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Jonathan SpenceA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Jonathan D. Spence explains why he chose to write about an obscure, rural part of 17th-century China and summarizes the primary sources he used to research the book. His goal is to explore a topic that is “both rural and local” (xi), the sort of history that often goes ignored. Further, it is a story that is ‘“small’ […] in the context of the overall historical record” but “[t]o the people actually involved […] of absolute, fatal importance” (xi).
Sources on local, rural Chinese history of this era are scarce since the premodern Chinese usually did not preserve local records (xii). Spence’s primary sources are: