R. Keith Schoppa – författare

Never before had any century in history known the continually accelerating rate and scope of change experienced in the twentieth century -- with its revolutionary discoveries, technological inventions, political upheaval, and scientific advances, radical transformation touched virtually every arena of life. In The Twentieth Century: A World History, R. Keith Schoppa uses a global lens spanning Africa, the Middle East, Russia, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and the Americas. He traces the major developments of the twentieth century from the rise of globalization to the dawn of the digital age; from the Great War of 1914-18 to the “great war in Africa,” conflicts that span the first genocide of the century in Namibia to that of Bosnia-Kosovo in the late 1990s. It was the “century of the refugee,” as the explosion of human violence caused significant population displacement-and it was also the century of indigenous peoples fighting off the lingering impacts of imperialism. This volume surveys various U.S. struggles in battles for civil rights, and witnesses the 1992 collapse of Soviet communism. The century ended in a spasm of violence: four African and European national genocides and the African war, one of the ten deadliest in history, involving nine nations, leaving 6 million dead and 5.4 million refugees.From the collapse of empires to the rise of decolonized nation-states on the global stage, The Twentieth Century: A World History offers a rich chronological narrative of our recent past and provides a valuable historical standpoint from which to view our twenty-first century world.

Never before had any century in history known the continually accelerating rate and scope of change experienced in the twentieth century -- with its revolutionary discoveries, technological inventions, political upheaval, and scientific advances, radical transformation touched virtually every arena of life. In The Twentieth Century: A World History, R. Keith Schoppa uses a global lens spanning Africa, the Middle East, Russia, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and the Americas. He traces the major developments of the twentieth century from the rise of globalization to the dawn of the digital age; from the Great War of 1914-18 to the “great war in Africa,” conflicts that span the first genocide of the century in Namibia to that of Bosnia-Kosovo in the late 1990s. It was the “century of the refugee,” as the explosion of human violence caused significant population displacement-and it was also the century of indigenous peoples fighting off the lingering impacts of imperialism. This volume surveys various U.S. struggles in battles for civil rights, and witnesses the 1992 collapse of Soviet communism. The century ended in a spasm of violence: four African and European national genocides and the African war, one of the ten deadliest in history, involving nine nations, leaving 6 million dead and 5.4 million refugees.From the collapse of empires to the rise of decolonized nation-states on the global stage, The Twentieth Century: A World History offers a rich chronological narrative of our recent past and provides a valuable historical standpoint from which to view our twenty-first century world.

China, the world's oldest and most populous state, remains an enigma to most people in the West, even at a time when that country is playing an increasingly prominent role on the international stage. At the heart of modern Chinese history have been the efforts of the Chinese people to transform their polity into a modern nation state, the Confucian orthodoxy into an ideology that can help direct that process, and an agrarian economy into an industrial one. These efforts are ongoing and of great importance. This book is both an introduction to the major features of modern Chinese history and a resource for researchers interested in virtually any topic relating to the Chinese experience of the last 220 years.This valuable reference contains: * a historical narrative providing a comprehensive overview of five core aspects of Chinese history: domestic politics, society, the economy, the world of culture and thought, and relations with the outside world; * a compendium of 250 short, descriptive articles on key figures, events, and terms; * a resource guide containing approximately 500 annotated entries for the most authoritative sources for further research in English, as well as descriptions of important films depicting modern China and a guide to electronic resources; and * appendices, including a chronology, excerpts from key primary source documents, and a wealth of tables and graphs on demographic, social, and economic trends.

Blood Road is a complex mix of social history, literary analysis, political biography, and murder mystery. It explores and analyzes the social and cultural dynamics of the Chinese revolution of the 1920s by focusing on the mysterious 1928 assassination of Shen Dingyi--revolutionary, landlord, politician, poet, journalist, educator, feminist, and early member of both the Communist and Nationalist parties. The search for Shen's killer details the contours of revolutionary change in different spatial contexts--metropolitan Shanghai, the provincial capital Hangzhou, and Shen's home village of Yaqian. Several interrelated themes emerge in this dramatic story of revolution: the nature of social identity, the role of social networks, the political import of place, and the centrality of process in historical explanation. It contributes significantly to a new understanding of Chinese revolutionary culture and the 1920s revolution in particular. But Blood Road remains at base a story of people linked in various relationships who were thrust, often without choice, into treacherous revolutionary currents that shaped, twisted, and destroyed their lives.

The Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937 led some thirty million Chinese to flee their homes in terror, and live—in the words of artist and writer Feng Zikai—“in a sea of bitterness” as refugees. Keith Schoppa paints a comprehensive picture of the refugee experience in one province—Zhejiang, on the central Chinese coast—where the Japanese launched major early offensives as well as notorious later campaigns. He recounts stories of both heroes and villains, of choices poorly made amid war’s bewildering violence, of risks bravely taken despite an almost palpable quaking fear.As they traveled south into China’s interior, refugees stepped backward in time, sometimes as far as the nineteenth century, their journeys revealing the superficiality of China’s modernization. Memoirs and oral histories allow Schoppa to follow the footsteps of the young and old, elite and non-elite, as they fled through unfamiliar terrain and coped with unimaginable physical and psychological difficulties. Within the context of Chinese culture, being forced to leave home was profoundly threatening to one’s sense of identity. Not just people but whole institutions also fled from Japanese occupation, and Schoppa considers schools, governments, and businesses as refugees with narratives of their own.Local governments responded variously to Japanese attacks, from enacting scorched-earth policies to offering rewards for the capture of plague-infected rats in the aftermath of germ warfare. While at times these official procedures improved the situation for refugees, more often—as Schoppa describes in moving detail—they only deepened the tragedy.

Combining evocative historical description and cogent analysis, Song Full of Tears is a chronicle of nine hundred years of life in southeast China. It reveals the workings of Chinese society in times of environmental and military crises, how the Chinese reacted to changes, threats, and opportunities, and how they dealt with one another and the world of nature and the environment. Until the 18th century, Xiang Lake, in the province of Zheijiang, was the stage for morality battles between loyalty and betrayal, chastity and impurity, civic virtue and private greed. After the 18th century, concerns about ecology, public rights, and technology emerged as elements in the struggle, and in the 20th century, the fate of the lake became linked to national political developments and then to technological and ecological realities. Song Full of Tears shows how Chinese views of life, society, and nature both changed and remained constant through the centuries. The paperback will include a new epilogue by the author.

Revolution and Its Past is a comprehensive study of China from the last quarter of the eighteenth century through to 2018. A fascinating and dramatic narrative, the book compels interest both as a history of an ancient civilization developing into a modern nation-state and as an account of how the Chinese as a people have struggled and continue to work to find their identity in the modern world. Beginning in the last two decades of the reign of the Qianlong emperor (1736–1795), the book provides a baseline that allows readers to understand China’s rapid decline in the nineteenth and part of the twentieth century, and extends into the present day, a time when China has the second largest economy in the world and aims to become a leading global power by 2050. The vast changes that have swept over China between these times are probed through the lens of the broad and important theme of "identities." This fourth edition has been updated throughout, providing a more thorough examination of recent history since 1960, and increasing coverage of such topics as "new Qing history," frontier and ethnicity, women and their roles, environmental concerns and issues, and globalization.Supported by maps, images, tables, online eResources and suggestions for further reading, and written in an engaging, concise, and authoritative style, Revolution and Its Past is the ideal textbook for all students of the history of modern China.