新书：路康乐《華南地區的戰爭與革命：一個跨國混血家庭的故事（1936–1951）》

War and Revolution in South China：The Story of a Transnational Biracial Family, 1936–1951

作者：Edward J. M. Rhoads

出版社：香港大学出版社

出版时间：2021年11月

页数：220页

本书简介

In War and Revolution in South China, Edward Rhoads recounts his childhood and early teenage years during the Sino-Japanese War and the early postwar years. Rhoads came from a biracial family. His father was an American professor while his Chinese mother was a typist and stenographer. In the late 1930s and the 1940s, the Rhoads family lived through the turbulent years in southern China and Hong Kong. The book follows Rhoads’ childhood in Guangzhou, his family’s evacuation to Hong Kong, his father’s internment and repatriation to the United States, and his and his mother’s flight to Free China. He recalls his reunion with family members in northern Guangdong Province in 1943, their retreat to China’s wartime capital of Chongqing, where his father worked for the American government, and how they returned to Guangzhou after the war. The Rhoads family then witnessed the socioeconomic recovery in the city and the regime change in 1949. The book ends with their departure from China to the United States in 1951, a year and a half after the Communist revolution. The book fills an important gap in the scholarship by examining the impact of the Sino-Japanese War in southern China from the perspective of one family. Rhoads reveals that the war in this region, while often neglected by scholars, was in fact no less turbulent than it was in northern and central China. He combines autobiography with serious historical research to reconstruct the lives of his family, consulting a large number of archival documents, private correspondence, and scholarly literature to produce a rare study that is both scholarly and accessible.

作者简介

路康乐(Edward J.M.Rhoads)，美国德克萨斯大学历史系教授，生于中国广东岭南大学，并在那里度过童年时代，1970年在哈佛大学获博士学位。著有《中国的共和革命：广东个案，1895—1913》(China’s republican Revolution:the Case of Kwangtung,1895—1913》和书目文献索引《中国红军，1927—1963》(The Chinese Red Army,1927—1963》。因《满与汉》一书获2002年列文森中国研究著作奖。

推荐语

“This book is a very timely reminder that one should look at the experience of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Second World War from a regional perspective in order to understand the diverse historical experience of the people from different geographical, ethnic, cultural, and social backgrounds.”

 —Chi-man Kwong, Hong Kong Baptist University

“A pleasure to read and of compelling interest, Edward Rhoads’ book explores the more benign side of the foreign influence in modern China: the introduction of modern educational institutions. The intriguing lens through which we look is his biracial family, their multiple flights across southern China as refugees escaping war, and their eventual expulsion from China.” 

—Stephen Davies, The University of Hong Kong