An Empress to be Remembered: A Review of Empress Dowager Cixi by Jung Chang

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The economic and political rise of China since the late 1970s has been one of the key historic trends of the last several decades. What is interesting though about China’s rise is that this is not the first time China has recovered from disastrous economic and political management to become a powerhouse in international affairs. In the middle of the 19th century, China had been humiliated in a war with foreign powers, but new leadership arose to lead China out of the middle ages and into the modern era. This wonderful biography is about the most important figure responsible for China’s first move towards modernity, the Empress Dowager Cixi, and why she should be considered in the same league as other great women world leaders like Elizabeth I of England or Catherine the Great of Russia.

Cixi was one of Emperor Xianfeng’s numerous concubines, but she possessed a keen intellect and an open-mindedness that far outpaced anyone leading China at the time.  When she gives birth to the Emperor’s only legitimate male heirs, she is thrust from back of the Emperor’s harem into the forefront of the court’s favored women.  When the First Opium War and the subsequent death of the Emperor soon afterwards leads to her young child becoming the next emperor, Cixi seizes her chance to launch a palace coup, removing from power the arch conservatives who had so disastrously run the empire, and begins a near five decade rule over China that sees the modernization of the country’s economy, military, and politics.  Though there were stumbles along the way, by the time of Cixi’s untimely death in 1908, China is on the verge of becoming a constitutional monarchy with limited civil liberties and voting rights for the average Chinese citizen.  Sadly, she did not live long enough to fully implement these political reforms and that failure would lead to the political turmoil that would engulf China for the next several decades.

The Empress Dowager could not have found a better modern biographer to tell her story.  Ms. Chang has used scores of archives from China, Japan, and elsewhere to not only tell Cixi’s story, but to also dispel some of the myths that have developed since her death that has portrayed her as an arch conservative who stood in the way of China’s progress.  Ms. Chang argues that not only is this narrative false, but that Cixi was the main reason why China advanced into modernity during her rule.  Ms. Chang also offers a very sympathetic picture of the Empress Dowager.  Cixi is portrayed as being open-minded and eager for discussion and consensus amongst her advisors (up to a point) and, though she could be opposed to adopting some reforms, she could be persuaded to change her mind.  At the time of Cixi’s death, some western admirers were comparing her to other great female leaders, and Ms. Chang does not seem to dispute that.  

Ms. Chang does not airbrush Cixi’s faults though.  She does give an extensive account of Cixi’s role in the Boxer Rebellion, which led to a catastrophic war with foreign powers.  There, Ms. Chang notes how stubborn Cixi could be and how disastrous her decisions ended up being, though it did help to bolster her image amongst the people and paved the way for even greater reforms in the last years of her life.

It is a shame that more people, particularly in the West, do not know about the Empress Dowager Cixi, but this book does is a perfect biography to help raise her historical profile and introduce her to a Western audience.  It is detailed, well-researched, and does a lot to dispel certain myths about her rule.  If you are looking for a great biography about great female world leaders, I highly recommend this one to you.

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"Don't You Forget About Me": A Review of The Korean War: A History

The Korean War: A History by Bruce Cumings

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Korean War is often, and rightfully, called "the forgotten war." Bracketed by World War II and the Vietnam War in American history, few Americans know anything about this war in which 3 million Koreans several thousand Americans died. Often what they do know is pretty basic: the North invaded the South, America and its UN allies intervened and pushed the North Koreans back across the 38th parallel all the way to the Yalu River, until communist China intervened and pushed the war back into a stalemate along the 38th parallel. However, in this revisionist work, Bruce Cumings puts more flesh and bones on this otherwise bare bones tale and emphasizes both its importance in American history why it has never really ended, and how it was just as dirty as the war dirty war in Indochina that would succeed it.

For those of you looking for a straight historical narrative of the Korean War, this book probably won't tickle that itch. The first chapter gives the standard story of the war, with a few relatively unknown details thrown in to flesh things out a little, but then hops around different topics for the rest of this book. This allows Mr. Cumings to talk about the darker side of this war that rarely makes it into America's headlines: how the roots of the war go back to, and are much more deeply intertwined with, the Japanese occupation of Korea, not the immediate Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States; how the South Korean regime of dictator Syngman Rhee was just as brutal, and possibly more so, than communist North Korea; how American forces too often stood by as South Korean forces massacred real and suspected communists; and just how the American air war was to the North Korean people and economy. It is a sobering look at a part of our history that is too easily swept under the rug simply because South Korea eventually developed into a vibrant democracy, because we didn't lose the Korean War (though we didn't necessarily win it either), and because the Vietnam War looms so much larger in the American psyche than the Korean War does. Mr. Cumings makes a passionate and nuanced plea for remembering and understanding this war.

And yet, I can't help but feel that, like the war it brings to light, will do nothing more than to create a stalemate in the American reader's mind. While many of the facts and figures Mr. Cumings brings to light may be revelatory, even damning, to many Americans, because this book forgoes a chronological structure, it fails to successfully mesh the unknown dark side of the war with what Americans already do know about the war. A more straightforward analysis of the war, similar to other standard military histories out there, with all of the revelations Mr. Cumings brings to light, would've had a much greater impact. Instead, like many other revisionist histories, this book lists off a litany of wrongs that Americans should feel bad about, forcing the reader to either assume a knee-jerk defensive position or not. For a book that begs for understanding and nuance regarding the war, the baseball bat approach this book takes does not lend itself to such an understanding of the ar.

Despite that, this book is an important work about a forgotten war. While it may be nothing more than a supplemental read to other histories of the war, such as The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam, it is a necessary supplemental read that all American history buffs should read.

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