Book Notes: A Bitter Revolution

I'm currently reading "A Bitter Revolution: China's Struggle with the Modern World" by Rana Mitter. My contacts with the Chinese Fellowship in Dundee made me interested to find out more about their history. Then I wisely listened to the counsel of Dr Stumpy Greenisland who pointed out that an astonishing array of cheap books is made available from Oxford University Press in their annual sale. When the OUP e-mail arrived earlier this year, this fascinating book was listed at a most aluring bargain price.

I have read the first third, about the 19th and early 20th century assaults upon the hierachical Confucian worldview which had dominated China for centuries, including Nationalism, capitalism, individualism, Christianity, colonialism, and communism. The book also looks at some of the social patterns which reflect this breakdown of the traditional order, women's rights, family structure, publishing and journalism, and political engagement - much of it told through some specific individuals and groups used to illustrate wider trends (within the so-called "May 4th Era"). Lines of continuity and contrast through the various movements are also helpfully outlined.

I can't really evaluate the stuff I'm learning as this is the only text on Chinese history I've read. However the writers blind acceptance that Christian mission work was the ideological component of the Opium-war-fighting British empire was dissapointing. The self-aggrandising aims of the opium traders and the self-impoverishment of so many of the missionaries should have been enough to demand a more nuanced view of this subject. The relationship between these two elements of westernisation was more complex than Mitter allows, and the writers prejudice at this point outruns his research. This however has been a minor criticism in comparison with the wealth of other stuff I have been learning.

On now to discover how Maoism emerged victorious.........