Salt of the Earth
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€51.99
A01=Ralph A. Thaxton
activism
Asian history
Author_Ralph A. Thaxton
Category=JPF
Category=NHF
China
communism
communists
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
history
Marxism
political culture
political history
political ideologies
political science
political studies of particular countries and areas
power
protest
revolution
Product details
- ISBN 9780520306776
- Weight: 635g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 29 Apr 2022
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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On October 1, 1949, a rural-based insurgency demolished the Nationalist government of Chiang-kai Shek and brought the Chinese Communists to national power. How did the Chinese Communists gain their mandate to rule the countryside? In this pathbreaking study, Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr., provides a fresh and strikingly original interpretation of the political and economic origins of the October revolution. Salt of the Earth is based on direct interviews with the village people whose individual and collective protest activities helped shape the nature and course of the Chinese revolution in the deep countryside. Focusing on the Party's relationship with locally esteemed non-Communist leaders, the author shows that the Party's role is best understood in terms of its intimate connections with local collective activism and with existing modes of local protest, both of which were the product of rural people acting on their own grievances, interests, and goals. The author's collection and use of oral histories—from the last remaining eyewitnesses—and written corroborative materials is a remarkable achievement; his new interpretation of why China's rural people supported and joined the Communists in their quest for state power is dramatically different from what has come before. This book will stimulate debates on the genesis of popular mobilization and the growth of insurgency for decades to come. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997.
Ralph A. Thaxton, Jr. is Professor of Politics at Brandeis University and author of China Turned Rightside Up: Revolutionary Legitimacy in the Peasant World.
