Modern China
Historians agree that the fall of the Qing dynasty demarcated the modern era in Chinese history. Scholars, however, are studying the reasons for that fall in the previous 130 years. Keith Schoppa, the editor of The Columbia Guide to Modern Chinese History argues, "A date around 1780 as the beginning of modern China is thus closer to what we know today as historical 'reality."' It also allows us to have a better baseline to understand the precipitous decline of the Chinese polity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."
Read more about this topic: Mid-Imperial China
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or china:
“So gladly, from the songs of modern speech
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers,
And through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.”
—Andrew Lang (1844–1912)
“It all ended with the circuslike whump of a monstrous box on the ear with which I knocked down the traitress who rolled up in a ball where she had collapsed, her eyes glistening at me through her spread fingers—all in all quite flattered, I think. Automatically, I searched for something to throw at her, saw the china sugar bowl I had given her for Easter, took the thing under my arm and went out, slamming the door.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)