China was afflicted by a brutal succession of conflicts through much
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet there has never been
clear understanding of how wartime suffering defined the nation and
shaped its people.
In Beyond Suffering, a distinguished group of historians of
modern China look beyond the geopolitical aspects of war to explore its
social, institutional, and cultural dimensions, from child rearing and
education to massacres and warlord mutinies. Though accounts of
war-inflicted suffering are often fragmented or politically motivated,
the authors show that they are crucial to understanding the multiple
fronts on which wars are fought, experienced, and remembered. The
chapters in Part 1, “Society at War,†reveal how war and
militarization can both structure and destabilize society, while those
in Part 2, “Institutional Engagement,†show how
institutions and the people they represent can become pawns in larger
power struggles. Lastly, Part 3, “Memory and
Representation,†examines the various media, monuments, and
social controls by which war has been memorialized. Â
Although many of the conflicts described in Beyond
Suffering barely registered against the sweeping backdrop of
Chinese history, such conflicts bring us closer to understanding war,
militarism, and suffering in modern China.