China on the Margins

Book excerpt: Should modern Chinese history be approached from the center looking out or from the margins looking in? In this book, twelve contributors attempt to answer this question. In the process, they adopt various conceptual schemes for understanding relations between the center and the margins, including at least four different ones: capital as center and provinces as margins; coast as center and interior as margins; cultural metropolis as center and parochial hinterland as margins; China as a center and bordering states also as centers with margins in between. The contributors explore the relations between these centers and margins in periods of time that span three major political eras: the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) when China s capital was in Beijing; the Republic of China (1912-1949) when its capital was in Beijing (1912-1927), Nanjing (1927 1937), Chongqing (1938-1945), and Nanjing again (1945-1949); and the People s Republic of China (1949-present) when its capital has been in Beijing. Taken together, the essays have both a cohesive thematic unity and a long chronological sweep.