This is one of my earliest and most valuable finds, an excellent resource for the study and/or reenactment of the period. The first several chapters detail city life, social classes, housing, cooking and personal grooming. The later chapters cover the broader subjects of life cycle (birth, marriage and death rituals), and the yearly cycle (festivals, religions observances). Detailed and well footnoted.

After searching for three years for a good detailed history of China, I came upon this book in a local bookshop and decided to buy it. However, what came as a disappointment later onwards was that the book does NOT follow a reign-by-reign chronology of the Chinese emperors and uses Wade-Giles transliteration.

Though westerners tend to focus on the culture and policies of dynasties, Chinese historians place equal emphasis on the reigns of emperors. Therefore, most history books in Chinese follow a chronological order of emperors, detailing events by reigning emperor instead of by dynasty (E.g. During Kangxi's reign, x, y, and z occurred; During Yongzheng's reign, m, n, and o occurred; During Qianlong's reign, c, d, and e occurred). However, from a Chinese point of view, "A History of Chinese Civilization" is "all over the place", covering the political policy, culture, achievements, and conquests of dynasties without systematically (and chronologically) naming the emperor reigning when events such as changes in policy, flowering of the arts, writing of a great literary work, conquests of foreign countries, etc. took place. In other words, the book does not pay enough attention to the emperors.

Also of note to Chinese readers is the book's usage of the Wade-Giles transliteration system (e.g. Teng Hsiao-P'ing= China's paramount leader from 1978 to 1989). According to the translator's preface, he was advised by Professor D.C. Twitchett to follow Wade-Giles. However, though some "European barbarians" may find Wade-Giles more understandable because of the English phonetic system, most Chinese will agree that Wade-Giles transliterations (developed by Europeans) are poor representations of Chinese words, which is why the Pinyin system (e.g. Deng Xiaoping= China's paramount leader from 1978 to 1989) was developed by native Chinese recently. Westerners should realise that although some Pinyin sounds are different from what the letters represent in English (e.g. xu is pronounced shü), correctly-pronounced Pinyin represents Chinese sounds exactly as they are. Wade-Giles transliterations, on the other hand, are pronounced in the English way- therefore hsu, which represents Chinese "shü", is pronounced "soo" by westerners, a sound which means something completely different in Chinese.

If you compare this book to its obvious competitors (e.g. Valerie Hansen's Open Empire, Schirokauer's Brief History of Chinese Civilization), you have to be amazed at the relatively low list price--especially considering that the publisher, Cambridge University Press, is not famous for selling cheap books. If you can buy only one textbook history of China, this one is worth considering for that reason alone.

Students tend to have the same complaints about Gernet's book year after year (I've used this book many times in an undergraduate survey of Chinese history): it is too long and confusing, without emphasizing what is "important" and what isn't. Other reviewers on this page have similar concerns: the book isn't organized emperor-by-emperor; rather, it tends to focus topically on themes that cover several emperors' reigns, sometimes whole centuries. But weigh that against the major criticism of the book by professional historians, who argue, on the contrary, that the book is arranged only too rigidly according to a periodization imposed from Western history (ancient, medieval, modern, etc.). There isn't enough space here to get involved in these theoretical issues, but it should be clear that Gernet is to be lauded, not derided, for his courage to depart from the old fashioned year-by-year, emperor-by-emperor approach.

This is especially evident in his section on the Six Dynasties (or Northern and Southern Dynasties), which is probably the best succinct account of the period in any Western language. Instead of tediously relating events and dates for this chaotic period, Gernet reveals the underlying socioeconomic forces that dictated the pattern of history in the north and south over the course of this long and complex period. (He happens to be one of the foremost economic historians of China, and is clearly in his element with this kind of historiography.) I believe readers come away with a richer understanding of the Six Dynasties because of Gernet's focus.

Finally, the complaints about Wade-Giles Romanization are unfair and uninformed. When this book first appeared, before the Library of Congress and other major libraries switched to Pinyin, virtually all Chinese books were catalogued according to Wade-Giles, so it made much more sense to write a textbook using that Romanization system than Pinyin. Today, of course, Pinyin would be preferable. But it's not the case that Pinyin is more precise. Both are acceptable Romanization schemes for Mandarin Chinese, and both--assuming one has mastered the principles--indicate the correct sounds efficiently and unambiguously. Criticizing a book about China on the basis of its Romanization system is a bit like judging a book by its cover.

This book gives better depth to Chinese history than Spence or Fairbank do. Spence is more concerned with the last 200 years, and Fairbank is too closely tied to the US foreign policy establishment for my tastes. The fact that Gernet is on page 462 of 655 before he starts writing about the Manchus is a good thing. He covers art and economics, politics and religion, with a refreshing equanimity. It would be interesting to hear how well written it is in French, but the English is fine. While clearly Western, Gernet's French persective is a welcome change of pace to these American's eyes.