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Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids

Donald Prothero and Daniel Loxton

Throughout our history, humans have been captivated by mythic beasts and legendary creatures. Tales of Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the Loch Ness monster are part of our collective experience. This book ... More

Throughout our history, humans have been captivated by mythic beasts and legendary creatures. Tales of Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the Loch Ness monster are part of our collective experience. This book explores and elucidates the fascinating world of cryptozoology. This is an entertaining, educational, and definitive text on cryptids, presenting the arguments both for and against their existence and systematically challenging the pseudoscience that perpetuates their myths. After examining the nature of science and pseudoscience and their relation to cryptozoology, the book takes on Bigfoot; the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, and its cross-cultural incarnations; the Loch Ness monster and its highly publicized sightings; the evolution of the Great Sea Serpent; and Mokele Mbembe, or the Congo dinosaur. It concludes with an analysis of the psychology behind the persistent belief in paranormal phenomena, identifying the major players in cryptozoology, discussing the character of its subculture, and considering the challenge it poses to clear and critical thinking in our increasingly complex world.Less

After the Red Army Faction: Gender, Culture, and Militancy

Charity Scribner

This book uses critical theory to answer key gender-related questions about the Red Army Faction (RAF), a group that was masterminded by women and which terrorized West Germany from the 1970s to the ... More

This book uses critical theory to answer key gender-related questions about the Red Army Faction (RAF), a group that was masterminded by women and which terrorized West Germany from the 1970s to the 1990s. The questions include: Why were women so prominent in the RAF? And what does the continuing cultural response to the German armed struggle tell us about the representation of violence, power, and gender today? The book analyzes works by pivotal writers and artists, including Gerhard Richter and Elfriede Jelinek, that point beyond militancy and terrorism. This literature and art discloses the failures of the Far Left and registers the radical potential that RAF women actually forfeited. The book maps out a cultural history of militancy and introduces “postmilitancy” as a new critical term. It demonstrates how the most compelling examples of postmilitant culture don't just repudiate militancy but also investigate its horizons of possibility, particularly on the front of sexual politics. The book uses previously untranslated essays by Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas, as well as novels by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Judith Kuckart, Johann Kresnik's Tanztheaterstück Ulrike Meinhof and the blockbuster exhibition Regarding Terror at the Berlin Kunst-Werke. It also focuses on German cinema and provides interpretations of films by Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff and Fatih Akın. This analysis discloses dynamic junctures among several fields of inquiry: national and sexual identity, the disciplining of the militant body and the relationship between mass media and the arts.Less

The Birth of Vietnamese Political Journalism: Saigon, 1916-1930

Philippe Peycam

This book is the first ever English-language study of Vietnam's emerging political press and its resistance to colonialism. Published in the decade that preceded the Communist Party's founding, it ... More

This book is the first ever English-language study of Vietnam's emerging political press and its resistance to colonialism. Published in the decade that preceded the Communist Party's founding, it established a space for public, political contestation that fundamentally changed Vietnamese attitudes and the outlook of Southeast Asia. It directly links Saigon's colonial urbanization to the creation of new modes of individual and collective political agency. To better justify their presence, French colonialists implemented a peculiar brand of republican imperialism to encourage the development of a highly controlled print capitalism. Yet the Vietnamese made clever use of this new form of political expression, subverting colonial discourse and putting French rulers on the defensive, while simultaneously stoking Vietnamese aspirations for autonomy. The book specifically considers the work of Western-educated Vietnamese journalists who, in their legal writings, called attention to the politics of French rule. It rejects the notion that communist and nationalist ideologies changed the minds of “alienated” Vietnamese during this period. Rather, it credits colonial urban modernity with shaping the Vietnamese activist-journalist and the role of the French, even at their most coercive, along with the modern public Vietnamese intellectual and his responsibility toward the group. Countering common research on anticolonial nationalism and its assumptions of ethno-cultural homogeneity, the book follows the merging of French republican and anarchist traditions with neo-Confucian Vietnamese behavior, giving rise to modern Vietnamese public activism, its autonomy, and its contradictory aspirations.Less

Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China

Hans van de Ven

This book describes the role of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, assesses the influence it had on Chinese history and society, and shows how it transformed China's relationship with the world. ... More

This book describes the role of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, assesses the influence it had on Chinese history and society, and shows how it transformed China's relationship with the world. It explains how, between its founding in 1854 and its collapse in 1952, the Service delivered one-third to one-half of all revenue collected by China's central authorities. The book shows that the service was much more than a tax collector—it also managed China's harbours, erected lighthouses, surveyed the Chinese coast, and pioneered China's modern postal system. The book also follows the activities of the Inspectors General, who were virtual autocrats within the Service and who communicated regularly with senior Chinese officials and foreign diplomats. The book assesses the Service's impact on historical events such as the Sino-French War, the Boxer Rebellion, the 1911 Revolution, and the rise of the Nationalists in the 1920s. It shows how the Service was pivotal to China's post-Taiping integration into the world of modern nation-states and twentieth-century trade and finance. It argues that the Service introduced the modern governance of trade to China, made Chinese legible to foreign audiences, and that it often kept China together when little else did.Less

The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea

Hyun Ok Park

The unification of North and South Korea is widely considered an unresolved and volatile matter for the global order, but this book argues capital has already unified Korea in a transnational form. ... More

The unification of North and South Korea is widely considered an unresolved and volatile matter for the global order, but this book argues capital has already unified Korea in a transnational form. As Hyun Ok Park demonstrates, rather than territorial integration and family union, the capitalist unconscious drives the current unification, imagining the capitalist integration of the Korean peninsula and the Korean diaspora as a new democratic moment. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic research in South Korea and China, The Capitalist Unconscious shows how the hegemonic democratic politics of the post-Cold War era (reparation, peace, and human rights) have consigned the rights of migrant laborers—protagonists of transnational Korea—to identity politics, constitutionalism, and cosmopolitanism. Park reveals the riveting capitalist logic of these politics, which underpins legal and policy debates, social activism, and media spectacle. While rethinking the historical trajectory of Cold War industrialism and its subsequent liberal path, this book also probes memories of such key events as the North Korean and Chinese revolutions, which are integral to migrants’ reckoning with capitalist allures and communal possibilities. Casting capitalist democracy within an innovative framework of historical repetition, Park elucidates the form and content of the capitalist unconscious at different historical moments and dissolves the modern opposition among socialism, democracy, and dictatorship. The Capitalist Unconscious astutely explores the neoliberal present’s past and introduces a compelling approach to the question of history and contemporaneity.Less

The China Threat: Memories, Myths, and Realities in the 1950s

Nancy Bernkopf Tucker

This book confronts the coldest period of the Cold War—the moment in which personality, American political culture, public opinion, and high politics came together to define the Eisenhower ... More

This book confronts the coldest period of the Cold War—the moment in which personality, American political culture, public opinion, and high politics came together to define the Eisenhower administration's policy toward China. It convincingly portrays Dwight D. Eisenhower's private belief that close relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) were inevitable and that careful consideration of the PRC should constitute a critical part of American diplomacy. The book argues that the Eisenhower administration's hostile rhetoric and tough actions toward China obscure the president's actual views. Behind the scenes, Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, pursued a more nuanced approach, one better suited to China's specific challenges and the stabilization of the global community. It explores the contradictions between Eisenhower and his advisors' public and private positions. The most powerful chapter centers on Eisenhower's recognition that rigid trade prohibitions would undermine the global postwar economic recovery and push China into a closer relationship with the Soviet Union. Ultimately, the book finds that Eisenhower's strategic thinking on Europe and his fear of toxic, anticommunist domestic politics constrained his leadership, making a fundamental shift in U.S. policy toward China difficult if not impossible. Consequently, the president was unable to engage Congress and the public effectively on China, ultimately failing to realize his own high standards as a leader.Less

Chinese History and Culture: Seventeenth Century Through Twentieth Century

Ying-shih Yü

The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities, Ying-shih Yü is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary ... More

The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities, Ying-shih Yü is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary oeuvre to English-speaking readers. Spanning two thousand years of social, intellectual, and political change, the essays in these volumes investigate two central questions through all aspects of Chinese life: what core values sustained this ancient civilization through centuries of upheaval, and in what ways did these values survive in modern times?Less

Chinese History and Culture: Sixth Century B.C.E. to Seventeenth Century

Ying-shih Yü

The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities, Ying-shih Yü is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary ... More

The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities, Ying-shih Yü is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary oeuvre to English-speaking readers. Spanning two thousand years of social, intellectual, and political change, the essays in these volumes investigate two central questions through all aspects of Chinese life: what core values sustained this ancient civilization through centuries of upheaval, and in what ways did these values survive in modern times? From Yü Ying-shih’s perspective, the Dao, or the Way, constitutes the inner core of Chinese civilization. His work explores the unique dynamics between Chinese intellectuals’ discourse on the Dao, or moral principles for a symbolized ideal world order, and their criticism of contemporary reality throughout Chinese history. Volume 1 of Chinese History and Culture explores how the Dao was reformulated, expanded, defended, and preserved by Chinese intellectuals up to the seventeenth century, guiding them through history’s darkest turns. Essays incorporate the evolving conception of the soul and the afterlife in pre- and post-Buddhist China, the significance of eating practices and social etiquette, the move toward greater individualism, the rise of the Neo-Daoist movement, the spread of Confucian ethics, and the growth of merchant culture and capitalism. A true panorama of Chinese culture’s continuities and transition, Yü Ying-shih’s two-volume Chinese History and Culture gives readers of all backgrounds a unique education in the meaning of Chinese civilization.Less

Collateral Damage: Sino-Soviet Rivalry and the Termination of the Sino-Vietnamese Alliance

Nicholas Khoo

Although the Chinese and the Vietnamese were Cold War allies in wars against the French and the Americans, their alliance collapsed and they ultimately fought a war against each other in 1979. More ... More

Although the Chinese and the Vietnamese were Cold War allies in wars against the French and the Americans, their alliance collapsed and they ultimately fought a war against each other in 1979. More than thirty years later the fundamental cause of the alliance's termination remains contested among historians, international relations theorists, and Asian studies specialists. This book brings fresh perspective to this debate. Using Chinese-language materials released since the end of the Cold War, the book revises existing explanations for the termination of China's alliance with Vietnam, arguing that Vietnamese cooperation with China's Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, was the necessary and sufficient cause for the alliance's termination. The book finds alternative explanations to be less persuasive. These emphasize nonmaterial causes, such as ideology and culture, or reference issues within the Sino-Vietnamese relationship, such as land and border disputes, Vietnam's treatment of its ethnic Chinese minority, and Vietnam's attempt to establish a sphere of influence over Cambodia and Laos. The book also adds to the debate over the relevance of realist theory in interpreting China's international behavior during both the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. While others see China as a social state driven by nonmaterial processes, the book makes the case for viewing China as a quintessential neorealist state. From this perspective, the focus of neorealist theory on security threats from materially stronger powers explains China's foreign policy not only toward the Soviet Union but also in relation to its Vietnamese allies.Less

The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan

Adam Clulow

The Dutch East India Company was a hybrid organization combining the characteristics of both corporation and state that attempted to thrust itself aggressively into an Asian political order in which ... More

The Dutch East India Company was a hybrid organization combining the characteristics of both corporation and state that attempted to thrust itself aggressively into an Asian political order in which it possessed no obvious place and was transformed in the process. This book focuses on the company's clashes with Tokugawa, Japan, over diplomacy, violence, and sovereignty. In each encounter the Dutch were forced to retreat, compelled to abandon their claims to sovereign powers, and to refashion themselves again and again—from subjects of a fictive king to loyal vassals of the shogun, from aggressive pirates to meek merchants, and from insistent defenders of colonial sovereignty to legal subjects of the Tokugawa state. Within the confines of these conflicts, the terms of the relationship between the company and the shogun first took shape and were subsequently set into what would become their permanent form. The first book to treat the Dutch East India Company in Japan as something more than just a commercial organization, it presents new perspective on one of the most important, long-lasting relationships to develop between an Asian state and a European overseas enterprise.Less

A Coney Island Reader: Through Dizzy Gates of Illusion

Louis Parascandola

John Parascandola (ed.)

This anthology focuses on the unique history and experience of Coney Island, a beloved fixture of the New York City landscape. It features a gallery of portraits by the world's finest poets, ... More

This anthology focuses on the unique history and experience of Coney Island, a beloved fixture of the New York City landscape. It features a gallery of portraits by the world's finest poets, essayists, and fiction writers. These include Walt Whitman, Stephen Crane, José Martí, Maxim Gorky, Federico García Lorca, Isaac Bashevis Singer, E. E. Cummings, Djuna Barnes, Colson Whitehead, Robert Olen Butler, and Katie Roiphe. Moody, mystical and enchanting, Coney Island has thrilled newcomers and soothed native New Yorkers for decades. As complex as the city of which it is a part, it is famous for its fantasy entertainments, world-class boardwalk and large beach and, even today, provides a welcome respite from the city's dense neighborhoods, unrelenting traffic and sombre grid layout. Coney Island has long offered a kaleidoscopic panorama of people, places and events, creating, as Lawrence Ferlinghetti once wrote, “a Coney Island of the mind.” This anthology captures the highs and lows of the place, with works that picture it as a restful resort, a playground for the masses and a symbol of America's democratic spirit, as well as a Sodom by the sea, a garish display of capitalist excess and a paradigm of urban decay.Less

A Confiscated Memory: Wadi Salib and Haifa's Lost Heritage

Yfaat Weiss

This book tells the story of an Arab neighborhood in Haifa that later acquired iconic status in Israeli memory. In the summer of 1959, Jewish immigrants from Morocco rioted against local and national ... More

This book tells the story of an Arab neighborhood in Haifa that later acquired iconic status in Israeli memory. In the summer of 1959, Jewish immigrants from Morocco rioted against local and national Israeli authorities of European origin. The protests of Wadi Salib generated for the first time a kind of political awareness of an existing ethnic discrimination among Israeli Jews. However, before that, Wadi Salib existed as an impoverished Arab neighborhood. The war of 1948 displaced its residents, even though the presence of the absentees and the Arab name still linger. The book investigates the erasure of Wadi Salib’s Arab heritage and its emergence as an Israeli site of memory. At the core lies the concept of property, as the book merges the constraints of former Arab ownership with requirements and restrictions pertaining to urban development and the emergence of its entangled memory. Establishing an association between Wadi Salib’s Arab refugees and subsequent Moroccan evacuees, the book allegorizes the Israeli amnesia about both eventual stories—that of the former Arab inhabitants and that of the riots of 1959, occurring at different times but in one place. The book uncovers a complex, multilayered, and hidden history and offers uncommon perspective on the personal and political making of Israeli belonging.Less

Conflict, Conquest, and Conversion: Two Thousand Years of Christian Missions in the Middle East

Reeva Spector Simon and Eleanor Tejirian

This book surveys two thousand years of the Christian missionary enterprise in the Middle East within the context of the region's political evolution. Its broad, rich narrative follows Christian ... More

This book surveys two thousand years of the Christian missionary enterprise in the Middle East within the context of the region's political evolution. Its broad, rich narrative follows Christian missions as they interacted with imperial powers and as the momentum of religious change shifted from Christianity to Islam and back. It adds new dimensions to the history of the region and the nature of the relationship between the Middle East and the West. The book explains how historians and political scientists are increasingly recognizing the importance of integrating religion into political analysis, and uses long-neglected sources to advance this effort. It surveys Christian missions from the earliest days of Christianity to the present, paying particular attention to the role of Christian missions, both Protestant and Catholic, in shaping the political and economic imperialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It delineates the ongoing tensions between conversion and the focus on witness and “good works” within the missionary movement, and shows how these have contributed to the development and spread of nongovernmental organizations.Less

Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food

Jon Krampner

This book is a popular history of peanut butter, the all-American comfort food that is found in the pantries of at least seventy-five percent of American kitchens. The book shows that, to a ... More

This book is a popular history of peanut butter, the all-American comfort food that is found in the pantries of at least seventy-five percent of American kitchens. The book shows that, to a surprising extent, the story of peanut butter is the story of twentieth-century America. It details the wide variety of ways in which Americans enjoy peanut butter, shows just how much of the product is consumed each year and provides an explanation for why it is such a deeply ingrained staple of an American childhood. It draws on anecdotes and facts culled from interviews, research, travels in the peanut-growing regions of the South, personal stories and recipes. It covers the stories of Jif, Skippy, Peter Pan, the plight of black peanut farmers, the resurgence of natural or old-fashioned peanut butter, the reasons why Americans like peanut butter better than (almost) anyone else and the five ways in which today's product is different from the original. It also looks at the role of peanut butter in fighting Third World hunger and details the Salmonella outbreaks of 2007 and 2009, which threatened peanut butter's sacred place in the American cupboard.Less

Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court

Audrey. Truschke

Culture of Encounters documents the fascinating exchange between the Persian-speaking Islamic elite of the Mughal Empire and traditional Sanskrit scholars, which engendered a dynamic idea of Mughal ... More

Culture of Encounters documents the fascinating exchange between the Persian-speaking Islamic elite of the Mughal Empire and traditional Sanskrit scholars, which engendered a dynamic idea of Mughal rule essential to the empire’s survival. This history begins with the invitation of Brahman and Jain intellectuals to King Akbar’s court in the 1560s, then details the numerous Mughal-backed texts they and their Mughal interlocutors produced under emperors Akbar, Jahangir (1605–1627), and Shah Jahan (1628–1658). Many works, including Sanskrit epics and historical texts, were translated into Persian, elevating the political position of Brahmans and Jains and cultivating a voracious appetite for Indian writings throughout the Mughal world. The first book to read these Sanskrit and Persian works in tandem, Culture of Encounters recasts the Mughal Empire as a polyglot polity that collaborated with its Indian subjects to envision its sovereignty. The work also reframes the development of Brahman and Jain communities under Mughal rule, which coalesced around carefully selected, politically salient memories of imperial interaction. Along with its groundbreaking findings, Culture of Encounters certifies the critical role of the sociology of empire in building the Mughal polity, which came to irrevocably shape the literary and ruling cultures of early modern India.Less

DMZ Crossing: Performing Emotional Citizenship Along the Korean Border

Suk-Young Kim

This book focuses on a diverse selection of people who have crossed the border between North and South Korea and also assesses the citizenship they acquire based on emotional affiliation rather than ... More

This book focuses on a diverse selection of people who have crossed the border between North and South Korea and also assesses the citizenship they acquire based on emotional affiliation rather than constitutional delineation. It details how these individuals use their physical bodies and emotions as “optimal frontiers,” and shows how they resist the state's right to draw geopolitical borders and define their national identities. It highlights the fact that, although the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ) is one of the most heavily guarded places on earth, it also provides passage for thousands of defectors, spies, political emissaries, war prisoners, activists, tourists and others testing the limits of Korean division. The book draws on sources that range from North Korean documentary films, museum exhibitions, and theatre productions. It also uses protester perspectives and interviews with South Korean officials and activists. In this way, it recasts the history of Korean division and draws a nuanced portrait of the region's Cold War legacies. The book ultimately helps readers conceive of the DMZ as a dynamic summation of personalized experiences rather than as a fixed site of historical significance.Less

Drinking History: Fifteen Turning Points in the Making of American Beverages

Andrew Smith

This volume recounts the individuals, ingredients, corporations, controversies, and myriad events responsible for America’s diverse and complex beverage scene. It revisits the country’s major ... More

This volume recounts the individuals, ingredients, corporations, controversies, and myriad events responsible for America’s diverse and complex beverage scene. It revisits the country’s major historical moments and tracks the growth of the American beverage industry throughout the world. Americans have invented, adopted, modified, and commercialized tens of thousands of beverages—whether alcoholic or nonalcoholic, carbonated or caffeinated, warm or frozen, watery or thick, spicy or sweet. These include uncommon cocktails, varieties of coffee and milk, and such iconic creations as Welch’s Grape Juice, Coca-Cola, root beer, and Kool-Aid. Involved in their creation and promotion were entrepreneurs and environmentalists, bartenders and bottlers, politicians and lobbyists, organized and unorganized criminals, teetotalers and drunks, German and Italian immigrants, savvy advertisers and gullible consumers, prohibitionists and medical professionals, and everyday Americans in love with their brew. The book weaves a history full of surprising stories and explanations for such classic slogans as “taxation with and without representation;” “the lips that touch wine will never touch mine;” and “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” It reintroduces readers to Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the colorful John Chapman (Johnny Appleseed), and rediscovers America’s vast literary and cultural engagement with beverages and their relationship to politics, identity, and health.Less

The Emergence of Iranian Nationalism: Race and the Politics of Dislocation

Reza Zia-Ebrahimi

Reza Zia-Ebrahimi revisits the work of Fathʿali Akhundzadeh and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, two Qajar-era intellectuals who founded modern Iranian nationalism. In their efforts to make sense of a ... More

Reza Zia-Ebrahimi revisits the work of Fathʿali Akhundzadeh and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, two Qajar-era intellectuals who founded modern Iranian nationalism. In their efforts to make sense of a difficult historical situation, these thinkers advanced an appealing ideology Zia-Ebrahimi calls “dislocative nationalism,” in which pre-Islamic Iran is cast as a golden age, Islam is reinterpreted as an alien religion, and Arabs become implacable others. Dislodging Iran from its empirical reality and tying it to Europe and the Aryan race, this ideology remains the most politically potent form of identity in Iran. Akhundzadeh and Kermani’s nationalist reading of Iranian history has been drilled into the minds of Iranians since its adoption by the Pahlavi state in the early twentieth century. Spread through mass schooling, historical narratives, and official statements of support, their ideological perspective has come to define Iranian culture and domestic and foreign policy. Zia-Ebrahimi follows the development of dislocative nationalism through a range of cultural and historical materials, and he captures its incorporation of European ideas about Iranian history, the Aryan race, and a primordial nation. His work emphasizes the agency of Iranian intellectuals in translating European ideas for Iranian audiences, impressing Western conceptions of race onto Iranian identity.Less

Emperor Wu Zhao and Her Pantheon of Devis, Divinities, and Dynastic Mothers

Norman Rothschild

This book looks at the reign of Wu Zhao (624–705), better known as Wu Zetian or Empress Wu, the only woman to have ruled China over the course of its 5,000-year history. It asks how she rose to power ... More

This book looks at the reign of Wu Zhao (624–705), better known as Wu Zetian or Empress Wu, the only woman to have ruled China over the course of its 5,000-year history. It asks how she rose to power and why she was never overthrown. The book explores a mystery that has confounded scholars for centuries and suggests that Wu Zhao drew on China's rich pantheon of female divinities and eminent women to aid in her reign. The book explains that, although Wu Zhao could not obtain political authority through conventional channels, she could afford to ignore norms and traditions. It shows that she deployed language, symbols, and ideology to harness the cultural resonance, maternal force, divine energy, and historical weight of Buddhist devis, Confucian exemplars, Daoist immortals, and mythic goddesses, so establishing legitimacy within and beyond the confines of Confucian ideology. It describes how Wu Zhao tapped into deep, powerful, subterranean reservoirs of female power to build a pantheon of female divinities carefully calibrated to meet her needs at court. The book details how the Empress' pageant was promoted in scripted rhetoric, reinforced through poetry, celebrated in theatrical productions and inscribed on steles. It concludes that her strategy is a model of political brilliance and proof that medieval Chinese women enjoyed a more complex social status than previously known.Less

An Encouragement of Learning

Yukichi Fukuzawa

The intellectual and social theorist Yukichi Fukuzawa wrote An Encouragement of Learning (1872–1876) as a series of pamphlets while completing his critical masterpiece, An Outline of a Theory of ... More

The intellectual and social theorist Yukichi Fukuzawa wrote An Encouragement of Learning (1872–1876) as a series of pamphlets while completing his critical masterpiece, An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (1875). These closely linked texts illustrate the core tenets of his philosophical outlook: freedom and equality as inherent to human nature, independence as the goal of any individual and nation, and the transformation of the Japanese mind as key to advancing in a rapidly evolving political and cultural world. In these essays, Fukuzawa advocated for the adoption of Western modes of education to help the Japanese people build a modern nation. He also believed that human beings’ treatment of one another extended to and was reflected in their government’s behavior, echoing the work of John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and other Western thinkers in a classically structured Eastern text. This book translates the full text into English and includes a chronology of Japanese history as it relates to Fukuzawa and his work. An introduction provides additional background on the life and influence of this profound thinker, and a selection of representative writings and suggestions for further reading fully introduce readers to the rare brilliance of his thought.Less