Makes a signal contribution to the understanding of warfare in China by examining the refugee experience comprehensively. The great strength of this book is that it focuses on an entire province, one whose history and geography the author knows intimately. Schoppa takes an important step towards fulfilling the call, made by the eminent historian Parks Coble, for scholars to explore more deeply the traumatic effects of this war on civilians. -- Rebecca Nedostup, author of Superstitious Regimes A stunning account of the horrific experiences of Chinese refugees during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45. Focusing on people's actual sentiments rather than state-generated propaganda, Schoppa finds that personal concerns, not the interests of the nation, were uppermost in the minds of refugees. He also shows that refugee strategies were profoundly shaped by the preeminent importance in Chinese culture of native place and the complex networks of human connections associated with it. In the brutal caldron of war, local attachments, which were concrete, trumped more abstract national ones. -- Paul A. Cohen, author of Speaking to History Japan's "Rape of Nanking" is infamous. Less well known are the massacres at Qiaosi and countless other places. In a moving, relentless narrative, Keith Schoppa shows how Japanese bombing, arson, rape, pillage and murder in the first years of war unleashed a "tsunami of refugees" across China. Rulers and ruled, teachers and students, merchants and customers, farmers and artisans went on the run. This is the story of how they lived, coped, resisted, remembered or died in one Chinese province. Schoppa takes us back to "a world where ghosts wailed," when local, national and global destinies were sorted out. This is a masterful and sobering history. -- William C. Kirby, editor of The People's Republic of China at 60
R. Keith Schoppa is Professor and The Edward and Catherine Doehler Chair in Asian History at Loyola University, Maryland.
Makes a signal contribution to the understanding of warfare in
China by examining the refugee experience comprehensively. The
great strength of this book is that it focuses on an entire
province, one whose history and geography the author knows
intimately. Schoppa takes an important step towards fulfilling the
call, made by the eminent historian Parks Coble, for scholars to
explore more deeply the traumatic effects of this war on
civilians.
*Rebecca Nedostup, author of Superstitious Regimes*
A stunning account of the horrific experiences of Chinese refugees
during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45. Focusing on people's
actual sentiments rather than state-generated propaganda, Schoppa
finds that personal concerns, not the interests of the nation, were
uppermost in the minds of refugees. He also shows that refugee
strategies were profoundly shaped by the preeminent importance in
Chinese culture of native place and the complex networks of human
connections associated with it. In the brutal caldron of war, local
attachments, which were concrete, trumped more abstract national
ones.
*Paul A. Cohen, author of Speaking to History*
Japan's "Rape of Nanking" is infamous. Less well known are the
massacres at Qiaosi and countless other places. In a moving,
relentless narrative, Keith Schoppa shows how Japanese bombing,
arson, rape, pillage and murder in the first years of war unleashed
a "tsunami of refugees" across China. Rulers and ruled, teachers
and students, merchants and customers, farmers and artisans went on
the run. This is the story of how they lived, coped, resisted,
remembered or died in one Chinese province. Schoppa takes us back
to "a world where ghosts wailed," when local, national and global
destinies were sorted out. This is a masterful and sobering
history.
*William C. Kirby, editor of The People's Republic of China at
60*
The brutal Japanese invasion of China in 1937 forced more than 30
million Chinese to flee their homes and subsist in regions of their
country unfamiliar to them as refugees until the end of World War
II. Schoppa retraces the stories of these refugees, produced from
oral histories, journals, and memoirs chronicling a turbulent
period in one particular province--Zhejiang, on the central Chinese
coast. The terrorizing offensives of mass murder, rape, and germ
warfare launched by the Japanese militarists brought about the most
demoralizing sense of political, cultural, and psychological
dislocation in Chinese history...A moving narrative for serious
readers in Chinese or Japanese history and in the history of
20th-century warfare in East Asia.
*Library Journal*
Schoppa relies primarily on the direct accounts of diarists to
illustrate the confusion and emotional distress that accompanied
the physical hardships of being without a home during
wartime--particularly for a culture that places such a high value
on the concept of home. The era Schoppa revisits in this book is a
dark one--as one refugee says, the loss of his home in the war
thrust him into a "sea of bitterness"--but with measured analysis
and an arsenal of facts, he sheds light on the war's forgotten
refugees.
*Publishers Weekly*
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