Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 1 de out. de 2010 - 448 páginas Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine that recasts the era of Mao Zedong and the history of the People's Republic of China. "Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up to and overtake Britain in less than 15 years The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives." So opens Frank Dikötter's riveting, magnificently detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented because access to Communist Party archives has long been restricted to all but the most trusted historians. A new archive law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that "fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era." Dikötter makes clear, as nobody has before, that far from being the program that would lift the country among the world's superpowers and prove the power of Communism, as Mao imagined, the Great Leap Forward transformed the country in the other direction. It became the site not only of "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history,"--at least 45 million people were worked, starved, or beaten to death--but also of "the greatest demolition of real estate in human history," as up to one-third of all housing was turned into rubble). The experiment was a catastrophe for the natural world as well, as the land was savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. In a powerful mesghing of exhaustive research in Chinese archives and narrative drive, Dikötter for the first time links up what happened in the corridors of power-the vicious backstabbing and bullying tactics that took place among party leaders-with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. His magisterial account recasts the history of the People's Republic of China. |
Conteúdo
3 | |
10 | |
15 | |
Bugle Call | 25 |
Launching Sputniks | 34 |
Let the Shelling Begin | 43 |
The Peoples Communes | 47 |
Steel Fever | 56 |
Wheeling and Dealing | 197 |
On the Sly | 208 |
Dear Chairman Mao | 215 |
Robbers and Rebels | 224 |
Exodus | 230 |
The Vulnerable | 243 |
Children | 245 |
Women | 255 |
Through the Valley of Death | 65 |
Warning Signs | 67 |
Shopping Spree | 73 |
Dizzy with Success | 84 |
The End of Truth | 90 |
Repression | 100 |
The SinoSoviet Rift | 104 |
Capitalist Grain | 108 |
Finding a Way Out | 116 |
Destruction | 125 |
Agriculture | 127 |
Industry | 145 |
Trade | 155 |
Housing | 163 |
Nature | 174 |
Survival | 189 |
Feasting through Famine | 191 |
The Elderly | 263 |
Ways of Dying | 267 |
Accidents | 269 |
Disease | 274 |
The Gulag | 287 |
Violence | 292 |
Sites of Horror | 306 |
Cannibalism | 320 |
The Final Tally | 324 |
Epilogue | 335 |
Acknowledgements | 339 |
An Essay on the Sources | 341 |
Select Bibliography | 349 |
Notes | 363 |
405 | |
Outras edições - Ver todos
Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe ... Frank Dikötter Prévia não disponível - 2011 |
Termos e frases comuns
amount appeared archives Beijing building Bureau cadres campaign canteen capital carried cent Chairman China close collective collectivisation communes communist cost countryside crop death died economic entire export factory famine farmers fields figures forced foreign Gansu given grain Guangdong half handed Hebei houses Hubei Hunan hundreds hunger imports increased industrial instance July June Khrushchev labour later leaders Leap Forward leaving living managed Mao’s March mass meeting million Ministry months Moscow Nanjing official party people’s political population procurements production projects province Qinghai region River Security sent Sept Shanghai showed Sichuan sometimes Soviet Union started statistics steel taken third thousands tion tonnes took trade turned United villagers women workers yuan Yunnan Zhang Zhou Enlai