Peter C. Perdue
Auteur van China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia
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Fotografie: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Algemene kennis
- Geboortedatum
- 1949-04-21
- Geslacht
- male
- Nationaliteit
- USA
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- #149,084
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- 4.0
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- 6
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The main subject of the book is the conquest of what's now Xinjiang by China's Qing dynasty, but Perdue throws his net very widely, including chapters on things like steppe ecology, the rise of Muscovy, and the (ab)uses of the conquest in 19C and 20C nationalist historiography. A problem here is that Perdue at times seems out of his depth when dealing with more peripheral matters.
Another problem is the confusing array of names for various subgroups of the Western Mongols that he throws at the reader without ever properly explaining how they relate to one another. Actually, after trying to make sense of it with the help of other sources I'm fairly sure that Perdue himself is confused at points.
Relatedly, Perdue expects a fair degree of background knowledge of his readers. If the intended audience, though, is fellow specialists, I might have expected more thorough citations - as it is, I found myself unable to track down a couple things I'd liked to learn more about.
That said, there's a lot of interest here, both in the form of concrete information about the conquest of Xinjiang, and in Perdue's suggestions about that conquest's wider historical impact; interest enough for me to finish a 725pp book and feel it was basically time well spent. One feels it could relatively easily have been even better, though.… (meer)