"Nanjing Massacre"
Recommendation reason
In December 11937, the Japanese army invaded Nanjing, the ancient capital of China. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were subjected to systematic rape, torture and massacre—the death toll exceeded the combined death toll of Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb explosions.
Zhang Chunru not only details the details of the crazy atrocities of the Japanese army in the book, but also analyzes the indifference of Japanese soldiers who grew up under the background of militarist culture to human life. Zhang Chunru conducted a large number of interviews with survivors of the Nanjing Massacre and discovered many important documents for the first time.
The whole book first explains the root causes of the Nanjing Massacre from multiple aspects such as why Japanese soldiers and officers have completely separated from the basic human behavioral norms. Japanese schools and textbooks instill hatred and contempt towards students from the psychological level, as well as a highly militarized education system.
In the core chapter of this book, the author records the brutal and inhumane massacre operations of the Japanese army in extremely detailed through interviews with the parties, reviewing archival materials, and field investigations and research, and deeply reveals the cruel nature of the Japanese invading army. At the same time, the author also vividly describes the heroic acts of saving the Chinese in the Nanjing safe zone by German businessman John Rabe, American surgeon Robert Wilson, and "Nanjing Living Bodhisattva" Minnie Weiterin .
Finally, the author used grief and anger to reveal the little-known plots such as the Nanjing Massacre, Nanjing under Japanese occupation, the trial of Japanese war criminals, and the fate of survivors.
This book is an authoritative work about this horrifying history.
02
" Origin of the modern country of China "
Recommended reason
k Feili takes political participation, political competition and political control as the main axis, and attributes the "fundamental agenda" of the formation and development of modern Chinese countries to three groups of interrelated issues or contradictions: the contradiction between the expansion of political participation and the strengthening of state power (Chapter 1); the contradiction between the development of political competition and the maintenance of public interests (Chapter 2); the contradiction between the state's fiscal absorption capacity and local social financial needs (Chapter 3). These three sets of problems did not begin in the Qing Dynasty, but were faced by all dynasties, but they crossed the dynasties and existed until the late imperial system, and continued to become a basic problem in the construction of modern Chinese state in the 20th century after the collapse of the imperial system.
Kong Feili believes that when changes in the political environment pose a major threat to society, people will begin to form a consensus around various "fundamental agendas". In the late Chinese imperial system, what historical environment did the various knowledge resources deeply embedded in history and culture have led to a gradual transformation towards a "modern country" with modernity and Chinese characteristics? Kong Feili responded to this question more macroscopically by discussing the thoughts of Wei Yuan, Feng Guifen, Liang Qichao, Zhang Taiyan and others, combined with relevant historical narratives since the late Qing Dynasty.
Kong Feili is very conceited about this "Origin of Modern China's Country". Compared with Kong's other three monographs and other special papers, this book is indeed very unusual. The first draft of this book is a lecture draft, and Kong Feili's other writings are empirical research ; in this book, the author tries to give positive answers to some more macro questions, and no longer hide behind the research on specific questions. In general, Kong Feili's purpose of studying and the core issues he thought about are most directly reflected in this book. The chapters in the book are based on the author's series of lectures (1994) given by the author at the French Academy . It was first published in French in 1999, and the English version was launched in 2002. This time, the Chinese version was first published.
03
"Modern Scale"
Recommended Reason
Two Opium War is a turning point in Chinese history, and traditional countries have entered the modern world. The author thus examined the military affairs of the two Opium Wars: the military expenditure, military strength, equipment and training level of the Qing Dynasty to disclose the old appearance of the "Celestial Dynasty" in front of the new Western enemies; examined the diplomacy in the two Opium Wars: Guangzhou's entry into the city, Xili's interview, the minister's residence in Beijing, and Ye Mingchen's diplomatic thoughts to illustrate the diplomatic failure under the concept of "Celestial Dynasty"; examined several important battle examples in the two Opium Wars: the Battle of Humen, the Battle of Wusong, the Battle of Zhejiang and the Three Dagu Wars to calculate the actual distance measured by modern standards, and illustrate the various pains of traditional countries' incompatibility in the process of adapting to the international community.
This book forms a sister chapter with "The Collapse of the Heavenly Dynasty". It was first published in the mid-to-late 1990s and is also a representative work of the author's modern history research.
