Beyond Suffering

A multi-faceted exploration of war, suffering, memory, and the makingof modern China.

This collection moves beyond the geopolitical sphere to examine the multiple fronts – personal, social, and institutional – on which wars in modern China have been fought, experienced, and remembered.

China was afflicted by a brutal succession of conflicts through muchof the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet there has never beenclear understanding of how wartime suffering has defined the nation andshaped its people.

In Beyond Suffering, a distinguished group of historians ofmodern China look beyond the geopolitical aspects of war to explore itssocial, institutional, and cultural dimensions. The chapters in Part 1,“Society at War,” reveal how militarization and war canboth structure and destabilize society, while those in Part 2,“Institutional Engagement,” show how institutions and thepeople they represent can become pawns in larger power struggles.Lastly, Part 3, “Memory and Representation,” examines thevarious media, monuments, and social controls by which war has beenmemorialized. 

Based on fragmented accounts of poorly understood incidents,Beyond Suffering pieces together a fuller picture of themultiple fronts on which wars in modern China have been fought,experienced, and remembered.