Harvard on China II: Logic, evidence, and ideology

Abstract

The December 1972 issue of this Bulletin contained two contributions to an ongoing debate on imperialism in Chinese history from Andrew Nathan and Joseph Esherick. This review article has the more restricted, if not more modest, aim of examining two of the most significant works cited by Nathan and Esherick, both of which have been published in the Harvard University Press's East Asian Series. The two books provide a reinforcing and complementary picture of the effects of foreign economic penetration on, respectively, the peasantry and the indigenous industrial and handicraft production of China over roughly the same time period. I will restrict myself to a critique of the internal consistency and the standards of logic and evidence in the two volumes.