Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915-1949

Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, June 1971. Trade Paperback. 1984 printing. Originally published in French in 1967 under the title Les Origines de la Revolution Chinoise, 1915-1949. Near Fine. Interior pristine. Spine straight, tight, and uncreased. Suning and edgewear to cover. Not from a library. No remainder mark. 223 pages.

The best introduction to Chinese Communism ever published. It focuses on the dynamic social forces underlying the Chinese Communists' rise in three short decades from obscurity to power. The author relates the events of this period to certain tentative generalizations about the nature and course of the revolution. He is concerned less with the May Fourth Movement as such, for example, than with the revolution's intellectual origins, less with the Communist party's early political history than with the place of Marxist ideology in that history, less with the military aspects of the war of 1937-45 than with the influence of nationalism in the growing success of the Communists. An important part of the book deals with the various governmental and non-governmental attempt at reform during the Kuomintang era, which the author shows were too little too late to dam the swelling flood of revolution. The conclusion evaluates the crucial role of imperialism, the peasantry, and the army in the Chinese "formula" for revolution and re-examines the relationship between Marxism and the Chinese Revolution.