This volume contains a number of articles on modern Chinese history and historiography written by one of the leading academic experts on the subject. The author provides a critique of older approaches to nineteenth-century history and offers powerful reinterpretations of such key events in the recent history of China as the boxer rebellion, Mao's ascension to power in 1949, and the process of political and economic reform in the post-Mao era. This is a strong collection which will be of enormous interest to scholars of East Asian history.

With the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Chinese laborers became the first group in American history to be excluded from the United States on the basis of their race and class. This landmark law changed the course of U.S. immigration history, but we know little about its consequences for the Chinese in America or for the United States as a nation of immigrants. At America's Gates is the first book devoted entirely to both Chinese immigrants and the American immigration officials who sought to keep them out. Erika Lee explores how Chinese exclusion laws not only transformed Chinese American lives, immigration patterns, identities, and families but also recast the United States into a "gatekeeping nation." Immigrant identification, border enforcement, surveillance, and deportation policies were extended far beyond any controls that had existed in the United States before. Drawing on a rich trove of historical sources--including recently released immigration records, oral histories, interviews, and letters--Lee brings alive the forgotten journeys, secrets, hardships, and triumphs of Chinese immigrants. Her timely book exposes the legacy of Chinese exclusion in current American immigration control and race relations.

Among the many groups of Chinese who migrated from their ancestral homeland in the nineteenth century, none found a more favorable situation that those who came to Hawaii. Coming from South China, largely as laborers for sugar plantations and Chinese rice plantations but also as independent merchants and craftsmen, they arrived at a time when the tiny Polynesian kingdom was being drawn into an international economic, political, and cultural world. Sojourners and Settlers traces the waves of Chinese immigration, the plantation experience, and movement into urban occupations. Important for the migrants were their close ties with indigenous Hawaiians, hundreds establishing families with Hawaiian wives. Other migrants brought Chinese wives to the islands. Though many early Chinese families lived in the section of Honolulu called "Chinatown," this was never an exclusively Chinese place of residence, and under Hawaii's relatively open pattern of ethnic relations Chinese families rapidly became dispersed throughout Honolulu. Chinatown was, however, a nucleus for Chinese business, cultural, and organizational activities. More than two hundred organizations were formed by the migrants to provide mutual aid, to respond to discrimination under the monarchy and later under American laws, and to establish their status among other Chinese and Hawaii's multiethnic community. Professor Glick skillfully describes the organizational network in all its subtlety. He also examines the social apparatus of migrant existence: families, celebrations, newspapers, schools--in short, the way of life. Using a sociological framework, the author provides a fascinating account of the migrant settlers' transformation from villagers bound by ancestral clan and tradition into participants in a mobile, largely Westernized social order.

The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and the Tang Prize for "revolutionary research" in Sinology, Ying-shih Yü is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary oeuvre to English-speaking readers. Spanning two thousand years of social, intellectual, and political change, the essays in these volumes investigate two central questions through all aspects of Chinese life: what core values sustained this ancient civilization through centuries of upheaval, and in what ways did these values survive in modern times? From Ying-shih Yü's perspective, the Dao, or the Way, constitutes the inner core of Chinese civilization. His work explores the unique dynamics between Chinese intellectuals' discourse on the Dao, or moral principles for a symbolized ideal world order, and their criticism of contemporary reality throughout Chinese history. Volume 2 of Chinese History and Culture completes Ying-shih Yü's systematic reconstruction and exploration of Chinese thought over two millennia and its impact on Chinese identity. Essays address the rise of Qing Confucianism, the development of the Dai Zhen and Zhu Xi traditions, and the response of the historian Zhang Xuecheng to the Dai Zhen approach. They take stock of the thematic importance of Cao Xueqin's eighteenth-century masterpiece Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) and the influence of Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People, as well as the radicalization of China in the twentieth century and the fundamental upheavals of modernization and revolution. Ying-shih Yü also discusses the decline of elite culture in modern China, the relationships among democracy, human rights, and Confucianism, and changing conceptions of national history. He reflects on the Chinese approach to history in general and the larger political and cultural function of chronological biographies. By situating China's modern encounter with the West in a wider historical frame, this second volume of Chinese History and Culture clarifies its more curious turns and contemplates the importance of a renewed interest in the traditional Chinese values recognizing common humanity and human dignity.

Chinese America - Stereotype and Reality is a comprehensive and fascinating textbook about the Chinese in America. Covering more than 150 years of history, the book documents the increasing importance of the Chinese as a social group: from immigration history to the latest immigration legislation, from educational achievements to socio-cultural and political accomplishments. Employing the author's detailed knowledge of the Chinese Diaspora, combined with her meticulous research, the book explores the history, diversity, socio-cultural structures, networks, and achievements of this often-overlooked ethnicity. It highlights how, based on their current position, Chinese Americans are well-placed to play a major role in future relations between China and the United States - the two largest economies of the twenty-first century.