Land wars : the story of China's agrarian revolution
- Responsibility
- Brian DeMare.
- Publication
- Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2019]
- Copyright notice
- ©2019
- Physical description
- xiii, 221 pages ; 23 cm
Description
Creators/Contributors
- Author/Creator
- DeMare, Brian James, author.
Contents/Summary
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Contents
-
- Introduction : the story of Mao's revolution
- Arriving : work teams
- Organizing : the search for bitterness
- Dividing : creating peasants and landlords
- Struggling : inside the furnace of revolution
- Turning : the promise of fanshen
- Conclusion : agrarian revolution in the rearview
- Appendix : major land laws and rural campaigns.
- Summary
-
Mao Zedong's land reform campaigns comprise a critical moment in modern Chinese history, and were crucial to the rise of the CCP. In Land Wars, Brian DeMare draws on new archival research to offer an updated and comprehensive history of this attempt to fundamentally transform the countryside. Across this vast terrain loyal Maoists dispersed, intending to categorize poor farmers into prescribed social classes, and instigate a revolution that would redistribute the land. To achieve socialist utopia, the Communists imposed and performed a harsh script of peasant liberation through fierce class struggle. While many accounts of the campaigns give false credence to this narrative, DeMare argues that the reality was much more complex and brutal than is commonly understood-while many villagers prospered, there were families torn apart and countless deaths. Uniquely weaving narrative and historical accounts, DeMare powerfully highlights the often devastating role of fiction in determining history. This corrective retelling ultimately sheds new light on the contemporary legacy of land reform, a legacy fraught with inequality and resentment, but also hope.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
Subjects
- Subject
- Mao, Zedong, 1893-1976 > Political and social views.
- Land reform > China > History > 20th century.
- Social conflict > China > History > 20th century.
- Collectivization of agriculture > China > History > 20th century.
- Communism and agriculture > China > History > 20th century.
- Propaganda, Communist > China > History > 20th century.
- China > Rural conditions > 20th century.
- China > History > Civil War, 1945-1949.
Bibliographic information
- Publication date
- 2019
- Copyright date
- 2019
- ISBN
- 9781503608498 hardcover
- 1503608492 hardcover
- 9781503609518 paperback
- 1503609510 paperback
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