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Title: Sun Yat-Sen by Marie-Claire Bergere, Janet Lloyd ISBN: 0-8047-4011-9 Publisher: Stanford University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Demythification of Sun Yat-sen
Comment: "The study of Sun has been distorted by both the creation of the myth and by attempts at demythification" argues author Marie-Claire Bergére in her ground-breaking book, SUN YAT-SEN. This recent biography by the French historian, translated in 1998 by Janet Lloyd, attempts to present a "measured analysis leading to an overall evaluation of the life and work of Sun Yat-sen." What emerges from this work is a "muddled politician, an opportunist with generous but confused ideas, interested first in power games". This Sun Yat-sen, argues Bergére, made little impression on history. "Nor was he a great theorist." What we do have as a result of Bergére's research is a Sun Yat-sen free of all the ideological baggage that has accompanied previous histories. Bergére asserts that much of what we have accepted about Sun Yat-sen as fact, is in fact exaggeration and myth. Both the Communists and Nationalists have emphasised the aspects of Sun which have suited their versions of the past. The more human picture of Sun Yat-sen that emerges from Bergére's biography is very different from the primary school type versions we have been used to.
Bergére claims that Sun Yat-sen made little direct impression on many of the events that he has been associated with previously. She questions whether the 1911 Revolution was really the fruit of Sun Yat-sen's efforts and claims that if he had died in 1920 his name would now probably be forgotten. Sun played no direct role in the events leading to the Wuchang insurrection of 10 October1911 and the edict of abdication of 12 February 1912. Sun Yat-sen did reap the benefits of the revolution by becoming the republic's first president. However, Sun's failure to work effectively with fellow revolutionaries and his poor leadership of the government in the early days explains why there was much support for Sun to stand down in favour of Yuan Shikai. Bergére argues that Sun only made a significant impact on events in China from 1920 when he re-invigorated his Guomindang party using Soviet support. By1924 Sun finally had all the ingredients necessary to unite China such as a secure revolutionary base in Canton, Soviet financial and technical aid and most importantly Soviet military support via the Huangpu Military Academy.
However, just at the time when Sun Yat-sen stood poised at the head of a revolutionary movement that was ready to challenge warlord control of China, he was struck down with cancer of the liver and died in March 1925. It was from the time of his death that Sun Yat-sen was transformed into the patriotic hero that we are familiar with in the current histories. During the Nanking regime from 1927 Sun Yat-sen was portrayed as having "single-handedly guided and inspired the revolution, ignited the 1911 revolution, and founded the Republic." There was no mention of Sun's long string of failures, of numerous attempts to achieve foreign support for his cause even at the expense of China or his pandering to Japanese imperialism in the guise of pan-Asianism. Bergére maintains that the "construction of the myth was pursued with renewed vigour, now served by the Guomindang's entire propaganda apparatus." A cult was constructed around Sun Yat-sen with the creation of a huge mausoleum at Nanking, the making of the Three Principles as a school textbook, and celebrating of Sun's birthdays and his death with national public holidays. In Nationalist China Sun Yat-sen was known by the of the 'president' up until 1940 when it was decreed that he was to be referred to as the 'Father of the Nation'. When the Nationalist Government was defeated in 1949 and retreated to the island of Taiwan it became even more crucial to rely on the myth of Sun Yat-sen to restore legitimacy in defeat.
It wasn't only the Guomindang which produced a neatly packaged version of Sun Yat-sen. The Communists, in their history of the revolutionary movement, revered Sun Yat-sen as 'pioneer of the revolution', though in a more modest role compared to Marx, Lenin and Mao. Similarly to the Guomindang, the Communists portrayed Sun as the exclusive leader of the revolutionary movement at least up until the appearance of the Communist party in 1921. Bergére says that from 1978 the Sunist myth has been invoked again as a justification of Deng Xiaoping's Four Modernisations policy which gives absolute priority of economic production to deal with China's backwardness. But also, Bergére maintains that in the long term the exultation of Sun Yat-sen is supposed to create the basis of an entente with the Taiwan regime and prepare the way for island's return to the mother country.
Bergére concludes by observing the heroic myth created by Chinese historiography has not stood up to the critical analysis by Western authors and that few of them now recognise Sun Yat-sen "as the sole guide or even the predominant leader of the Chinese revolution, neither does any of them venture explicitly to deny him any importance at all". Western studies of Sun seem to have got stuck in an impasse and that "once stripped of its legendary aura, the figure of Sun Yat-sen arouses very little interest", laments Bergére. However, after reading this book, nothing could be further from the truth. This more human portrait of Sun Yat-sen is far more scintillating, and the unravelling of myth and history that Bergére has undertaken has made reading this book a truly enlightening experience. This biography is a must for anyone wishing to understand the events in China from the turn of the century to the twenties.
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Title: Chiang Kai Shek by Jonathan Fenby ISBN: 0786713186 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Rise of Modern China by Immanuel Chung-Yueh Hsu ISBN: 0195125045 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $54.95 |
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Title: Stalin : The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore ISBN: 1400042305 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 13 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: History in Three Keys by Paul Cohen, Paul A. Cohen ISBN: 0231106513 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Taiwan: A Political History by Denny Roy ISBN: 0801488052 Publisher: Cornell University Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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