Chinese History: A Manual, Revised and Enlarged

Rating:
Summary: An invaluable guide to all aspects of traditional China
Review: This is an annotated resarch guide and bibliography, as described by the publisher, but has much more: introductions to the sources available for the writing of traditional Chinese history (up to 1911); shrewd evaluations of reference and research tools involved; explanation of how the study of the field developed; brief summaries of the state of research on a wide variety of topics, including:origins of Chinese characters, history of Chinese food, how to handle dates and chronology; how to find out where places are and who people are... well, you get the idea. The MANUAL is useful not only for primary research, but also for finding articles and secondary references on many topics (my own bibliography, CHINA (Clio: World Bibliography Series, 1997) lists mainly books). The term "Manual" in Wilkinson's title really describes it, i.e. something which must be "at hand" for anyone working in Chinese history, and a "must" for libraries.

Rating:
Summary: Peerless Resource for Chinese Historiography
Review: Wilkinson's 'Chinese History: A Manual' is an essential volume on the bookshelf of any serious Chinese historiographer or scholar of Chinese history. Since the publication of the first edition, this book has very much become a standard reference for Chinese history. Note, though, that this is not a textbook on Chinese history, although one can certainly learn a great deal about Chinese history from it. It serves better as a handbook on Chinese history, an informative reference one consults to discover resources for the study of divers aspects of Chinese history.

The first section provides an excellent introduction to Chinese history, and the methods of Chinese historiography. Topics such as language, geography, demography, chronology, statistics, etc., are introduced, and reference works such as dictionaries and encyclopaedias are discussed in some detail. This section provides much of the groundwork necessary for study of Chinese history.

The remainder of the book is devoted to the description of the primary and secondary sources of historical documents, categorising them by genre, era and topic. Some 4,300 sources and references are described, from pre-Qin periods to the modern era, making the book an excellent first-port-of-call for identifying historical texts and documents. Wilkinson's work is especially helpful because the resources are not merely presented as lists, but their context is described, and often, some evaluation of the quality, worth, reliability, ubiquity, etc., is presented. Difficulties and obstacles encountered in research are mentioned, and solutions are often suggested.

This is a revised version of the 1998 edition, enlarged to include republican period. An already excellent manual was improved upon, and there is little I can say to criticise this edition. The book is physically well bound and the print is clear and of a good size: no magnifying glass is necessary. One particularly laudable feature of this book is that where English is employed for terms particular to Chinese culture or history, the Chinese term is given throughout, and the name of texts and sources are always given in Chinese. Moreover, romanisation is generally accompanied by Chinese characters, elminating the often frustrating guesswork involved in trying to figure out the characters corresponding to a romanised phrase. My only complaint is that, although Pinyin romanisation is used consistently, the tone marks are generally omitted.

In short, then, I have nothing but praise for Wilkinson's work. It is an indispensible guide to the study of Chinese historiography, and constitutes an excellent resource for anyone at all interested in Chinese history. Although written as a handbook for research, I have found the book suited to casual browse, and I often use it as a coffee-book table: I open it to a random page, and, more often than not, I find something that strikes my fancy and piques my interest. All in all, this book is a valuable resource seldom to be met with elsewhere.