Patterns of East Asian History marks the third volume in Oxford University Press’s highly
successful Patterns series, which currently includes Patterns of World History in its third
edition and Patterns of Modern Chinese History. These offerings are college-level introductory
texts whose purpose is to provide beginning students with an entree into complex fields of history
with which American students have generally had little or no exposure. The approach of all the
volumes revolves around the idea of using recognizable and widely accepted patterns of historical
development as a loose framework around which to structure the material both as an organizational
aid to the instructor and as a tool to make complex material more comprehensible to the student.
As we have stressed in previous volumes in the series, this approach is not intended to be
reductionist or deterministic, or to privilege a particular ideological perspective, but rather to
enhance pedagogical flexibility while providing a subtly recursive format that allows abundant
opportunities for contrast and comparison among and within the societies under consideration. As
with the other volumes in the series, the overall aim is to simplify the immense complexities of
history for the beginning student without making them simplistic.
All the historical fields covered in these volumes (world history, Chinese history, East Asian
history) now face lively internal debates concerning various topics, and one of the goals of the
series is to introduce students to these discussions in order to stress the idea that historians are not
monolithic in their ideas or approaches, but more often than not disagree with each other,
sometimes vigorously. Thus, all the books employ certain pedagogical features designed to
enhance the sense that “the past,” as William Faulkner put it so memorably, “is not dead; it isn’t
even past.” Chapters begin with a vignette designed to crystallize a particular situation or idea
emphasized within that chapter or section and include a feature, “Patterns Up-Close,” designed to
examine a particular concept or event at a deeper level to enhance the material in question.
Because chapters 9 and 10 constitute essentially one long chapter on China from 1895 to the
present, the vignette for both chapters opens Chapter 9 and the Patterns Up-Close feature for both
is in Chapter 10.