The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution

by Harold Isaacs

Overview

The story of contemporary China typically dates back to Mao’s 1949 revolution. But in this classic work, Harold R. Isaacs uncovers how workers and peasants struggled for a different kind of revolution, one built from the bottom up, in the 1920s. The defeat of their heroic efforts profoundly shaped the further course of modern Chinese history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781931859844
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	05/01/2010
Pages:	550
Sales rank:	678,733
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Harold Isaacs was a writer and long-time student of Chinese affairs. The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, his first book, was based largely on long-hidden original historical documents and has been recognized for many years as preserving the historical truth that would otherwise have been erased by the revolution’s betrayers. Isaacs’ loyalty was not to a party or ideology, but to the "martyrs" of the 1925-1927 revolution to whom he dedicated his work and to the millions who fought for a more just and humane Chinese society.

Table of Contents

Foreword Arnold Isaacs vii

Introduction Leon Trotsky xi

1 Seeds of Revolt 1

2 Problems of the Chinese Revolution 19

3 The New Awakening 40

4 Canton: To Whom the Power? 60

5 Canton: The Coup of March 20, 1926 75

6 From Canton to the Yangtze 94

7 The Shanghai Insurrection 110

8 The Prodigal Returns 120

9 Conspiracy of Silence 132

10 The Coup of April 12 150

11 Wuhan: "The Revolutionary Center" 160

12 The "Revolutionary Center" at Work 174

13 The Struggle for the Land 193

14 Moscow and Wuhan 212

15 The Wuhan Debacle 227

16 The Autumn Harvest 246

17 The Canton Commune 261

18 Fruits of Defeat 280

19 The Rise and Fall of "Soviet China" 294

20 The New "National United Front" 316

Notes 340

Index

Editorial Reviews

This is an excellent narrative: it is clear, exciting, and well-balanced in evidence and interpretation. Isaacs provides a detailed yet highly digestible account of the 1925-27 revolution, its roots, and its consequences. The book... successfully counters the tendency for the 1949 divide to ‘flatten[s] the jagged course of history into an uninformative curve that hides from us too much of the meaning of both past and present.’” 
—Sigrid Schmalzer, Assistant Professor of History University of Massachusetts, Amherst

From the Publisher