Professor of History Paul Jakov Smith Publishes Major Work of Chinese History
Just out from Cambridge University Press is the Cambridge History of China. Vol. 5 Part 1, co-edited by Professor of History Paul Jakov Smith. The new volume, subtitled The Sung Dynasty and its Precursors, 907 – 1279 , takes its place among 13 previously published volumes in what is considered the largest and most comprehensive history of China in the English language.
The series, which will comprise 15 volumes when it is completed, covers Chinese history from the 3rd century BC, to the death of Mao Tse-tung. Written not only for students and scholars but also with general readers in mind, the series was first planned in the 1960s by the late China scholars John K. Fairbank of Harvard and Denis Twitchett, of Princeton. Publication began in 1979. Smith joined Twitchett as co-editor of the Sung Dynasty volume, in 2000 and assumed primary responsibilities for bringing it to completion after Twitchett's death in 2006.
Ten authors contributed to the 1100-page volume, for which Smith provided the introduction and a chapter on the political and institutional reforms of the late-eleventh century.“It has been exhilarating to experience these four centuries through the eyes of my co-authors,” says Smith.“And it has been a unique privilege to do so as a colleague of the late Denis Twitchett, one of giants of the field.” This is the first volume in English to cover the political history of China from the tenth through the late-thirteenth centuries, an era of dramatic transformations when the outlines of modern China first began to form. It was during this era, says Smith, that a vibrant print culture, an examination-based elite, and Neo-Confucian ideology first came to the fore. “By the time the Sung Dynasty finally succumbed to the Mongols in 1279,” Smith says.“China was, according to Marco Polo, the richest and most advanced culture of its day.”
