The Story Of China: A portrait of a
civilisation and its people
Michael Wood
Simon and Schuster 2020
Introduction
Michael Wood is a historian with a well-deserved reputation
for telling the story of the past in a way that people can relate to. With his
Television series ‘In search of the Dark Ages’, ‘In search of the Trojan War’
and ‘In search of Alexander the Great’ he did for Television history what Brian
Cox has recently done for science; made it accessible and attracting new
audiences. He is arguably approaching National Treasure status, not that he
would thank any-one for describing him in that way.
But even he must have had doubts when he sat down to write a
one volume history of China, even though he had already made the TV series on
the subject. The Story of China
tells a tale on a bigger scale even than that of the career of Alexander the
Great, a story that itself that stretched from Macedonia to India. There is so
much material, much of it recently available as China has opened up and begun
to engage with its past again. Everything about China is on the Grand scale. To
begin with, the chronology; any meaningful study must encompass the span of
time from the Bronze Age to the present day. Secondly, geography; at various
times the borders of China have stretched from Tibet in the Southwest to
Manchuria in the North-East and from the Western deserts of the silk road to the
Coasts of the South China Sea. Within these borders are two of the world’s
mightiest rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow River. The history of China also
encompasses multiple ethnicities and languages and as if that wasn’t complex
enough, has been influenced by many of the major religions of the world,
including Daoism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity and the Philosophy of Confucius
and Mencius (and various strands of communism, which despite being ostensibly
anti-religion, shares many of religions characteristics).
Across this vast expanse of time, space and culture the
stories of a bewildering cast of characters have played out, exemplars of the
great populations who have occupied this land. The task that the author set
himself was to make a coherent narrative out of this. In this review, I will explore
how he set about telling this epic tale as well as evaluating the book.
Basic structure
To begin with, by contrast with the books of his earlier
series, this is a fully integrated history .The books that accompanied those
series were very much adjuncts to the programmes, with chapters mirroring each
episode and layouts that relied heavily on images; photographs, maps, diagrams.
This book has a narrative flow which at
times almost reads like a novel, with a clear storyline. Wood’s narrative runs
through the tapestry of China’s history like a golden thread, interwoven with
many other stories (that of the Mongols, for instance) but always clearly
visible.
Any historian has to make choices. What to include, what to
leave out, where to start and finish, who are the heroes and who the villains,
are just a few of the dilemmas to wrestle with. In making those choices, the
historian must be aware of their own prejudices, either endeavouring to
suppress them or being honest about them. They also have to be aware of
possible prejudices in the readership; they can either re-inforce these or
endeavour to dispel them. When it comes to China this is a particular issue.
For young adults today, China is a superpower; perhaps indeed the coming
superpower. For older people, China can have different connotations. When they
were coming of age China was often portrayed as the home of a particularly
virulent (or pure, depending on your viewpoint) strand of communism, or worse,
a backward country that the world had left behind.
So the author’s choices clearly affect the nature of a book
as it is written. Which choices are visible in this book? The clearest is that
the author has chosen to follow a linear time structure in constructing his
narrative. This might seem a statement of the obvious but there were other
possibilities open to the author. He could have looked at each region of the
country in turn, or looked at China through the prism of each of the major
religions. A writer could approach the subject through the medium of the
inventions China gave to the world. The
Story of China mainly travels from the Bronze Age and to the present day. The
only exception to this is the opening mis en scene, which describes the ceremonial
trappings of Empire at the very moment they ceased to have meaning (1899). This
traditional narrative approach has many advantages. It brings to the fore the
storytelling aspect and creates a strong sense of the story developing over
time. In telling such a long story of course, there is a danger of the reader
losing their way. The author is aware of this and has some tools at his
disposal to aid his readers. These tools provide signposts to guide the reader
on their journey and illustrate his choices over what he feels is important to include.
Dynasties
The most important signposts are the Dynasties. Like England
with its Plantagenets, Tudors and Stuarts, China was ruled at different times
by various ruling clans. Shang, Zhou,Tang , Song, Ming; each had their turn in
the limelight. In between there were often periods of flux, or as the Chinese
themselves put it, chaos, where the unity of the state was lost. These
divisions are of course to some extent artificial; England did not change
overnight just because James of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth. In China’s case,
these dynastic changes were often significant and so they are useful markers.
Also, as you read about the rise and fall of each dynasty, you begin to
appreciate the recurring patterns; environmental catastrophe, periodic rises in
inequality, the constant push/pull of centralism and regionalism, how the
practical actions are underpinned by philosophical beliefs. These all hint at
continuity, despite the initial impression of change.
There is a danger
that a history written in this way can become merely a series of dates.
Although due weight is given to both the founding and the fall of each dynasty,
the author does so much more. He presents portraits of the society ruled by
each dynasty, touching on commerce, intellectual atmosphere and technological
innovation, as well as carefully chosen vignettes of individuals and families that
bring each period to life. For instance, when discussing the first Emperor (he
of the terracotta army) we the readers are shown correspondence between rank
and file soldiers and their families back home, asking for money and clothes
and enquiring about the welfare of family members.
References
to the wider world
Possibly aware that many readers will be relatively unaware
of the chronology of Chinese history, the author makes frequent comparative references
to what was happening elsewhere in the world. We hear that the Shang Emperors
were the contemporaries of Bronze Age Mycenae, that the Byzantines were aware
of the Tang Emperor Taizong and that he came to power on the eve of the Arab
Conquests in the Middle East. These
little asides help the reader to anchor the story with their existing
knowledge. This becomes more important in more recent history, when events in
the wider world began to impinge on China.
Capital
Cities
In the UK, London, once it gained capital status at the
expense of Winchester, has never lost it. In China no less than five major
cities were at one time the capital of the Empire. This rotation is explained
by, and helps to explain, the changes in the country at large; for instance the
change in the centre of gravity in the country from North to South and then
back to North again. The author shows us each city at its height of influence,
shedding light on the bigger picture in the process, for instance how some were
fortified centres of administration and others were hubs of commercial activity
or centres of intellectual ferment. Again and again, the descriptions of these
capital cities make the point that they were bigger, more populous and home to
more advanced societies, than anything Europe had to offer at the corresponding
period.
Local
examples of national trends
In writing this book Michael Wood has also drawn on devices
used his previous writings. In 1986 his book Domesday approached the 900th
anniversary of the creation of the Domesday Book by William the Conqueror
partly through the lens of looking at individual villages. In this book he
incorporates ‘the view from the village’ into every chapter, which allows him
to tell the story through the words of individuals who explain how the national
events impacted on them and their families. This brings the history alive and
personalises it, which is especially important where the epic scale of the
story deals in groups of people numbered in the millions. He sometimes revisits
places during different epochs, showing us the continuity of places and
families over time.
Poetry
Another, perhaps slightly surprising element in this book is
its use of poetry as a reference, including the poetry of women. A moments
thought will remind us of the usefulness of this; very few books about World
War One do not reference the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon or Wilfred Owen. In using
this the author is reminding us that to be a refugee when the Song dynasty
fell, or a woman trying to protect her children when the Manchu invasion
overran the Ming, was no less traumatic or worthy of remembrance than anything
that happened in twentieth century Europe.
Beyond this though, the poetry of China is a treasure trove
of human experience given shape and form by those with a mastery of words and
handed down to those who came after. China is as much those poems as it is a
list of Dynasties, or inventions, or religious ideas.
Using the tools listed above to give structure to his story,
the Author has written a book that is not only informative but intensely based
on human experience. The dates and the individual Emperors and conquerors are important,
but they are not the whole story. The life of a city, the fate of a family, the
words of a poet, all these shed an illuminating light on the tapestry.
Does this book do what it sets out
to?
As I hope I have made clear, the history of China is a vast
repository of knowledge. To attempt a synthesis like this is to accept that
this book amounts to an introduction; one might almost say a teaser. For those
already interested in History, some chapters will appeal more than others. As
an aficionado of the Dark Ages, I was particularly taken with the chapter on
the Tang Dynasty, rulers of China in that period, which put the events in
England into a perspective that leaves them looking like squabbles that might get a paragraph in the
local paper but scarcely register on a wider level. Those with an interest in
the fine arts may be more enthralled by the Ming or the Qing.
As an overview, an
introduction to those who come to it not knowing whether the Zhou or the Ming
come first in time, it succeeds admirably. Michael Wood tells a clear story
whilst exploring many byways and differing ideas. The book leaves the reader
feeling they know enough facts to answer a test whilst also being more equipped
to be empathetic to the country and its people.
To my mind, it fulfils a need we have in this country to
know more about the country that is going to be the dominant power as this
century plays out. As mentioned earlier, the view of English people over, say,
fifty years of age is all too often the one held by people in this country
since the early nineteenth century, that China allowed itself to be overtaken
by the Europeans because they were superior and China was backward. As a child,
my reading material all too often offered Chinese people as villains, drug
addicts and coolies, with a side order of magic and trickery.
It takes a historian like Mr Wood to show us that, viewed
through the prism of the Chinese experience, the last couple of hundred years
are a passing phase, one of those periods of disruption and chaos between the
times of order and harmony. I am of the view that we need to see the country as
it is; a country with a fifth of the world’s population, the third biggest land
mass of any country, and a culture with a long history of technological and
artistic achievement. The rise of Donald Trump to my mind was fuelled by the
anger of those who became obscurely aware that America’s time as top dog was
coming to an end and didn’t know what to do about it.
There are things about modern China that deserve criticism.
The current treatment of the Uighurs, the crackdown in Hong Kong, the
suppression of dissent, are all legitimate subjects for comment by the West.
But when you read about the Opium wars, the forcible opening up of China to
Western trade at the barrel of a gun, our right act as moral arbiters in
relation to China begins to look more than a bit suspect. Michael Wood treats
the recent history of China with tact and sympathy, not shying away from the
disastrous consequences of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution,
but trying to understand how they fit into the historical pattern he has woven.
China is a nation whose time has come and the challenge for
the West will be to realise this. As a result, The Story of China is a book whose time has come; I hope as many
people as possible read it. But I also hope it inspires them to read more, to
delve into the poetry and the literature, the philosophy and the religion and
the folk tales of this rich and complex culture. In so doing the reader will
enlarge their own view of the world and make sense of the present.
I am reluctant to call this Michael Wood’s Magnum Opus,
since that would imply that he has peaked, there is, I’m sure, more to come
from him. But it certainly feels like the culmination of his writing to date,
retaining his enthusiasm for his subject and ability to bring the past to life
whilst exploring deeper issues of philosophy and society. He also deserves
credit for attempting to remedy the tendency for the historical record to make
the stories of women invisible. Here you will find women given a voice, not
simply as adjuncts to men but as actors in their own lives. I am therefore happy to bestow on it the
Mandate of Heaven and give it five capitals!
Afterthoughts and Caveats
There is very little about this book I would wish to
criticise. I was perhaps slightly disappointed he did not reference one of the
off-beat historical theories that appeals to me; namely that China’s stagnation
under the Qing can be partly explained by the fact of the Wests commercial
success being fuelled by the stimulant of coffee whilst the Chinese remained
wedded to tea. I’m being facetious, but remember that Lloyds of London began
life as a Coffee House!
I would have also liked to see one or two more maps;
especially since Geography is so important in this story. However, I had a
remedy to hand in The Times Complete History
of the World, which contains excellent two page spreads covering each of
the main epochs of Chinese History, to which I frequently referred whilst
reading. Finally, although technically it was not part of the remit he set
himself, some commentary on the influence in the world of the Chinese Diaspora,
including the community in this country, would have been interesting. That is a
book that also needs writing if some-one has not already tackled that subject.
I have also published a table listing the Dynasties with approximate dates and Global contemporaries:
https://curiousmiscellanies.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-dynasties-of-china-explanatory.html
