INTRODUCTION: THE OLD ORDER

In the course of 2,000 years the Chinese historical record accumulated so voluminously that bibliography early became a specialty. Historians of China, both Chinese and foreign, have constantly produced bibliographies in the effort to avoid drowning in the flood of historical literature. For the English-reading public the quickest starting point is in the bibliographies attached to survey texts written for the obviously intelligent but unfortunately ignorant beginner. Most recently available are the reading lists in Immanuel C. Y. Hsu, The rise of modern China, and Paul H. Clyde and Burton F. Beers, The Far East, a history of Western impacts and Eastern responses, 1830-1973. In one survey there is even a fifty-page essay on 650 books on China, mainly modern; see John K. Fairbank, The United States and China. For the present introductory chapter, the most recent background study, with selected bibliography, is Charles O. Hucker, China's imperial past: an introduction to Chinese history and culture.