Lui, The Silk Road In World History And Ropp, China In World History

Abstract

     The Silk Road in World History and China in World History are offerings in the New Oxford World History series. Among other objectives, the series aims to describe the lives of ordinary people. Readers will welcome the attention to commoners. Xinru Liu, author of The Silk Road in World History, uses letters from soldiers to good effect in revealing details of daily life. Liu also uses the contents of tombs to further inquiry into the lives of commoners. Admittedly this is no easy task because evidence from graves tilts portions of this book toward the elites, who had more elaborate tombs than did ordinary people. Paul Ropp, author of China in World History, likewise included information about commoners, though this is not the primary aim of his book. The brevity of the narrative might have led Ropp to emphasize political and military matters at the expense of an analysis of daily life. The peasants, the backbone of Chinese civilization, are absent from much of the text. Ropp conveys the desperate poverty of the peasants in the dynastic eras, but the reader learns little about rural life. The transfer of several cultivated plants to China during the Columbian Exchange merits brief treatment, but the reader does not learn how corn, potatoes, peanuts, and the other American crops affected the lives of farmers. In this context, Ropp is right to note that these new crops fueled an increase in population. In his treatment of ordinary people, Ropp is particularly successful in examining the lives of women. He does well to balance treatment of elite women with that of ordinary women. The rise and fall of foot binding receives skillful treatment. Ropp describes the expectation of men that virtuous women be chaste. He notes that during the Ming dynasty the government compensated families of women who committed suicide after the husband's death or who remained celibate thereafter. He calls attention to the movement to end widow suicide and arranged marriages and to promote the education of women.