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Book synopsis

In "Lost Modernities", Alexander Woodside offers a probing revisionist overview of the bureaucratic politics of pre-industrial China, Vietnam and Korea. He focuses on the political and administrative theory of the three mandarinates and their long experimentation with governments recruited in part through meritocratic civil service examinations remarkable for their transparent procedures. The quest for merit-based bureaucracy stemmed from the idea that good politics could be established through the 'development of people' - the training of people to be politically useful. Centuries before civil service examinations emerged in the Western world, these three Asian countries were basing bureaucratic advancement on examinations in addition to patronage. But, the evolution of the mandarinates cannot be accommodated by our usual timetables of what is 'modern'. The history of China, Vietnam and Korea suggests that the rationalisation processes we think of as modern may occur independently of one another and separate from such landmarks as the growth of capitalism or the industrial revolution. A sophisticated examination of Asian political traditions, both their achievements and the associated risks, this book removes modernity from a standard Eurocentric understanding and offers a unique new perspective on the trans-national nature of Asian history and on global historical time.

Book details

Book category Books in English Humanities History Regional & national history

• Full title: Lost Modernities
• Subtitle: China, Vietnam, Korea, and the Hazards of World History
• Author: Alexander Woodside
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardback
• Number of pages: 160
• EAN: 9780674022171
• ISBN: 0674022173
• ID: 04634880
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Weight: 394 g
• Dimensions: 235 × 156 × 22 mm
• Date of publishing: 07. January 2021

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