Timothy Brook

"The Ming dynasty (1368-1644), a period of commercial expansion and cultural innovation, fashioned the relationship between the present-day state and society in China. In this unique collection of reworked and illustrated essays, one of the leading scholars of Chinese history re-examines this relationship and argues that, contrary to previous scholarship, which emphasized the heavy hand of the state, it was radical responses within society to changes in commercial relations and social networks that led to a stable but dynamic "constitution" during the Ming dynasty. This imaginative reconsideration of existing scholarship also includes two essays first published here and a substantial introduction, and will be fascinating reading for scholars and students interested in China's development."--Jacket.

"The Confusions of Pleasure marks a significant departure from the conventional ways in which Chinese history has been written. Rather than recounting the Ming dynasty in a series of political events and philosophical achievements, it narrates this longue duree in terms of the habits and strains of everyday life."--BOOK JACKET.

The Beijing Massacre was a watershed in the history of modern China. In the early hours of June 4, 1989, the People's Liberation Army forced its way into the center of Beijing. Its objective was to take control of Tiananmen Square, headquarters of the fledgling Democracy Movement, at all costs. Even the Chinese leaders may not have realized that the Army would carry out a massacre that would shred the legitimacy of the government in the eyes of its own people and of the world community. In Quelling the People, Timothy Brook offers the first detailed and objective reconstruction of the Army's actions during that night, as well as in the weeks leading up to the massacre. Brook goes behind the scenes, interviewing dozens of eyewitnesses, reviewing Chinese and foreign press reports, collecting unofficial hospital reports, and working from over a hundred student documents smuggled out of Beijing University. What he discovers is something very different from the official story. He demonstrates that the soldiers killed two to three thousand people as opposed to the reported hundreds. He finds that the soldiers, armed with combat weapons, were not trained to handle civilian opposition, and had no strategy except to open fire into crowds. In short, they should never have been used as riot troops. Given such poor resources, Brook asserts, the Chinese leaders should have sought a nonmilitary solution, for in deploying their incompetent troops, the government came close to provoking a civil war as the military units which had participated in the massacre squared off against each other. In addition, he looks into the Chinese government's extensive propaganda campaign - from videos edited to show that the Army was in the right, to books with the same storyline, to the celebration on National Day, an attempt to create the illusion of normalcy and unity. As Brook writes, "The Chinese government's sole hope is amnesia ... It asks that we succumb to its logic ... That what the soldiers did, they did in self-defense ... That nothing really happened. That nothing has changed." Filled with vivid, personal accounts of both participants and observers, Quelling the People not only sets the record straight as to what happened at Tiananmen Square, but it also provides a provocative story of the people who stood up to fight for democratic change, the soldiers who were sent against them, and the disregard for human rights that resulted in the tragic deaths of thousands.

In recent years, most of the economies of Eastern Asia have been absorbed into global capitalism. Capitalism has transformed these economies, but the process has not been one-way. The cultures of Eastern Asia have in turn shaped how capitalism organizes labor, capital, and markets, in ways that could not have been anticipated even ten years ago. On the basis of rich empirical analyses of East and Southeast Asia, and with theoretical insights from different approaches in the social sciences, Culture and Economy addresses these issues in both macroscopic and microscopic terms. These careful case studies suggest that it is inevitable that Eastern Asia will shape, even remake, capitalism into a system of production and consumption beyond its original definition.

Explores the history of China between the Mongol reunification of China in 1279 under the Yuan dynasty and the Manchu invasion four centuries later, explaining how climate changes profoundly affected the empire during this period.

"In one painting, a Dutch military Officer leans toward a laughing girl. In another, a woman at a window weighs pieces of silver. In a third, fruit spills from a porcelain bowl onto a Turkish carpet. Vermeer's images haunt us with their beauty and mystery--what stories lie behind these exquisitely rendered moments? As Timothy Brook shows us in Vermeer's Hat, these pictures, which seem so intimate, actually open doors onto a rapidly expanding world." "The dashing officer's hat is made of beaver fur, which European explorers got from Native Americans in exchange for weapons. Beaver pelts, in turn, financed the voyages of sailors seeking new routes to China. There--with silver mined in Peru--Europeans would purchase, by the thousands, the porcelains so often shown in Dutch paintings of this time." "Timothy Brook traces the rapidly growing web of trade that might bring a beaver pelt, a Turkish carpet, or a Chinese bowl to a sitting room in Delft. The wharves of Holland, wrote a French visitor, were "an inventory of the possible." Vermeer's Hat shows just how rich this inventory was, and how the urge to acquire such things was refashioning the world more thoroughly than anyone quite realized. It offers us a rich new understanding both of Vermeer's paintings and of the era they portray."--Publisher description.

Offers an understanding of Vermeer's paintings and of the era they portray.