that only those recording positive outcomes were kept. But this important text [that one shell!] shows that the Shang recorded failed prognostications in addition to their successes." No, unless she can say that she or someone has found a significant number of negative shells (surely more than one), then her comments are groundless speculation.
Example 3 --
On page 109, in chapter 3, after granting that Qin Shihuang did order all but a small number of approved books burned/banned, she works as his apologist saying that since much of that was an oral tradition, the banning "would not have had much effect." Gee, then I wonder why they bothered to write them down in the first place or why Qin needed to destroy and ban the books if everyone had them in their heads as oral tradition or why there have been different versions of the classics or why archaeologists have found different versions of the classics or why there's been endless debate to this very day about which versions of the classics are authentic? In fact, since it was written down, then we cannot simply say it was by that time purely an oral tradition.
Example 4 --
The caption for the picture on page 255 for the rules for a women's association says, "The scribe who drew up the document used colloquial language, which the women may have dictated directly, . . . " They may have, but they may not have. The accompanying text does not tell us either.
Example 5 --
Then on page 111, in talking about some Qin legal code, we get this wonderful sentence: "Because these are the only sections of the Qin code to survive today, they allow us to judge whether Qin law was as brutal as later historians suggested." No, I think that very fact means we don't have enough information to "judge", but merely to speculate. The 15th amendment of the US Constitution gave all persons, regardless of race, the right to vote in 1870. But as we all know, half of the country did not comply with this until the Voting Rights Act in 1965. If a future historian writes about US law based only on the Constitution (which is so well protected in it's 'tomb' it will survive long after most other written records of the US Government are gone) what would they speculate?
Granted, I didn't get that far into the book, but at this point, do I want to continue reading? I might learn something from this book. But I would have zero confidence in what I learned. I would constantly be rereading passages sorting out her unsubstantiated guesses from what is known.
I can recommend Jacques Gernet's "A History of Chinese Civilization" which covers the same time period, in the same introductory manner though with different emphases, with at least as many words -- and it's history.
Rating: 2
Summary: dont' buy this book!
Comment: I think this book is clearly written and is easy to read
and presents some good examples of archaeological finds
and artifacts and their analyses. But I didn't like this book.
The book has a lot of author's own opinions and points of view that often contradict with and deviate from the conventional Chinese history. It seems to me that in the book she is somewhat biased and too opiniated and often tries to convice the readers with such strong word as "... we must therefore conclude that..." to make her own opinions and points of view of history look like proven facts without very persuasive arguments to
support her own assertions. It think that it is very critical that the author makes very good and persuasive reasonings to support his/her own interpretations and opinions, especially when they contradict and deviate from the conventional ones but in this book, however, the author often fails to do so. It seemed to me when I first read it that she tries to show the readers that she is trying to base her own historical analyses solely based on reliable historical sources such as archaeological finds but it also seemed to me that she also does so to support her own biased opinions about Chinese history.
The only reason I give this book a rating of two instead of
one is that it is clearly written. If you really want to
learn about Chinese history, I suggest to use other books
because this book just gives its readers a distorted view of
Chinese history based on what the author thinks is right.
Rating: 4
Summary: A nice book to have
Comment: This book is wonderful to have for people who don't have knowledge in Chinese History. The author categorized the subjects neatly. However, I am pretty dissapointed with this book because the author focus more on the literature and philosophy then the history itself.
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Title: Chinese Civilization : A Sourcebook, 2nd Ed by Patricia Buckley Ebrey ISBN: 002908752X Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 10 May, 1993 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Human Tradition in Premodern China (The Human Tradition Around the World Series, 4) by Kenneth J. Hammond, William H. Beezley, Colin M. Maclachlan ISBN: 0842029591 Publisher: Scholarly Resources Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Sources of Chinese Tradition by William Theodore De Bary, Irene Bloom, Joseph Adler ISBN: 0231109393 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Search for Modern China by Jonathan D. Spence ISBN: 0393307808 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Buddhism in Chinese History by Arthur F. Wright ISBN: 0804705488 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: December, 1983 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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