CREATORS OF MODERN CHINA

'100 Lives from Empire to Republic 1796-1912' is the sub-title of this British Museum publication in association with the publisher Thames & Hudson. The political, social and cultural diversity of the late empire is reflected through the remarkable lives of rulers, statesman, soldiers, artists, writers, entertainers, craftspeople, reformers and revolutionaries. Portraits in many media, paintings and drawings of significant sites and events and emblematic objects evoke the visual material worlds of those featured. Through the telling of these lives, the book explores how China transformed from dynastic empire to modern republican nation during the period 1796 to 1912. Famous and surprisingly little-known men and women are brought together in eight thematic sections. Featured figures include the Dowager Empress Cixi, the power behind the throne of the Qing dynasty for 50 years; Yu Rongling, the aristocratic daughter of a Qing diplomat who trained in Paris with Isadora Duncan and is now seen as one of the founders of modern dance in China; Shi Yang, the most powerful woman pirate in the world, celebrated in popular culture as a female icon; the Manchu-Chinese Duanfang, a lynchpin of the late Qing government and an avid collector of international art, murdered by his own troops in the 1911 Revolution that ended dynastic rule; Luo Zhenyu, a pioneer of Chinese archaeology whose discoveries and research empirically confirmed the antiquity of Chinese civilization and many others including puppet and reforming emperors, opera stars, healers and mystics, an Islamic scholar, the British soldier 'Chinese' Gordon, a wartime artist, successful photographer, novelist and newspaperman, poet and travel writer, the wealthiest man in the world in the 1830s, a Shanghai publisher and campaigners, reformers, diplomats and philosophers, folklorists and scientists, a medical leader and missionary among them. History is made and made memorable by individuals, and through the biographies of 100 people, this volume aspires to show the diverse and innovative responses to the mid-century shift of international trade and change which historians have long identified as the May Fourth-New Culture era (c.1915-25) and the crucible of Chinese formation into a modern republican nation. Beautifully decorated with colour images on most pages plus archive photos and watercolours. 368 pages, 150 illustrations in a heavyweight and fascinating tome.