Beyond Suffering: Recounting War in Modern China(Contemporary Chinese Studies)

China was afflicted by a brutal succession of conflicts through muchof the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet there has never beenclear understanding of how wartime suffering has defined the nation andshaped its people. In Beyond Suffering, a distinguished group of historians ofmodern China look beyond the geopolitical aspects of war to explore itssocial, institutional, and cultural dimensions. The chapters in Part 1,"Society at War," reveal how militarization and war canboth structure and destabilize society, while those in Part 2,"Institutional Engagement," show how institutions and thepeople they represent can become pawns in larger power struggles.Lastly, Part 3, "Memory and Representation," examines thevarious media, monuments, and social controls by which war has beenmemorialized. Based on fragmented accounts of poorly understood incidents,Beyond Suffering pieces together a fuller picture of themultiple fronts on which wars in modern China have been fought,experienced, and remembered.

Table of Contents:
Introduction / James Flath and Norman Smith Part 1: Society at War 1 Writing andRemembering the Battle against Opiates in Manchukuo / NormanSmith 2 War,Schools, China, Hong Kong: 1937-49 / Bernard Hung-kay Luk 3 BombsDon't Discriminate? Class, Gender, and Ethnicity in theAir-Raid-Shelter Experiences of the Wartime Chongqing Population /Chang Jui-te 4 Militarization and Jinmen (Quemoy) Society, 1949-92 / MichaelSzonyi Part 2: Institutional Engagement 5 TheBlagoveshchensk Massacre of 1900: The Sino-Russian War and GlobalImperialism / Victor Zatsepine 6 Victims andVictimizers: Warlord Soldiers and Mutinies in Republican China /Edward A. McCord 7 Turning BadIron into Polished Steel: Whampoa and the Rehabilitation of the ChineseSoldier / Colin Green 8 Orphans inthe Family: Family Reform and Children's Citizenship during theAnti-Japanese War, 1937-45 / M. Colette Plum Part 3: Memory and Representation 9 ControllingSoldiers: The Memory Scars of Late Imperial China / AlexanderWoodside 10 Chinese Savages andChinese Saints: Russians and Chinese Remember and Forget the BoxerUprising in 1920s China / Blaine Chiasson 11 Setting Moon and RisingNationalism: Lugou Bridge as Monument and Memory / JamesFlath 12 War and Remembering:Memories of China at War / Diana Lary Glossary Selected Bibliography Contributors

About the Author :
James Flath is an associate professor in theDepartment of History at the University of Western Ontario and authorof The Cult of Happiness: Nianhua, Art, and History in Rural NorthChina. Norman Smith is an associate professor inthe Department of History at the University of Guelph and author ofResisting Manchukuo: Chinese Women Writers and the JapaneseOccupation. Contributors: Timothy Brook, Blaine Chiasson, JamesFlath, Colin Green, Chang Jui-te, Diana Lary, Bernard Hung-kay Luk,Edward A. McCord, M. Colette Plum, Norman Smith, Michael Szonyi,Alexander Woodside, and Victor Zatsepine.

Review :
This is a very powerful volume, which sheds light on a variety of topics that scholarship, particularly in English, does not sufficiently cover - the wartime bombing of China, Russian imperialism in northeastern China, and the makeup of the Nationalist army during wartime. With its focus on the social history of warfare in China, Beyond Suffering makes a major contribution to the field. - Rana Mitter, editor of Ruptured Histories: War and Memory in Post-Cold War Asia Uniformly well-researched and written, Beyond Suffering is a book that I would use in my graduate seminars. This important work covers a wide range of topics and issues and, since few studies deal with the impact of warfare and militarization on modern China, it should find a receptive audience. - Parks M. Coble, author of Chinese Capitalists in Japan's New Order: The Occupied Lower Yangzi, 1937-1945