A History of Modern China. By Kenneth Scott Latourette. (Pelican
Books. 2s. 6d.)
Tins is the first of a series of national histories, which together will form a history of the modern world. The author devotes a chapter each to China's geography, pre:. revolutionary history from the earliest times, sand culture (`Superior and alone Confucius stood, Who taught that useful science, to be good') before coming to rips with the nineteenth and twentieth fEenturies. The facts are clearly and temperately presented, but some of the explanptions—notably of
ttie st: tion under the Ming and Manchu a. sta.s. .ight well' has e been taken
further. Individually the Chinese seem highly adaptable people; the petrifaction which underlay the brilliance that confronted the earlier European visitors might have beert worth a few more pages of examination. There is also an element of confusion in the author's treatment of the Communist revolution. Sometimes he represents it as a phase in a preconceived Chinese destiny, basically similar to those periods of reform and regeneration that in the past have repeatedly followed a change in the Mandate of Heaven; sometimes as something far more radical, a complete break with the specifically Chinese past. On the whole, however, this is a handy, readable and informative little book.
M. C.
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