Chinese History and Culture ─ Seventeenth Century Through Twentieth Century (Volume 2)

Chinese History and Culture is an indispensable two-volume resource for scholars of China. The books arrange the most significant works of a legendary Sinologist into a comprehensive course on Chinese civilization. Volume 2 of Chinese History and Culture completes Ying-shih Yü's systematic reconstruction and exploration of Chinese thought over two millennia and its impact on Chinese identity. Essays address the rise of Qing Confucianism, the development of the Dai Zhen and Zhu Xi traditions, and the response of the historian Zhang Xuecheng to the Dai Zhen approach. They take stock of the thematic importance of Cao Xueqin's eighteenth-century masterpiece Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) and the significant influence of Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People, as well as the radicalization of China in the twentieth century and the fundamental upheavals of modernization and revolution.

Ying-shih Yü also discusses the decline of elite culture in modern China, the relationships among democracy, human rights, and Confucianism, and changing conceptions of national history. He reflects on the Chinese approach to history in general and the larger political and cultural function of chronological biographies. He situates China's modern encounter with the West in a wider historical frame to explain its more curious turns, and he contemplates the importance of a renewed interest in the traditional Chinese values recognizing common humanity and human dignity.

Ying-shih Yu is a preeminent historian of China. Awarded the John W. Kluge Prize for achievement in the Study of Humanity and the inaugural Tang Prize International Award in Sinology, he has published more than thirty books and five hundred articles and essays on Chinese history, thought, politics, and culture. His most recent works include Lun tian ren zhi ji (Between Heaven and the Human: An Exploration of the Origin of Ancient Chinese Thought, 2014), Zhu Xi de lishi shijie (The Historical World of Zhu Xi: A Study of the Political Culture of Song Intellectuals, 2003, 2011), and Shi yu Zhongguo wenhua (Chinese Intellectuals and Chinese Culture, 2003, 2010, and 2013).

Josephine Chiu-Duke is associate professor of Chinese intellectual history in the Asian Studies Department at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of To Rebuild the Empire: Lu Chih's Confucian Pragmatist Approach to the Mid-T'ang Predicament (2000), editor of Liberalism and the Humanistic Tradition—Essays in Honor of Professor Lin Yu-sheng (2005), and co-translator of Ge Zhaoguang's An Intellectual History of China, Volume 1: Knowledge, Thought, and Belief Before the Seventh Century C.E. (2014).

Michael S. Duke is professor emeritus of Chinese and comparative literature at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of several books on modern and traditional Chinese literature, including Blooming and Contending: Chinese Literature in the Post-Mao Era (1985), translator of Koonchung Chan's The Fat Year (2011), and co-translator of Ge Zhaoguang's An Intellectual History of China, Volume 1 (2014).