Reviews for Civilsation and Empire: East Asia's Encounter with the European International Society

The average rating for Civilsation and Empire: East Asia's Encounter with the European International Society based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-01-18 00:00:00 Brent Shepherd This is a fine book for anyone who wants to learn A LOT about how China and Japan struggled to deal with the incursion of the West into their societies in the mid-late 19th century. It is very well organized, thoughtful, and thorough in its analysis. Suzuki puts the history of these two countries into a very comprehensible theoretical framework. Ie, I learned a lot! Two provisos are in order. First, the language gets a bit stilted at times. Some of the sentences are overly long/complex. So one has to go back and re-read a sentence now and then to try to ensure one is really understanding what is intended. Perhaps this is because English is Suzuki's second language. Or perhaps it is because it is an 'academic, scholarly' as opposed to a 'popular' book. In either case, it could have benefited from some more active editing. Second, the thoroughness means it is probably better for a reader who is really interested in at least one if not both of these countries. I have a lifelong interest in Japan and have done a fair amount of reading about that era of its history. This made the detailed descriptions of all the political and diplomatic intrigues interesting rather than tedious to me. My general knowledge of the country's history and its culture made the book more readable than it might be for someone with less general knowledge. Knowing much less about China than Japan I had to work a little harder to grasp the chapters on the so called Middle Kingdom. Overall, it was worth the effort. I'd probably give it a 4.5, in fact. And look for other books written by Suzuki.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-10-29 00:00:00 Ryan Story Lecture pour mon cours d'anthropologie. Si le départ est un peu difficile c'est normal vu qu'elle pose les bases et explique les difficultés matérielles de son travail d'ethnographie, les attentes et mise en pratique (en gros sa rencontre avec le Bocage Poitevin). Mais la suite est vraiment intéressante j'ai trouvé ça bien écrit, on se plonge avec plaisir dans les scénarios d'agressions. Effectivement on prend bien conscience que pour comprendre la magie comme phénomène social il est difficile de ne pas « être pris ».