The importance of revolution as an historical topic

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1 Reinhart Koselleck, “Begriffsgeschichte and Social History,” in Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 73–91.

2 A good example is of revolutionary intellectuals attracted to Marxism—Leninism. See Hung-yok Ip, Intellectuals in Revolutionary China, 1921-1949 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005).

3 Timothy Brook and Bernard Frolic, eds., Civil Society in China (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 4.

4 This is but a necessary reminder of a basic principle of liberal historiography, my favorite exposition of which is Charles A. Beard, “Written History as an Act of Faith,” The American Historical Review, vol. 39, no. 2 (January 1934), 219–31.

5 Gao Hua, Hong taiyang shi zenyang shengqide: Yan’an zhengfeng yundong de lailong qumai [How the Red Sun Rose over Yan’an: The Origin and Development of the Yan’an Rectification Movement] (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2000) and Geming niandai [Revolutionary Years] (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 2010); Yang Kuisong’s major writings are collected in Geming [Revolution], 4 vols. (Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2012).

6 Steven A. Smith, Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Jeremy Brown and Paul Pickowicz, eds., The Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People’s Republic of China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); and Michael Schoenhals, Spying for the People: Mao’s Secret Agents, 1949-1967 ((New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

7 Elizabeth J. Perry, Anyuan: Mining China’s Revolutionary Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).

8 Heilmann, Sebastian and Elizabeth J. Perry, eds., Mao’s Invisible Hand: The Political Foundations of Adaptive Governance in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2011), 1–29.

9 Brown, Jeremy, City Versus Countryside in Mao’s China: Negotiating the Divide (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 229-34; and Schoenhals, Spying for the People, 233–34.

10 Timothy Cheek, Living with Reform: China Since 1989 (London: Zed Books, 2006), 32–73.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Timothy CHEEK

Timothy CHEEK is Professor and Louis Cha Chair in Chinese Research at the Institute of Asian Research and Department of History at the University of British Columbia. His research, teaching, and translating focus on the recent history of China, especially the role of Chinese intellectuals in the twentieth century and the history of the Chinese Communist Party. Most recently, he has edited A Critical Introduction to Mao (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).