Primary Sources: China

Revolutions in: Poland, Philippines, Chile, South Africa, Ukraine, and China.

Written in China more than 2,000 years ago, Sun Tzu's classic The Art of War is the first known study of the planning and conduct of military operations. These terse, aphoristic essays are unsurpassed in comprehensiveness and depth of understanding, examining not only battlefield maneuvers, but also relevant economic, political, and psychological factors.
Other editions available

An introduction and translation of the major writings of three major Chinese political thinkers of the 5th through 3rd centuries B.C.: Mo Tzu, Hsun Tzu.

Compiled by the great Neo-Confucian philosopher Chu Hsi (1130-1200), the Family Rituals is a manual for the private performance of the standard Chinese family rituals: initiations, weddings, funerals, and sacrifices to ancestral spirits.

Pan Ku's celebrated and influential History of the Former Han has been a model for dynastic history since its appearance in the first century A.D.Burton Watson has translated ten chapters from the biography section, including the lives of imperial princes, generals, officials, and some lesser figures.

Describes the occupations, pleasures, clothes, food, art, and social/civic life of the people of Hangchow. Uses quotations from primary documents throughout.

This innovative sourcebook builds a dynamic understanding of China's early medieval period (220--589) through an original selection and arrangement of literary, historical, religious, and critical texts. A tumultuous and formative era, these centuries saw the longest stretch of political fragmentation in China's imperial history, resulting in new ethnic configurations, the rise of powerful clans, and a pervasive divide between north and south.

Deploying thematic categories, the editors sketch the period in a novel way for students and, by featuring many texts translated into English for the first time, recast the era for specialists. Thematic topics include regional definitions and tensions, governing mechanisms and social reality, ideas of self and other, relations with the unseen world, everyday life, and cultural concepts. Within each section, the editors and translators introduce the selected texts and provide critical commentary on their historical significance, along with suggestions for further reading and research.

A collection of 13th-century documents selected from local judicial decisions and official papers specifically to provide a glimpse of daily lives and problems of ordinary people. The sections cover officials, taxes and services, academic affairs, households and marriage, human relationships, categories of persons, and chastising evil.

The sayings of Confucius presented in the order of the 64 classic I Ching hexagrams.

Biographies compiled by the Han Dynasty scholar Liu Xiang circa 18 BC. It includes 125 biographical accounts of exemplary women in ancient China, taken from early Chinese histories including Chun Qiu, Zuo Zhuan, and the Records of the Grand Historian. The book served as a standard Confucianist textbook for the moral education of women in traditional China for two millennia.

Primary sources scattered throughout.

This volume of The Grand Scribe's Records includes the second segment of Han-dynasty memoirs and deals primarily with men who lived and served under Emperor Wu (r. 141-87 B.C.). The lead chapter presents a parallel biography of two ancient physicians, Pien Ch'üeh and Ts'ang Kung, providing a transition between the founding of the Han dynasty and its heyday under Wu. The account of Liu P'i is framed by the great rebellion he led in 154 B.C. and the remaining chapters trace the careers of court favorites, depict the tribulations of an ill-fated general, discuss the Han's greatest enemy, the Hsiung-nu, and provide accounts of two great generals who fought them. The final memoir is structured around memorials by two strategists who attempted to lead Emperor Wu into negotiations with the Hsiung-nu, a policy that Ssu-ma Ch'ien himself supported.

Analysis and documents covering:
Kinship & Marriage
Social Classes
Powerful Families

This rich collection of writings -- many translated especially for this volume and some available in English for the first time -- provides a journey through the history of Chinese culture, tracing the Chinese understanding of women as elucidated in writings spanning more than two thousand years. From the earliest oracle bone inscriptions of the Pre-Qin period through the poems and stories of the Song Dynasty, these works shed light on Chinese images of women and their roles in society in terms of such topics as human nature, cosmology, gender, and virtue.

Translation of the class work of Chinese philosophy.

Islamic Central Asia is the first English-language anthology of primary documents for the study of Central Asian history. Scott C. Levi and Ron Sela draw from a vast array of historical sources to illustrate important aspects of the social, cultural, political, and economic history of Islamic Central Asia. These documents-many newly translated and most not readily available for study-cover the period from the 7th-century Arab conquests to the 19th-century Russian colonial era and provide new insights into the history and significance of the region.

This is the first volume to present a comprehensive collection of sources on Chinese women's history. The anthology explores overt and covert information on Chinese women across a vast number of textual and non-textual materials, as well as conventional and unconventional sources. Some chapters revisit well known texts or previously marginalized texts and brainstorm new ways to use and interpret these sources; other chapters explore new or previously overlooked or undervalued materials.

Sima Qian (145?-90? BCE) was the first major Chinese historian. His Shiji, or Records of the Grand Historian, documents the history of China and its neighboring countries from the ancient past to his own time. These two volumes cover the Han dynasty.

Primary Document
Sima Qian (145?-90? BCE) was the first major Chinese historian. His "Shiji," or "Records of the Grand Historian," documents the history of China and its neighboring countries from the ancient past to his own time.

Generally speaking, covers 1600 - present.
The new edition of this outstanding documents collection displays a stronger blend of social history-pieces reflecting everyday life, family, social networks, and culture-and political history-critical proclamations, treaties, laws, and other public acts. Many of the documents are translated into English for the first time and available only in this book.
Older editions: 1999 and 1990

An anthology of Chinese philosophy to cover its entire historical development. It provides substantial selections from all the great thinkers and schools in every period--ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary--and includes in their entirety some of the most important classical texts.

Volume 1: Early times - 1600
Volume 2: 1600 - 2000
Volume 1:
Antiquity - Confucius - Way of Laozi - Evolution of Confucianism - Legalists (Chinese Legalism) - Classical Culture - Imperial Order & Han - Codifying Confucian Canon - Economic Order - Later Daoism & Mahayana Buddhism - More Buddhism Chapters - Confucian Revival - Women - Ming Dynasty - Qi
Volume 2:
Challenges to Chinese Tradition - Popular Values - Response to Early Christian Contacts - Opening to West - Reform and Revolution - New Culture Movement - Communist Revolution - Modern China

2 Volumes

Volume 1: through 1500s
Volume 2: 1500s - present

Contains numerous primary documents and quotations from primary documents
Professor Ebrey explores features of the Chinese family, gender and kinship systems as practices and ideas intimately connected to history and therefore subject to change over time. The essays cover topics ranging from dowries and the sale of women into forced concubinary, to the excesses of the imperial harem, excruciating pain of footbinding, and Confucian ideas of womanly virtue.

Contains documents in the following areas:
Overseas expansion in Asia, Africa, Europe & Americas
Atlantic World Encounters
State & Religion
Women, Marriage & Family: China & Europe
Scientific Revolution
Enlightenment & Revolution: Europe, Americas, India
Capitalism & Industrial Revolution
Colonization: Europe in Africa & Asia
Westernization & Nationalism: Japan, India & the West
World War I
World War II
Cold War
New Democracy Movements
Globalization

Contains documents in the following areas:
Prehistory & Origisn of Patriarchy to 1000BCE
Urban Revolution: Ancient cities in Mesopotamia, Egypt, & Peru
Caste societies in Greece & India
Empire & Government: China and Rome
Gender, Sex & Love: India, China & Mediterranean
Religions: Hindu-Buddhist & Judeo-Christian
Spread of Universal Religions: Afro-Eurasia
Migrations, Trade & Travel: Movement of people, goods & ideas: Eurasia, Africa & Pacific
Love, Sex & Marriage: Medieval Europe & Asia
First Crusade: Muslims, Christians and Jews
Vikings & Mongols: Eurasia & the Atlantic
Black Death: Afro-Eurasia
Cities: European, Chinese, Islamic & Mexican
Environment, Culture & Technology