A decade of upheaval

A revealing exploration of political disruption and violence in a rural Chinese county during the Cultural RevolutionA Decade of Upheaval chronicles the surprising and dramatic political conflicts of a rural Chinese county over the course of the Cultural Revolution. Drawing on an unprecedented ra...

A local history of global capital

Before the advent of synthetic fibers and cargo containers, jute sacks were the preferred packaging material of global trade, transporting the world's grain, cotton, sugar, tobacco, coffee, wool, guano, and bacon. Jute was the second-most widely consumed fiber in the world, after cotton. While th...

A narrative of cultural encounter in southern china

Using a local land reclamation project of the later eighth century, this book explores the interaction between a local culture of the southeast coast and the Sinitic culture of the north.

A people's constitution

It has long been contended that the Indian Constitution of 1950, a document in English created by elite consensus, has had little influence on India’s greater population. Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People’s Constitution upends this narrative an...

A thirst for empire

How the global tea industry influenced the international economy and the rise of mass consumerismTea has been one of the most popular commodities in the world. For centuries, profits from its growth and sales funded wars and fueled colonization, and its cultivation brought about massive changes—i...

Abortion before birth control

Why has postwar Japanese abortion policy been relatively progressive, while contraception policy has been relatively conservative? The Japanese government legalized abortion in 1948 but did not approve the pill until 1999. In this carefully researched study, Tiana Norgren argues that these contra...

Alliance of adversaries

The 1922 Congress of Toilers of the Far East was among the most influential and impactful gatherings of the Communist International. This volume brings it to life through edited and annotated minutes.

Azadi

From the best-selling author of My Seditious Heart and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a new and pressing dispatch from the heart of the crowd and the solitude of the writer’s desk. 

Beyond the steppe frontier

A comprehensive history of the Sino-Russian border, one of the longest and most important land borders in the worldThe Sino-Russian border, once the world’s longest land border, has received scant attention in histories about the margins of empires. Beyond the Steppe Frontier rectifies this by ex...

Bodies of memory

Japan and the United States became close political allies so quickly after the end of World War II, that it seemed as though the two countries had easily forgotten the war they had fought. Here Yoshikuni Igarashi offers a provocative look at how Japanese postwar society struggled to understand it...

Capitalism

From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India i...

Central asia

A major history of Central Asia and how it has been shaped by modern world eventsCentral Asia is often seen as a remote and inaccessible land on the peripheries of modern history. Encompassing Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and the Xinjiang province of China, it in ...

China in global capitalism

As the rivalry between the US and China enters a dangerous new phase, reaffirming the politics of anti-imperialism is a task more important than ever. From trade wars and pandemic politics to rioting workers, intercontinental balloons, and battles over TikTok, the US media tends to present contem...

China's aristocratic age

A new perspective on the Springs-and-Autumns period, China’s longest experiment with polycentrismThe Springs-and-Autumns period (770–453 BCE)—the longest aristocratic age in Chinese history—marks a break from what is often associated with the normative orientations of Chinese political life. Duri...

China's new confucianism

What is it like to be a Westerner teaching political philosophy in an officially Marxist state? Why do Chinese sex workers sing karaoke with their customers? And why do some Communist Party cadres get promoted if they care for their elderly parents? In this entertaining and illuminating book, one...

China’s peaceful rise

Adopting a constructivist approach, this book argues that China's prospects for achieving 'great power' status peacefully depend more on perceptions of the country's development than on concrete measures of power or economic benefits. Incorporating historical perceptions, survey data and general ...

Chinese architecture

An unprecedented survey of the origins and evolution of Chinese architecture, from the last millennia BCE to todayThroughout history, China has maintained one of the world’s richest built civilizations. The nation’s architectural achievements range from its earliest walled cities and the First Em...

Chinese painting and its audiences

A history of the reception of Chinese painting from the sixteenth century to the presentWhat is Chinese painting? When did it begin? And what are the different associations of this term in China and the West? In Chinese Painting and Its Audiences, which is based on the A. W. Mellon Lectures in th...

City on fire

A long-term resident and expert observer of dissent in Hong Kong takes readers to the frontlines of Hong Kong’s revolution. Through the long, hot summer of 2019, Hong Kong burned. Anti-government protests, sparked by a government proposal to introduce a controversial extradition law, grew into a ...

Classical chinese

Classical Chinese is the most comprehensive and authoritative textbook on the language, literature, philosophy, history, and religion of premodern China. Rigorously and extensively field-tested and fine-tuned for years in classroom settings, it sets a new standard for the field. Originally publis...

Confucianism and family rituals in imperial china

Confucianism as a world religion

Is Confucianism a religion? If so, why do most Chinese think it isn't? From ancient Confucian temples, to nineteenth-century archives, to the testimony of people interviewed by the author throughout China over a period of more than a decade, this book traces the birth and growth of the idea of Co...

Depression in japan

Since the 1990s, suicide in recession-plagued Japan has soared, and rates of depression have both increased and received greater public attention. In a nation that has traditionally been uncomfortable addressing mental illness, what factors have allowed for the rising medicalization of depression...

Developmentalist cities?

Bringing together inter-disciplinary research into the subject of urban developmentalism, this indispensable collection fills gaps in research on both East Asian developmentalism and urbanization.

Distant shores

A pioneering history that transforms our understanding of the colonial era and China's place in itChina has conventionally been considered a land empire whose lack of maritime and colonial reach contributed to its economic decline after the mid-eighteenth century. Distant Shores challenges this v...

Edo-punk!

Emergency chronicles

The gripping story of an explosive turning point in the history of modern IndiaOn the night of June 25, 1975, Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India, suspending constitutional rights and rounding up her political opponents in midnight raids across the country. In the twenty-one harr...

Empires of the silk road

The first complete history of Central Eurasia from ancient times to the present day, Empires of the Silk Road represents a fundamental rethinking of the origins, history, and significance of this major world region. Christopher Beckwith describes the rise and fall of the great Central Eurasian em...

Empires of vice

A history of opium's dramatic fall from favor in colonial Southeast AsiaDuring the late nineteenth century, opium was integral to European colonial rule in Southeast Asia. The taxation of opium was a major source of revenue for British and French colonizers, who also derived moral authority from ...

Exile

Indonesia's most celebrated writer speaks out against tyranny and injustice in a young and troubled nation.

Factory girls

Investigating the enormous contribution made by female textile workers to early industrialization in Meiji Japan, Patricia Tsurumi vividly documents not only their hardships but also their triumphs. While their skills and long hours created profits for factory owners that in turn benefited the st...

Field notes on democracy

With anger and compassion, Arundhati Roy's new book maps India's turbulent present and possible futures.

From development to democracy

Why some of Asia’s authoritarian regimes have democratized as they have grown richer—and why others haven’tOver the past century, Asia has been transformed by rapid economic growth, industrialization, and urbanization—a spectacular record of development that has turned one of the world’s poorest ...

Fuji

A panoramic history of Japan’s iconic mountain from the Ice Age to the presentMount Fuji is everywhere recognized as a wonder of nature and enduring symbol of Japan. Yet behind the picture-postcard image is a history filled with conflict and upheaval. Violent eruptions across the centuries wrough...

Governing bodies

A beautifully rendered debut memoir of family, legacy, conservation, the natural world—and those who inhabit it.As a civil engineer, Sangamithra Iyer knows about resilience from studying soils and water. As an animal rights activist, she advocates for a revolution in how we value and relate to ot...

Guanzi

Named for the famous Chinese minister of state, Guan Zhong (d. 645 B.C.), the Guanzi is one of the largest collections of ancient Chinese writings still in existence. With this volume, W. Allyn Rickett completes the first full translation of the Guanzi into English. This represents a truly monume...

Guilty of indigence

In the early twentieth century, a time of political fragmentation and social upheaval in China, poverty became the focus of an anguished national conversation about the future of the country. Investigating the lives of the urban poor in China during this critical era, Guilty of Indigence examines...

Hindu rulers, muslim subjects

Disputed between India and Pakistan, Kashmir contains a large majority of Muslims subject to the laws of a predominantly Hindu and increasingly "Hinduized" India. How did religion and politics become so enmeshed in defining the protest of Kashmir's Muslims against Hindu rule? This book reaches be...

Hong kong and british culture, 1945–97

A major contribution to the scholarship on British decolonisation, the cultural history of imperialism and British engagement with China. This highly original study places the emergence of contemporary Hong Kong in the wider, post-imperial setting.

Humanity

Writings on human life and the refugee crisis by the most important political artist of our timeAi Weiwei (b. 1957) is widely known as an artist across media: sculpture, installation, photography, performance, and architecture. He is also one of the world's most important artist-activists and a p...

In asian waters

A sweeping account of how the sea routes of Asia have transformed a vast expanse of the globe over the past five hundred years, powerfully shaping the modern worldIn the centuries leading up to our own, the volume of traffic across Asian sea routes—an area stretching from East Africa and the Midd...

Inglorious empire

Inglorious Empire tells the real story of the British in India and reveals how Britain’s rise was built upon its plunder of India.

Islamic thought in early modern india

A wide-ranging new history of Islamic thought and practice in India from the early eighteenth century to the presentFocusing on one of the most influential families in Indian Islam, this history provides a broad yet intimate view of Islamic thought and practice in India from the early eighteenth ...

Japan's modern myths

Ideology played a momentous role in modern Japanese history. Not only did the elite of imperial Japan (1890-1945) work hard to influence the people to "yield as the grasses before the wind," but historians of modern Japan later identified these efforts as one of the underlying pathologies of Worl...

Know your remedies

A cultural history of the concept of pharmacy, both the material nature of drugs and the trade in medicine, in early modern China Know Your Remedies presents a panoramic inquiry into China’s early modern cultural transformation through the lens of pharmacy. In the history of science and civilizat...

Laws of the land

A groundbreaking history of fengshui’s roles in public life and law during China’s last imperial dynastyToday the term fengshui, which literally means “wind and water,” is recognized around the world. Yet few know exactly what it means, let alone its fascinating history. In Laws of the Land, Tris...