Since its first publication, Paul A. Cohen's Discovering History in China has occupied a singular place in American China scholarship. Translated into three East Asian languages, the volume has become essential to the study of China from the early nineteenth century to today. Cohen critiques the work of leading postwar scholars and is especially adamant about not reading China through the lens of Western history. To this end, he uncovers the strong ethnocentric bias pervading the three major conceptual frameworks of American scholarship of the 1950s and 1960s: the impact-response, modernization, and imperialism approaches. In place of these, Cohen favors a "China-centered" approach in which historians understand Chinese history on its own terms, paying close attention to Chinese historical trajectories and Chinese perceptions of their problems, rather than a set of expectations derived from Western history. In an important new introduction, Cohen reflects on his fifty-year career as a historian of China and discusses major recent trends in the field. Although some of these developments challenge a narrowly conceived China-centered approach, insofar as they enable more balanced comparisons between China and the West and recast the Chinese and their history in more human, less exotic terms, they powerfully affirm the central thrust of Cohen's work.

Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (STUDIES OF THE EAST ASIAN INSTITUTE)

History

Cohen, Paul A.

Asia

Columbia Univ. Pr.

China Unbound (Asia's Transformations/Critical Asian Scholarship)

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.

China Unbound: Evolving Perspectives on the Chinese Past (Asia's Transformations/Critical Asian Scholarship)

Routledge

Reference

The ancient story of King Goujian, a psychologically complex fifth-century BCE monarch, spoke powerfully to the Chinese during China's turbulent twentieth century. Yet most Americans—even students and specialists of this era—have never heard of Goujian. In Speaking to History, Paul A. Cohen opens this previously missing (to the West) chapter of China's recent history. He connects the story to each of the major traumas of the last century, tracing its versatility as a source of inspiration and hope and elegantly exploring, on a more general level, why such stories often remain sealed up within a culture, unknown to outsiders. Labeling this phenomenon "insider cultural knowledge," Cohen investigates the relationship between past story and present reality. He inquires why at certain moments in their collective lives peoples are especially drawn to narratives from the distant past that resonate strongly with their current circumstances, and why the Chinese have returned over and over to a story from twenty-five centuries ago. In this imaginative stitching of story to history, Cohen reveals how the shared narratives of a community help to define its culture and illuminate its history.

Speaking to History: The Story of King Goujian in Twentieth-Century China

University of California Press

The ancient story of King Goujian, a psychologically complex fifth-century BCE monarch, spoke powerfully to the Chinese during China's turbulent twentieth century. Yet most Americans―even students and specialists of this era―have never heard of Goujian. In Speaking to History, Paul A. Cohen opens this previously missing (to the West) chapter of China's recent history. He connects the story to each of the major traumas of the last century, tracing its versatility as a source of inspiration and hope and elegantly exploring, on a more general level, why such stories often remain sealed up within a culture, unknown to outsiders. Labeling this phenomenon "insider cultural knowledge," Cohen investigates the relationship between past story and present reality. He inquires why at certain moments in their collective lives peoples are especially drawn to narratives from the distant past that resonate strongly with their current circumstances, and why the Chinese have returned over and over to a story from twenty-five centuries ago. In this imaginative stitching of story to history, Cohen reveals how the shared narratives of a community help to define its culture and illuminate its history.

Speaking to History: The Story of King Goujian in Twentieth-Century China (Volume 16)

Between tradition and modernity: Wang T'ao and reform in late Ch'ing China (Harvard East Asian series)

Harvard University Press

见识城邦·在传统与现代性之间：王韬与晚清改革著名中国研究学者柯文的成名之作，雷颐领衔翻译，晚清改革代表人物、“中国*报人”王韬的传奇一生，看中国在传统和现代之间如何踌躇前行软精装作者:[美]柯文 著；雷颐 罗检秋 译分类:历史|中国史|近代史（1840-1919）卖家微信(soweinc)折扣优惠.

Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang T'ao and Reform in Late Ch'ing China (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Harvard University Asia Center

In February 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, the American Society of International Law organized a study panel of legal scholars, social scientists, lawyers, and government officials to consider problems relating to "China and International Order." The panel was founded in the belief that the turmoil in China would not endure and that the People's Republic might soon wish to participate fully in the world community. To prepare for this day, the panel commissioned and reviewed a number of studies of China's interpretation and application of international law.  The ten essays in this volume-written by twelve scholars including Mr. Cohen, who has also written a substantial introduction are the fruit of this effort. Four of the essays deal with basic problems relating to Peking's international conduct: recognition and the establishment of diplomatic relations, the regulation of foreign diplomats serving in China, manipulation of the concept of "unequal treaties," and the PRC's conditions for participation in international organizations. The other six essays focus on legal problems that have arisen in China's relations with a given country or international organization.

China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860-1870

Religion & Spirituality

In this memoir, Paul A. Cohen, one of the West’s preeminent historians of China, traces the development of his work from its inception in the early 1960s to the present, offering fresh perspectives that consistently challenge us to think more deeply about China and the historical craft in general. A memoir, of course, is itself a form of history. But for a historian, writing a memoir on one’s career is quite different from the creation of that career in the first place. This is what Cohen alludes to in the title A Path Twice Traveled. The title highlights the important disparity between the past as originally experienced and the past as later reconstructed, by which point both the historian and the world have undergone extensive change. This distinction, which conveys nicely the double meaning of the word history, is very much on Cohen’s mind throughout the book. He returns to it explicitly in the memoir’s final chapter, appropriately titled “Then and Now: The Two Histories.”

A Path Twice Traveled: My Journey as a Historian of China

In February 1967, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, the American Society of International Law organized a study panel of legal scholars, social scientists, lawyers, and government officials to consider problems relating to "China and International Order." The ten essays in this volume-written by twelve scholars including Mr. Cohen, who has also written a substantial introduction are the fruit of this effort.

China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860–1870 (Harvard East Asian Series, 11)

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