The developmental trajectories of North China and the Southeast Coast during the middle and late imperial periods are surveyed to illustrate the recurrence of regional macrocycles of development and decline and to show that such cycles may be unsynchronized as between regions. These cases provide a basis for arguing that economic macrocycles are a systemic property—not of provinces or of the empire as a whole but of regional economies viewed as internally differentiated and interdependent systems of human interaction. An exploration of the relation between regional developmental cycles and the Chinese dynastic cycle concludes that the latter was mediated by the former. It is suggested that regional developmental cycles are cycles not only of economic prosperity and depression but also of population growth and decline, of social development and devolution, and of peace and disorder. China's historical structure, then, is seen as an internested hierarchy of local and regional histories whose scope in each case is grounded in the spatial patterning of human interaction, and whose critical temporal structures are successive cyclical episodes. The uses of such an historiographic model are briefly explored.

Japanese imperialism relentlessly besieged the Nationalist government of China during the Nanking decade. Chiang Kai-shek, believing that China was not ready to confront Japanese military power and obsessed with the desire to eliminate the Communists, adopted a policy of consistent appeasement toward the.Japanese. This enraged public opinion in urban China, and Zou Tao-fen, a popular journalist, led the cry for resistance to Japan. He and his associates were continually suppressed by the Nanking government; nevertheless, they published several journals in succession, each of which denounced Chiang's policy toward Japan and all of which achieved enormous circulation. Late in 1935 Zou and his followers helped organize the National Salvation Movement, which demanded that Chiang suspend the civil war against the Communists and fight the Japanese. When Chiang Kai-shek, acting under Japanese pressure, arrested Zou and the leaders of the association in 1936, they became national heroes, the legendary “Seven Gentlemen.” Zou's martyrdom and that of his associates transformed their movement into a powerful political force, one that opposed Chiang and increasingly favored the Chinese Communists.

The industrial Patriotic Movement (Sampō) symbolized the suppression of labor unions in prewar Japan, but it also shaped the development of Japan's postwar system of industrial relations. When first launched by officials of the Home Ministry in 1938, Sampō was intended to be a constructive reform movement for reducing conflict and for maintaining an efficient labor market. With the support of the police and of some labor leaders, Sampō encouraged formation of factory committees with elected worker representatives for negotiating wages and working conditions. The resistance of business leaders led to the assertion of direct bureaucratic control over the movement, and with army interference in civil administration after 1940, Sampō eventually led to the suppression of unions. Nevertheless, the foundations were laid for the spread of enterprise unionism on a national scale in the postwar era even under military rule.

It was once popular for Western scholars to view the liberation of women as one of the most dramatic accomplishments of the Chinese revolution. This article reviews three recently published studies that present a more sanguine view of the impact of the policies adopted by the Chinese Communist party on women's lives. Throughout its history (with the possible exception of the 1920s) the CCP has failed to commit itself to the achievement of gender equality. To have done so, the new scholarship suggests, would have alienated male peasants, the most important constituency of the CCP Patriarchy, rather than being dismantled, has thus been perpetuated and reinforced in China. This argument is substantiated in the three volumes under review by an analysis of Party policy and political campaigns. The extent to which these policies and campaigns reflect social reality is a task that future scholars will have to confront.

The book under review has been hailed by its supporters as one of the finest examples of “the new Vietnam scholarship.” Like other writings of this genre, this book claims that the United States caused the loss of South Vietnam by going to the Paris peace talks in 1968 and by yielding “far too much to Communist demands” after that. What makes this book stand out from the other writing, however, is its author's unabashed use of highly questionable sources and techniques; he attempts to show that the government of Vietnam is so absolutely evil, its policies and programs such unmitigated failures, and its leaders and cadres so totally inept, corrupt, devious, and callous that the United States and its allies should continue to exert pressure to break that government and to make it capitulate to entire sets of impossible demands prescribed by the author. Given the Cold War climate at present, this book may help to rally people to the anti-Communist cause, but it contributes nothing to scholarship.

The Public Broadcasting Service series Vietnam: A Television History is generally sound, and commendably willing to present opinions and judgments on controversial issues.

Stanley Karnow's Vietnam: A History presents important new information but gives inadequate attention to some fundamental issues; James Harrison's The Endless War contains less original material but deals better with fundamental issues, including the nature and sources of Communist strength in Vietnam.

R. B. Smith, Revolution versus Containment, 1955–1961, volume 1 of An International History of the Vietnam War, tries to cover too much in a short book. Some of the conclusions are not adequately proven.

Ronald Spector's Advice and Support: The Early Years, 1941–1960 (the first volume of the United States Army's official history of the Vietnam War) is useful, especially for the periods 1944–1945 and 1956–1960. It slightly exaggerates the speed with which Communist guerrilla warfare developed in South Vietnam between 1957 and 1960.

Recent books on colonial Vietnam by David Marr and Martin Murray make possible an assessment of the relationship between economic change and the diffusion of modern ideologies among Vietnamese intellectuals. The ideological ferment that Marr documents occurred because the downfall of Confucianism left intellectuals without a way to analyze their country. Martin Murray's detailed description of colonial economic transformations helps to explain why most of the Vietnamese concern was with radical ideologies, and why there was no intellectual and economic basis for moderate political activity among the intelligentsia.