The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature and Institutions) - Hardcover

"In this absorbing, tour de force account of the cult of the Wall, Waldron propels the reader along a fascinating journey of the frontier of China anad into the factionalized inner circles of dynastic politics to capture the tension between the syncretic and conservative approaches to foreign policy....an exquisitely crafted chronicle of China's ironic approach of using 'walls' as a way of embracing the larger world." Asian Thought and Society "Waldron makes a valuable contribution to our historical understanding of China." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies "China's modern rulers have nurtured the popular myth that the Great Wall of China is a single, continuous barrier built in the third century B.C. and surviving to the present. Actually, as Princeton historian Waldron demonstrates in a landmark study, most of what we today call the Great Wall was built during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644)...one of the few books that change our basic assumptions about China." Publishers Weekly "This book has a wisdom, a patience, and a confidence about it that enrich Waldron's wonderful knack for writing history." History Book Club "Historical writing at its best, a brilliant and very readable account." The Asia Society "This should be the standard work for some time to come, and may be assigned to graduate students and senior history majors as a model of historical scholarship. Having also pubished interpretive essays on 'warlordism' and 'federalism, ' Waldron is rapidly building a reputation for taking fresh looks at concepts Chinese history specialists have taken for granted." Roger B. Jeans, The China Quarterly

This is the first full scholarly study of the Great Wall of China to appear in any language, and it challenges many deeply held ideas about Chinese history. Drawing both on primary sources and on the latest archaeology, the book first demonstrates that the standard account of the Great Wall is untrue and misleading and then presents a convincing new account. It begins by tracing the various walls and systems of frontier defences that existed in early Chinese history, and shows how the greatest of these achieved a mythical symbolic stature which long survived the Wall itself. A striking concluding chapter traces how the true history of the Wall was lost in the early twentieth century as it was gradually transformed into a Chinese national symbol explained through historical myth. The book is an important contribution to the history of China's defensive policy, and her ideological attitudes, and will be of interest both to students of Chinese history and of international relations in the pre-modern world.