Andrew J. Nathan - Modern China, 1840-1972: An Introduction to Sources and Research Aids

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES

MICHIGAN PAPERS IN CHINESE STUDIES

MODERN CHINA, 1840-1972

An Introduction to Sources and Research Aids

Andrew J. Nathan

East Asian Institute

Columbia University

Ann Arbor

Center for Chinese Studies
The University of Michigan

1973

Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies No. 14

Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program

Copyright 1973

by

Center for Chinese Studies

The University of Michigan

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-89264-014-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-472-03826-8 (paper)
ISBN 978-0-472-12790-0 (ebook)
ISBN 978-0-472-90186-9 (open access)

The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

To

John K. Fairbank

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project began as a handout for a research seminar which I taught with Richard H. Solomon at the University of Michigan in the winter term, 1971. Charles W. Hayford, in reading over the first draft, suggested the possibility of publication. Professors Solomon and Albert Feuerwerker supported the idea, and, together with Wan Wei-ying, formed a committee to provide leads and guidance toward improving the manuscript. Important contributions were made by Douglas H. Coombs and Carney Fisher, who located and made initial annotations of many of the entries, and by Abraham T. C. Shen and Ronald Toby, who helped to check, verify, edit and revise. The index was prepared by Sybil Aldridge.

During the academic year 19711972, a draft was circulated on a limited basis in order to get comments and criticisms. Many colleagues responded with extraordinary generosity, making possible substantial improvements in the manuscript. Other scholars provided copies of articles or draft research aids of their own, or helped in other ways. It is a pleasure to express my gratitutde to David Arkush, Masataka Banno, Nancy Bateman, David D. Buck, Chang Peng-yuan, Lloyd E. Eastman, Elling O. Eide, Joseph W. Esherick, John K. Fairbank, Edward Friedman, Ho Lieh, Noriko Kamachi, Donald W. Klein, Philip A. Kuhn, Kuo Ting-yee, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Kenneth Lieberthal, Liu Feng-han, James T. C. Liu, John T. Ma, Fumiko Mori, Rhoads Murphey, Michel C. Oksenberg, Richard A. Orb, Dwight H. Perkins, Jane L. Price, Evelyn Sakakida Rawski, Thomas G. Rawski, Peter J. Seybolt, Frank J. Shulman, Richard Sorich, Ronald Suleski, Tsuen-hsuin Tsien, William W. Whitson, Edgar Wickberg, Eric Widmer, C. Martin Wilbur, Endymion P. Wilkinson, Ernst Wolff, and Eugene W. Wu.

It is only because of the work of those who opened the field of modern China studies, because of the training they gave, the libraries they collected and the reference works they compiled, that a younger scholar can presume to this sort of survey of basic materials. My debt to those whose work is cited throughout, especially in section 1, is great.

Both the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan and the East Asian Institute at Columbia University have supported this undertaking financially, for which I am grateful.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Graduate students have traditionally learned a good part of what they know about sources and research aids on modern China through hearsay and serendipity, in unsystematic and unreliable bits and pieces. The field has now developed to the point where this need not and ought not to be so. It is now possible for beginning researchers to start with some shared basic knowledge of research aids and documentary resources. This research guide is meant to provide that knowledge.

The user of this guide is envisaged as an American graduate student in history or the social sciences who is already familiar with the major English-language secondary literature on modern China and is about to begin original research, either for a seminar paper or for a dissertation. I assume that the student feels most comfortable using English and Chinese, but is also willing to use other languages, especially Japanese, where useful. I also assume that although the students present research project may be restricted to the Ching, republican or post-1949 period, he regards the modern period as a whole as his field of competence and wishes to be able to use materials relevant to all three sub-periods.

As I see it, this students dual problem is to choose a topic which can be researched successfully with available resources, and to locate and use the relevant sources and research aids. To help with this problem, the guide briefly describes the major documentary primary sources and research aids available in all languages for historical and social science research on modern China (18401972); describes the most important libraries and archives of materials on modern China; and refers the student whenever possible to sources of more detailed information. Certain fields, including economics, literature, ethnography, Hong Kong history and Overseas Chinese history, and the history of science and technology are to varying degrees slighted, while politics, social change, intellectual history and Sino-foreign relations are stressed. Dictionaries and Western scholarly journals are not systematically covered, and few bibliographies on specific subjects are included. (Students who want guidance in these areas should start with the items listed in section 1.A.)

The guide is arranged by types of material. Within each section, the approach is selective rather than exhaustive. I have included only the items that I think are most useful for research and have tried to say precisely what I think they are useful for. Each section is arranged in whatever way seems most natural (usually by period covered) rather than according to mechanical principles such as alphabetization. This is because the guide is meant in the first instance to be read (perhaps in conjunction with classroom lectures, demonstrations or exercises) rather than merely referred to. This perhaps presumptuous expectation is grounded in the concept of the guide as a brief and basic introduction to what every researcher ought to know before he starts research. Through the table of contents and the index the reader will be able to return to the guide for reference.

Special attention is directed to section 2, Major Collections and How to Find Whats in Them. Students cannot expect existing bibliographies or union catalogues to give them fully satisfactory access to the world, holdings of research materials on modern China, so they must develop a sense of the terrain that will enable them to have lucky hunches. This means knowing the major collections and archives and their strengths and weaknesses.

It is important to avoid the illusory sense of mastery which may be conveyed by the guides compactness. It is meant to provide only an initial sense of the scope of the materials and their possibilities, and must not be considered an adequate instrument of bibliographic control over any topic or type of material. The student who delves into a particular type of source material will soon need more detailed information. I have tried wherever possible to tell him where to get it, but bibliographic control of some types of materials is more highly advanced than that of others. In general, modern China studies is a field with myriad and widely scattered materials, most of them still largely untouched. Students can expect to make bibliographic discoveries in their own fields that go beyond not only what is covered in this guide but what is covered in the more detailed and more specialized bibliographies listed in section 1. My modest purpose here is to speed the journey to the frontier.