The Great Wall of China
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Revised ed., 1/12/2008
EAN 9780521427074, ISBN10: 052142707X
Paperback, 316 pages, 21.6 x 14 x 2 cm
Language: English
The Great Wall of China is renowned as one of the most impressive and intriguing man-made structures on earth. It is also the subject of an awesome mythology, embedded in both learned and popular imaginations, which has grown up and now obscured the historical record. Even the maps which chart the Wall's position offer erroneous accounts of a phenomenon which has never been accurately surveyed. Arthur Waldron reveals that the notion of an ancient and continuously existing Great Wall, one of modern China's national symbols and a legend in the eyes of the West, is in fact a myth. His fascinating account reveals the strategic and political context for the decision to build walls as fortified defences, and explores its profound implications for nomadic and agricultural life under the Ming dynasty. Taking up the insights offered into more recent Chinese politics, the book concludes with a searching investigation of the Wall's new meanings in the myths - departing from that history - fostered in our own century.
List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on romanization
1. Introduction
what is the Great Wall of China?
Part I. First Considerations
2. Early Chinese walls
3. Strategic origins of Chinese walls
Part II. The Making of the Great Wall
4. Geography and strategy
the importance of the Ordos
5. Security without walls
early Ming strategy and its collapse
6. Toward a new strategy
the Ordos crisis and the first walls
7. Politics and military policy at the turn of the sixteenth century
8. The second debate over the Ordos
9. The heyday of wall-building
Part III. The Significance of Wall-Building
10. The Great Wall and foreign policy
the problem of compromise
11. The Wall acquires new meanings
Notes
Bibliography
Chinese and Japanese materials
Western materials
Glossary
Index.
'Historical writing at its best, a brilliant and very readable account.' The Asia Society