A New finding pushes back the history of flying mammals by 70 million years

Teaming up with their US coworkers, CAS paleontologists have discovered, in Ningcheng of northern China’s

New Chinese Military History, 1839-1951： What＇s the Story？

Since 1990, New Chinese Military History in the West has remedied scholarly neglect of Chinese warfare and changed the usual stories of modern China. These studies disproved Orientalist assumptions of a unique ＂Chinese way of war＂ or a strategic culture that avoided aggressive confrontation. Scholars also challenge the assumption that Confucian immobility led to a clash of civilizations and decisive defeat in the Opium Wars, First Sino-Japanese War, and Boxer War of 1900. In fact, Qing officials were quick and successful in creating a new military regime. New military histories of the warlords, the Sino-Japanese Wars, and the Chinese Civil War show that developing new types of warfare was central in creating the new nation. All these wars split the country into factions that were supported by outside powers： they were internationalized civil wars. The article also asks how the choice of terms, labels, and categories shapes interpretations and political messages.

History Is the New Fashion Books that help people look at history in a more interesting way have become popular in recent years

In a world bursting with every kind of digital toy and modern convenience, many people find comfort going back in time to a simpler era. Or at least that’s what book sales suggest.

When a New Page In History Was Turned

CHINA, a once-mysterious oriental land, has nowbecome part of the international family of nations. Yetfew people realize what humiliation China once sufferedor what a suffocating life the ordinary Chinese once lived.Even those who experienced that part of history seemreluctant to recall the painful period.

Frontier Stories： Periphery as Center in Qing History

Since at least the 1960s, the importance of the tremendous territorial expansion under Qing role to the modem history of China has been generally acknowledged. Indeed, one can say that the frontier story is one of the things that makes the Qing ＂Qing.＂ However, only in the last twenty years has the study of what is now termed the ＂borderlands＂ come into its own as a sub-field. This essay begins by describing some key concepts and terms in the study of the Qing frontier, including the Manchu wordjecen. It then raises the problem of narrative fiameworks, asking how we might best contextualize the growth of the empire, before going on to explore the implications of the discursive shift represented by the ＂New Qing History＂ and the extensive research on Qing borderlands associated therewith. A poem by the Mongol poet Na-xun Lan-bao provides the focus for a concluding discussion of a distinctive Qing frontier sensibility.

Warfare, Imperialism, and the Making of Modern Chinese History： A Review Essay

This historiographic essay contends that warfare made and unmade the Qing dynasty between 1644 and 1911, and its study has helped to create the field of modem Chinese history during the past seventy years. It advances three principal claims. First, the literature on war, especially interstate conflict, can serve as a synecdoche for the development of the modem China field as a whole since the 1950s. The research interests of late Qing specialists have oscillated along an ＂external-internal-external＂ axis that corresponds with three distinct periods of intellectual inquiry, scholarly production, and generational dominance. Second, historians have reached inaccurate conclusions about the state capacity of the Qing Empire after 1840 through a crude analysis of the First Sino-Japanese War, a mistake they can rectify by adopting a longer-term perspective on the state-making process. Third, scholars have deftly traced the changing role of military power in modem Chinese politics but have also adopted the interpretive categories of wen and wu from literati discourse without sufficient critical reflection. In the future, researchers may seek to explore the intersection of warfare and the environment, technology, and ethnic identity, approaches that will continue to move the field in comparative, global, and Inner Asian directions.

Chinese Social History： Forty Years of Research under the Chinese Economic Reform

In the wake of the Chinese economic reform, Chinese scholars have welcomed in the resurgence of historical social research. Looking back over the past 30-odd years of research development, it could be said there existed four general periods： A brainstorm period, an initial ＂beginning＂ period, a period of maturation and lastly an expansion period. From looking at the context of [its] theoretical development, it is clear that scholars researching Chinese social history were, from the beginning, focused on how exactly to define ＂society.＂ This, however, resulted in much debate about the different concepts of social history itself. Though the matter has yet to be setded, the ultimate research objective for the field of historical social research is in its pursuit of truth. In recent years following the dissolution of disciplinary boundaries, the interdisciplinary viewpoint（s） established by social and cultural history have also provided forth a new horizon for the development of Chinese historical social research.

Chinese Social History Studies: Development, Problems, and Solutions

Since its revival in the mid-1980s,the study of Chinese social history has enjoyed steady growth and prominence as an emerging field.Its development over the past three decades can be roughly divided into three stages.The first is the rejuvena-tion stage,when“social history”started to gain ground as a new branch of study and developed into regional and cultural histories.The second stage started around the 1990s when the study of“new social history”arose to break away from the old paradigms and establish new approaches for a self-sustained branch of study.Due to its narrowly targeted narrative framework,obscure jargon,and exclusive rhetoric,it was later reduced to new historical research that focused on investigating concepts without due emphasis on revisiting the origin of the study.The third stage featured the rise of historical anthropology,which sprang up in the late 1990s and brought forth new ideas that spread across the country into the twentieth century with extensive influence.Hence,social history,4<new social history,and historical anthropology mark the three different yet connected stages in the development of Chinese social history studies.Each played a significant part in history with a lasting impact on the development of the field and issues raised for further inquiry.