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| Mao’s Last Revolution
ISBN: 9780674040410
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Harvard University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: China -- History -- Cultural Revolution 1966–1976;
Given the hostile biographies and debunking histories that have recently appeared, it?s safe to say that Mao?s long honeymoon is over. In this exhaustive critique, MacFarquhar (director of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard) and Schoenhals (lecturer on modern Chinese society at Sweden?s Lund University) cover the terrifying Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976, when Mao unleashed the Red Guards on his people. As the unceasing, pointless intrigues between Mao and his chief henchmen unfolded, the violence and denunciations, the staged humiliations and mass executions raged remorselessly out of control, and the country lurched into turmoil. Even today, no one knows the final death count of the Mao cult. In rural China alone, according to a conservative estimate, 36 million people were persecuted, of whom between 750,000 and 1.5 million were murdered, with roughly the same number permanently injured. In the end, the authors, ironically, take comfort from one of the chairman?s favorite sayings: "Out of bad things can come good things." For out of that dreadful decade, the authors conclude, "has emerged a saner, more prosperous, and perhaps one day a democratic China." 57 b&w photos. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Roderick Lemonde MacFarquhar was born in Lahore, India on December 2, 1930. He graduated with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Keble College, Oxford University, in 1953. He briefly worked at The Telegraph of London before receiving a master's degree in East Asian studies from Harvard University. In 1960, he founded The China Quarterly, an academic journal on Chinese politics and economics published by the University of Cambridge. He was elected to Parliament in Britain as a Labour candidate in 1974 and served for five years. He went on to teach history and political science at Harvard. He was the director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard from 1986 to 1992, and again from 2005 to 2006. He wrote several books including The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. He died from heart failure on February 10, 2019 at the age of 88. (Bowker Author Biography) |
