Introduction

Historians of the twentieth century tend to think of history – and more often than not write about it – in terms of important ‘turning-points’. They do so partly because it makes for a more interesting read. They are also impelled to because the modern era in particular is littered with dramatic moments. Upheavals like the Russian revolution, the Wall Street crash or Hitler's coming to power are not merely dramatic, but, more fundamentally, transitional events which quite literally turn the world upside down and alter our ways of thinking about it. By this simple measure, the Chinese revolution of 1949 clearly has to be viewed as one of the great historical turning-points of the epoch.

First, though the revolution gave birth to an era of chaos, it also brought to a conclusion one of the most unstable and bloody periods in China's history – one which had witnessed the collapse of an ancient imperial dynasty in 1911 and the subsequent disintegration of the country, followed in turn by revolution in the 1920s, intervention by Japan in the 1930s and, finally, China's insertion into a wider global war in 1941. Nor was this all. After having defeated his main rivals in the pro-Western Guomindang after a lengthy civil war, Mao not only ended the country's humiliating subordination to foreign powers but united China's vast territories under one single, sovereign authority.