Paul A. Cohen
Forfatter af History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth
Paul A. Cohen is Paula Cohen (2). For andre forfattere med navnet Paula Cohen, se skeln forfatterne siden.
Om forfatteren
Paul A. Cohen is Professor of History Emeritus at Wellesley College and Associate of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University. His books include Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past and History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, vis mere Experience, and Myth. vis mindre
Værker af Paul A. Cohen
Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (1984) 30 eksemplarer
China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860-1870 (1963) 13 eksemplarer
Ideas Across Cultures: Essays on Chinese Thought in Honor of Benjamin I. Schwartz (1990) 2 eksemplarer
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This book, published in 1997, is both a study of the Boxer Rebellion and a fascinating insight into historiography and the way that history is used and distorted. In the introduction, Cohen explains his approach: when we read the 'history' of an event, we read an analysis that was made after the event, with a much wider field of knowledge than it was possible for anyone to have at the time. This is not how it feels to people living through it. Because history is written backwards, it also often ignores the things which almost happened, or the way that something which was seen as a significant trigger could have disappeared without trace if it had happened in a different place or time.
(So, for example, the Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire could not possibly have known that he would be seen as the catalyst for what became the Arab Spring - he might have seen himself as one in a line of people who had immolated themselves as a last desperate protest. Others in the region who had done the same thing will most likely be no more than a footnote when 'history' is being written).
To highlight this, Cohen's book is in three sections:
- 'event', a short section which tries to tell the chronology of the Boxer Rebellion - this deliberately tries not to be a broad sweep but simply explains how one event triggered the next, and I found it interesting how much I noticed that I wasn't reading a big historical overview
- 'experience', which tries to capture what it actually would have felt like to be in the middle of the events as they happened, whether from a perspective of foreign missionary or diplomat, Chinese court official, Boxer or ordinary Chinese person just trying to survive. This section covers things like fear (of losing your livelihood through drought, of the unaccountable changes brought about by the foreign presence, of being killed by the rebels), belief in magic or religion, and rumour - all of which do build up into a picture of the chaos of actually living through something like this. There are some really interesting eyewitness records and even photos, although the majority of these are from the Western point of view
- 'myth', about the way that the Boxer rebellion has been treated by later historians - this does include Western views but is mainly about the way that it has been portrayed in China. This is especially interesting for two reasons - one that Chinese history in the twentieth century has involved so much re-writing to make it fit with current political lines, and the other that the Boxer rebellion involves so many different themes and aspects that it's easier to bend it into different forms. So first of all, it was seen as emblematic of the 'old', superstitious and xenophobic China which needed to be left behind; later, the Boxers were anti-imperialist heroes or models of rebellion and resistance.
I think this book would be of interest to anyone interested in history, not just Chinese - Cohen makes a point of broadening out his canvas to include examples from other times and places which might throw light on the way events affected each other or how people reacted to difficult situations, as well as the way that historical perspectives and even personal memories change over time. I'd also say it's quite an important aspect of understanding modern China - especially since so much that is written about modern China is completely ahistorical. We in the West are always much more amnesiac about history than the countries which didn't come off so well from our first encounters, and I think the book is quite revealing about how Chinese memories of something like the Boxer rebellion can still play into its feelings about the West.… (mere)