This page will contains the combined bibliographies for all my essays and subjects as well as many more books. 

The majority of the books listed here are still in print:

Latest Books Read

• S.J. Houston, James I

• C. Durston, Charles I

• ANOTHER CHARLES I SBIOGRAPHY

• W.H.McNeil, Plagues & Peoples

• P. Crowe. Pre-Industrial Societies

• A.W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism

• R.J. Hobsbawn: The Age Of Revolution 1789-1848, Redwood Press, Wiltshire, 1962

• R.J. Hobsbawn: The Age Of Capital 1848-1875, Wiltshire, 1975

• Linda Colley: Britons

• Michael Burleigh: The Third Reich

• L.R. Johnson, Central Europe: enemies, neighbors, friends

• J. Brooke: King George III

• Rothwell & Merson, A Calendar of Southampton Apprenticeship Registers 1609-1740

Soviet Russia Bibliography

My favourite book on Soviet Russia is undoubtedly A.S Bullock's Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, Harper Collins, 1991, London. My book review of this masterly 'tombstone' text is available here.

• C. Kennedy-Pipe, Russia and the world 1917-1991, Arnold, 1998 .

• E. Action, Russia, The Present And The Past, Longman, 1990, SingaporeHosking, G., A History of the Soviet Union, Fontana, 1985, London

• Isaac, Stalin- a political biography, Pelican, 1996, Suffolk

• Fitzpatrick, S. The Cultural Front - Power and Culture in revolutionary Russia, 

• Hodgson, Godfrey. People's Century, London 1995

• J. Lewis and P.Whitehead, Stalin, A time for judgement, Methuen London, 1991

• J.L. Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War, New York, 1987.

• J.L. Gaddis, The USA and the Origins of the cold war 1941-47, Coloumbia, 1972.

• J.L. Nogee and R.H. Donaldson, Soviet foreign policy since World War II, Pergamon, 1988, Exeter.

• K. Dawisha, Eastern Europe, Gorbachev and Reform: The Great Challenge, Second edition, Cambridge, 1990.

• Lynch, M. Stalin and Khruschev the USSR, 1924-64, London, 1990

• M.D. Shulman, Stalin’s foreign policy reappraised, Harvard University Press, 1963.

• M.McCauley, Stalin and Stalinism, Longman, 1995, London

• McCauley, M. The Soviet Union since 1917, Longman, 1981, Hong Kong

• Morris, TA. European History 1848-1945, London, 1992 

• P.G. Lewis, Central Europe since 1945, Longman, London, 1994.

• R. McNeal, Stalin: Man and Ruler, 1988, Hong Kong

• R.A. Medvedev, On Stalin and Stalinism, 1979, Oxford

• R.W.Davies, The Soviet Union, Allen and Unwin, London, 1978

• Rice C., Lenin, Cassel, London, 1990

• Robin Edmonds, Soviet foreign policy 1962-1973 : the paradox of super power, (Ney York, Oxford University Press, 1975).

• S. Fitzpatrick, Culture in the Soviet Union, Chicago

• S. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain Stalinism as a Civilisation, 1995, University of California, USA

• Siegelbaum, L, Soviet State and Society between Revolution, 1918-1929

• Thomas/McAndrew. Russia/Soviet Union 1917-1945, Australia, 1996

• Ulam, A.B., Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Collins, 1965, Glasgow

• C. Ward, Stalin's Russia, London, 1994 
• E.Action, Russia, The Present And The Past, Longman, 1990, Singapore
• A.S Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, Parallel Lives, Harper Collins, 1991, London
• D.Cook, Forging the Alliance: NATO, 1945-1950, London, 1989
• K. Dawisha, Eastern Europe, Gorbachev and Reform: The Great Challenge, Second edition, Cambridge, 1990.
• J.L. Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War, New York, 1987.
• J.L. Gaddis, The USA and the Origins of the cold war 1941-47, Coloumbia, 1972.
• C. Kennedy-Pipe, Russia and the world 1917-1991, Arnold, 1998
• R.S.Kirkendall, The Truman period as a research field: a reappraisal, USA, 1974.
• R.B. Levering, The Cold War 1945-1987, USA, 1988.
• P.G. Lewis, Central Europe since 1945, Longman, London, 1994.
• J.L. Nogee and R.H. Donaldson, Soviet foreign policy since World War II, 1988.
• E.D. Nolfo, The Atlantic Pact Forty Years Later: A Historical Reappraisal, USA, 1991
• M.D. Shulman, Stalin’s foreign policy reappraised, Harvard University Press, 1963.
• Thomas/McAndrew, Russia/Soviet Union 1917-1945

British History Bibliography

My favourite book covering the 18th Century is  Linda Colley: Britons: Forging The Nation 1707-1837

• C. Brooks, The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550-1800, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1994.

• J. Brooke: King George III

• R. Finlay and L. Beier, London 1500-1700: The Making of the Metropolis, New York, Longman, 1986  

• D. Marshall, Eighteenth century England

• B. A. Krausman, 'Service and the coming of age', Continuity and Change 3, 1988

• J. Lane, Coventry Apprentices And Their Masters, 1781-l806

• D. F. McKenZie, London Stationers' Company Apprentices, 1605-1640, Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, Charlottesvile, USA, 1961

• M. Mitterauer, 'Servants and youth', Continuity and Change 5, 1, 1990

•  S. L. Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds: structures of life in sixteenth-century London, Cambridge University press, New York, 1989

• S.H. Rigby, English society in the later middle ages: class status and gender, Macmillan, London, 1995

•  S. R. Smith, 'London apprentices as adolescents', Past and Present 6,1,1973

• A. Temple Patterson, A History Of Southampton: Volume One An Oligarchy In Decline 1700-1835, Camelot Press, Southampton, 1966

• J. Wareing, 'Recruitment of Apprentices', Journal of Historical Geography 6, 1980

• A. J. Willis and Merson, A Calendar of Southampton Apprenticeship Registers, 1609-1740, Southampton Records Series. University of Southampton Press, 1968

• Yarborough, 'Apprentices as adolescents', Journal of Social History 13, 1979

• Richard E. Bowyer English Declarations Of Indulgence 1687 and 1688

• Hoak and Feingold, The World of William and Mary: Anglo-Dutch perspectives on the Revolution of 1688-89, Stanford university press, 1996
• Geoffrey Holmes ed. Britain After the Glorious Revolution 1689-1714, St Martins Press, 1969
• Betty Kemp, King and Commons 1660-1832, London, St. Martin's Press, 1957.
• Lois G. Schwoerer, The Declaration Of Rights 1689, the John Hopkins University Press, UK, 1981
• Lois G. Schwoerer ed, The Revolution of 1688-1689: Changing Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, 1992
• W.A. Speck, Reluctant Revolutionaries: Englishmen and the Revolution of 1688, Oxford University press, 1988
• G.M. Trevelyan, The English Revolution 1688-1689, Oxford University press, 1937

• Schowoerer, The Revolution of 1688-1689

• J.R.H. Moorman, A History of The Church Of England

• J.H. Plumb, England in the 18th century (1714-1815)

• J.R. Jones, The Restored Monarchy 1660-1682

• Langford A Polite and Commercial people England 1727-1783

• John B. Owen, The 18th Century

World History Bibliography

• M.M.Ahsan, Social life under the Abbasids, 1979, Longman Group, London

• John Bagot Clubb, Haroon al Rasheed and the Great Abbasids, 1976, Hodder and Stoughton, London

• G. Barraclough, The Times Atlas of World History, 1989, Guild, London

• C. McEvedy, The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History,1973, Penguin books, London

• D. Arnold, The Problem of Nature: Environment, Culture and European Expansion 1996, Hartnolls Limited, Bodmin, Cornwall

• Cook, Nobel David, Born to Die: Disease and the New World Conquest 1492-1650, 1998, Cambridge University Press

• A.W Crosby, The Columbian voyages, the Columbian exchange, and their historians, Washington, c1987.

• S.D. White, From Cortés to Castro: an introduction to the History of Latin America, 1492-1973, London, 1974

• A. W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe

• J. Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, ch. 11

• H.F. Dobyns, Their number become thinned: Native American population dynamics in eastern North America, 1st edition, Knoxville, 1985.

• A. Karlen, Plague’s Progress: A social History of Man and Disease, Great Britain, 1995.

• W.H.McNeil, The Rise of the West: A History of the human community, London and Chicago, 1963.

• A.F. Ramenofsky, Vectors of death: the archaeology of European contact,  1^st edition, University of New Mexico Press, c1987.

• J. M. Roberts, The Penguin History of the World, 3rd edition, Penguin Books, 1995.

• R. Thornton, American Indian holocaust and survival: a population history since 1492, University of Oklahoma Press, 1987

• J. Blum, Lord and peasant in Russia, from the ninth to the nineteenth century, Princetown, 1961

• E.R. Wolf,  Peasants,  New Jersey, 1966

• R.H. Hilton, Bond men made free: medieval peasant movements and the English rising of 1381, New York, 1977

• R.W. Southern, The making of the Middle Ages, London, 1953.

• H.O. Lindsey, History of Black America. Magna Books, 1995.  

• A.M. Schlesinger, The Disuniting of America, London, 1992.

• M.F. Berry, Long Memory: Black Experience in America. Oxford University Press, 1982. E.R.Bethel, The Roots of African-American Identiyt, USA, 1997
• N. Lemann, Promised Land: Great Black Migration and How it Changed America, 1995. ,  
• H. Zinn, A People's History of the United States, New York, 1980  
• G. Barraclough, The Times Atlas of World History, Guild, London, 1989
• P. Crone, Pre-industrial Societies, Basil Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1989
• S. Dayf, The Universality Of Islam, I.E.S.C.O, 1997
• P. K. Hitti, History Of The Arabs: 10^th Edition, Macmillan, London, 1970
• P.M. Holt ed, Cambridge History Of Islam, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1970
• E. Kamenka, Bureaucracy, Basil Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1989
• J. M. Roberts, The Penguin History of the World, 3rd edition, Penguin Books, London 1995
• R.M. Savroy ed., Islamic Civilisation, Cambridge University Press, 1976
• M.A. Shaban, Islamic History: A New Interpretation (Parts 1 and 2, 600-1055), Cambridge University Press, 1976  
• E.Fawcett & T.Thomas, America, Americans, Collins, London, 1983.
• D. C. Twitchett, Financial Administration Under The T’ang Dynasty (2^nd edition), Cambridge University Press, 1970
• Waley, The Analects of Confucius, G. Allen & Unwin, London, 1971

Imperial China Bibliography

A good book about Imperial China is Wild Swans and another is Patricia Buckley Ebrey's The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period. My book review of this text is available here.

• Christopher Dawson ed. The Mongol Mission: narratives and letters of the Franciscan missionaries in Mongolia and China in the 13^th and 14^th centuries, Sheed & Ward, New York, 1955
• Patricia Buckley Ebrey , The Cambridge illustrated history of China, Cambridge University Press, 1999
• Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Chinese Civilization and Society: A Sourcebook, New York: Free Press, 1981.
• Paul Heng-chao Ch’en, Chinese Legal Tradition under the Mongols: The Code Of 1291 reconstructed, Princeton University Press, USA, 1979
• John D. Langlois ed., China Under Mongol Rule, Princeton University Press 1981
• Kay Ann Johnson, Women in the family and peasant revolution in China
• Morris Rossabi, Khubilai Khan: His Life And Times, University Of California Press, USA, 1988
• H. F. Schurmann, Economic Structure Of The Yüan Dynasty, Harvard University press, 1967  
• H.G. Ceel, Confucius and The Chinese Way, Harper, New York, USA, 1960
• E.T. Cheng, China Moulded by Confucius; the Chinese way in Western light, Stevens, London, 1947

• Fairbank & Reischauer, China: tradition & transformation

• O. Kazuko - Chinese Women in a century of revolution 185-1950

• A.S. Elwell-Sutton, The Chinese people: their past, present and future

• Jung Chang, Wild Swans

•   J.K. Fairbank & E.O. Reischauer, China: Tradition and Transformation, Houghton Mifflin, USA, 1978

•   D.S. Nivison, Confucianism In Action, Stanford University Press, USA, 1959

•   A. Sharma Ed, Women in World Religions, State University of New York Press, USA, 1990

• A. Waley, The Analects of Confucius, G. Allen & Unwin, London, 1971

Spanish Civil War Bibliography 

• A.Beevor, The Spanish Civil War, London, 1922

• B.Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War

• S.M. Ellwood, The Spanish Civil War, Oxford, 1991.

• R.Fraser, Revolution and war in Spain 1931-39.

• H.Gannes and T.Repard, Spain in Revolt, London, 1936.

• G.Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

• V. Richards, Lessons of the Spanish Revolution (1936-1939), London, 1953

• F.R. Salvado, 20^th century Spain, Politics and Society in Spain 1898-1998, New York, 1999.

Book Review: Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives by Allan Bullock, 1991 Harper Collins, London

    Parallel Lives is an extremely long book at 1300 pages but it is written in an easily readable style. It was aimed at an audience of general readers as well as scholars. The fact that it can be described as readable is a great achievement considering its length. In the book Bullock looks at who Hitler and Stalin were and what they did. There are vivid descriptions of the men from people who met them, like Marshal Tito. A critic wrote that ‘no author has  come closer to understanding them’. The author puts both men ‘on trial’, detailing both men’s crimes. The reader is left in no doubt that Bullock sees them as evil. He’s extremely critical of many aspects of their regimes like Stalin’s campaign against the Kulaks.

            It is a well-established genre for Bullock who is an accomplished historian. He wrote the first major biography of Hitler in 1952, 40 years before this book. The parallel biography of Hitler and Stalin was something that had not been attempted before because it was seen as too difficult. I think that this was Bullock’s motivation behind the book.

            He writes in a gripping, narrative style, although also very analytical. It has alternate chapters on each man, mainly in chronological order although there is also a chapter called ‘Hitler and Stalin Compared’. It is often easier to read a chronological book as the background and the development of the subject is more accessible. It would have been far more confusing if it had used ‘flashbacks’ or themes such as ‘Hitler’s and Stalin’s economies’. I think the chronological style helps the reader get closer to the full picture and offers a wider perspective.

            Interestingly, the chronological way that the book is written reveals that for all their differences, Hitler and Stalin had many things in common. I think their differences were mainly in their personalities. Stalin is portayed as a calculator whilst Hitler is a gambler. Hitler is characterised as a lazy ‘artist’ and a great orator whilst Stalin as dull and grey but exceptionally meticulous. There are many similarities between them which Bullock comments on such as the way they dealt with ‘opposition’. Both men were guilty of crimes against humanity on a scale unprecedented in history. For example, against the Jews in Germany and against the peasants in the USSR.

            Bullock carries out an interesting discussion surrounding the two men’s sanity. He thought neither Stalin or Hitler were mad. Although he does admit that Hitler was close to insanity by 1945 when he was heavily dependant on a variety of drugs and that  Stalin had paranoia and was suspicious of everything around him. I disagree with the author on this point and I think the book overall points to the fact that they were mad.

            It adds to the book that the author lived through the era, making him a  contemporary commentator. The book certainly had contemporary relevance when it was written, at the time of the collapse of USSR. For example the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, two years before the book was published.

            Bullock discusses the many historical viewpoints of other historians, such as the revisionists of the sixties and seventies. There has been some research done since the book was published into Stalin’s regime. Since 1991 after Russian historians were allowed to see new source material - the regimes records. In spite of this the book is almost all up to date.

            The book contains many impressive statistics (tables) and an excellent picture section. Hundreds of both primary and secondary sources were used and this makes the book emphatically comprehensive in the sources it covers. The author does not attempt to neglect or suppress any important aspect of the subject.  I found the section on Stalin’s economic progress, (which I recently used to write an essay) far more comprehensive and analytical than all the many other books that I read on the subject.

            Why did Bullock chose to compare Stalin and Hitler?  Because the two ‘most devastating’ events of the 20th century were World War Two and Communism. Of course Stalin and Hitler played the major roles in these events. A major theme throughout the book is the ideological conflict between Communism and Nazism. Bullock sees this as defining the 20th century, with the consequences lasting from 1950 to the present day. Stalin and Hitler have had the greatest single effect of any two people, heading the two Great Political movements of Nazism and Communism, so it seems natural to compare them.

            WW2 and Communism led to a huge loss of life and completely changed the lives of hundreds of millions of people, obviously those who lived through the era would find the book interesting. At the time the book was written (and now) events in the first half of the twentieth century were still exerting a huge influence in eastern Europe. Bullock wrote the book for the people who did not live through the war who want to understand why these movements occurred as well as seeing what occurred.

            I think Bullock consciously intended to get beyond the conventional limits of the sources. He wanted younger readers to see how easily both Hitler and Stalin came to power and consequently how people today should realise it could happen again. I think the book was written as ‘a warning from History’ to the generations who did not live through the first half of the twentieth century. People voting for extremist parties might read the book and reconsider their actions.

            I knew much more about Stalin than Hitler before I read the book and perhaps this is why I found the Hitler chapters more engrossing especially those on Hitler’s early life in Vienna and his last days in Berlin. I was moved by the sections on the holocaust and the eugenics programme. I think Bullock used emotive language in these sections to emphatically state his opinions about the terrible personality of Hitler. One of the best chapter sin the book is the final one in which Bullocks looks back on the Hitler-Stalin period ‘from the perspective of the nineties’, concluding that Europe has a bright future in the next century..

Book Review: The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period by Patricia Buckley Ebrey

            The Inner Quarters successfully portrays what it was like to be a woman in Sung China (960-1279), from arranged marriages, rearing children, and coping with concubines, to the dilemmas facing widows. It is a work riddled with nuances, too subtle to lend itself to a quick and easy summary. Ebrey appreciates the fundamental complexity of Sung women’s situation and Sung society. She purposely avoids the restricted practice of searching for exceptional women as many other gender historians have done but writes a far more comprehensive history focusing on the broader, daily issues that affected every woman’s fate throughout society.
            Sung times represent the most interesting period of women’s History, a period of great cultural change, of realigning Chinese social order. It was a time when the status of women simultaneously increased and decreased. Foot binding became common and Confucian scholars strongly condemned widows who remarried, insisting it was better to starve. However, there were also improvements in women's status in marriage and property rights. Literacy among women increased and they were encouraged to use it to educate their sons. Ebrey questions whether women's situations actually deteriorated in the Sung, linking their experiences to the widespread social, political, economic, and cultural changes of this period. 
            Ebrey’s main focus, and the one upon which she bases most of her evidence, centers on marriage, viewing family life from the perspective of women. She contends that the ideas, attitudes, and practices which constituted marriage shaped both society and women's lives. It provided the context for their entire lives a factor nowhere more poignant, than in determining financial status. She writes marriage was ‘central to the identity of every woman and also to men’s view of women ’. It gives a sensible focus to the book, albeit not dramatic enough for some readers. 
            Patricia Buckley Ebrey is one of the most respected and eminent scholars of pre-modern China. She dispels many of the notions the reader may have about Sung China, instead stressing the importance of change. This sense of change, perhaps unexpected in ‘changeless’ China, is a continuing theme throughout the work although she admits that many of her arguments about change must remain hypotheses, since the evidence to prove them does not exist, or is yet to be found. She concedes on the last page that ‘Chinese society is marked by remarkable continuities ’ such as the link between the living and the dead. That her claims cannot be conclusively proven stems from the restricted evidence which, as yet, does not provide a completed picture. Her approach is far superior to arriving at sweeping conclusions that were not justified. Her conclusions never overstep the evidence.
            Although an overview, the work a takes far more complex look at women’s role and position than most other books on the subject. Ebrey makes better use of the sources than Kay Ann Johnson and she writes in a clearer and more engaging style. Ebrey’s style is strikingly similar to that of Susan Mann in her work Precious Records, which was based on Chinese women in the 18th Century. Both are based around the sources and both stress the complexity and significance of gender relations. The depth of the sources in The Inner Quarters is evident by the pages and pages of cited sources.
        The two books are well structured and organised in a very similar way using chapters based around important aspects of Sung women’s lives. The Inner Quarters chapter that I found particularly enlightening was the first, called ‘Separating the Sexes’ It discusses ideas like yin and yang in quite a different, subtler way to other histories. For example, Ebrey explains that men desired female attendants, partly to show they were powerful enough to demand the services of women . She then shows how contemporary art demonstrates the gender distinctions by analysing illustrated hand scrolls and poems. The first chapter shows that women universally came second in gender distinctions. Ch’eng I wrote that a man ‘lowers himself ’ to come into contact with a woman. The book demonstrates to the reader that Sung women did not exist as islands but, both shaped AND were shaped by the various social, political and economic structures of their period.
        Ebrey argues that Sung Women often contradicted the familiar notion of Chinese women: that they are eternally oppressed, powerless, passive, and silent; hence unworthy of scholarly attention. The Inner Quarters succeeds in disputing and disproving the traditional view because it highlights the influence of women in society and hence in history. Although the family continued to be patrilineal and patriarchal, women found various ways of exerting power and authority. Ebrey looks for women’s agency, for example the say they had in their son’s marriage strategies. They were also able to use their dowry, divorce and remarriage laws to the great benefit of themselves and their children. Many also studied; active women were often regarded well in biographies. For example, the wife of Wang Pa-lang is described as intelligent. 
            Unlike most other authors, Ebrey thinks to focus on women only as victims obscures both their achievements and demeans them. She concentrates on the limited room to maneuver they had, their creative adaptation to restricted circumstances, dispelling the victimisation theory in many revisionist books by other women authors. Unavoidably, Ebrey’s style is sometimes fragmented and complicated. The subject will never be as straightforward as a history of a war or a biography. This because it is written about ‘an historic stage… with no leading characters ’. Even if Ebrey had wished to, how many leading female characters in Sung China could she have found?The nature of the sources determines that the book is often written on a personal, as opposed to a society-wide basis. It paints a vivid and absorbing picture, drawing the reader closer to the mindset of the individuals depicted. For example, a tale that stresses that the feelings of a potential bride should always be listened to brings the women of Sung China to life.The Inner Quarters with its rich, eclectic variety of sources has been described as a ‘study grounded in the documents ’. Ebrey draws insight from advice books, art, biographies, the hsing-t’ung (Sung code), and from medical records. Evidence is reinterpreted bringing to the fore the women’s role, for example, the use of divorce documents in the Adultery chapter that blame the woman’s parents for the divorce. 
Ebrey accepts the inherent limitations in her sources, such as them being produced exclusively by men. We are never told about women’s views on footbinding and men have traditionally tended to deny the changes in society that the book is arguing for. Even so, Ebrey points out how many of the sources depict women determining their own well being as well of that of their families and even their society. 
Another problem with her ‘admittedly imperfect sources ’ can be seen in the chapter on upper class wives. She admits that many biographers, (upon which much of her study is based), ‘did not have an entirely free hand ’ and simultaneously, often exhibited huge class bias. The funerary biographies about upper class women portray them as virtuous if not idyllic, whilst the court documents concerning the rest of society concentrate on despised behavior. This limitation adversely affects the book in obscuring the class differences that existed.
Ebrey writes in an objective way, judging from the moral viewpoint of the Sung period as opposed to a modern viewpoint. She recognises the complexity of the subject and often presents at least two arguments and leaves the reader to decide whether to judge as in the ‘pious wives’ section.
Sung Chinese society is judged to be as ‘contradictory, complex and fluid as our own ’; a superior approach to the simplistic version so often portrayed. For example, she details the situation of young widows and the complicated reasons why they were held in such awe, although she also stresses the ways that people took advantage of them.
The author constantly casts her reflections as questions posed against traditional Chinese history. After reading the book, familiar topics such as commercialisation, Confucianism, class and the legal system are encountered from a new perspective. New questions are posed such as, did economic changes affect women in the same way as men? The book does not aim be the decisive voice but leaves space for the reader to draw their own conclusions surrounding women’s experience. This is nowhere better illustrated than by her conclusion which cleverly forces the reader to ponder historical perspectives and the assumptions they make when reading History. 
Although very well received, Inner Quarters has faced some criticisms from Richard Davis, (an expert on Sung China), in his review of the book for the American Historical Review. He sees various differences in society that Ebrey does not highlight such as inadequate differentiation between the urban and rural areas in terms of marriage practices or gender relations. I would agree that the differences between the two areas are infrequently mentioned, although I do not know how significant these differences are and whether, in fact, they existed in the sources Ebrey used.
The work remains a remarkable contribution to our overall understanding of the subject in that it is a ‘thoroughly original work ’. No other book I have read covers the history of women in imperial China in such depth. Davis called it ‘the first comprehensive study, at least in English, of women in the middle period ’. If it is ‘the first’ then it obviously adds to historical understanding of the period. There are few works based on gender in Chinese history but other valuable works include Susan Mann’s Precious Records and Ono Kazuko’s brilliant yet biased Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850-1950. Over the next two decades our knowledge of women in Sung China will greatly increase due to the thousands of narratives and other sources that survive. As Susan Mann says ‘research on the history of Chinese women is just beginning ’. In the future will we be able to make reasonable conclusions about women during the Sung period?
The Inner Quarters, unlike for example, Fairbank & Reischauer’s, China: Tradition & Transformation made me change my mind about many aspects of women in Sung China, particularly the meaning of marriage as a joining of two families. The book achieves what the author set out to do; to portray an objective account of Sung China from a female perspective. Ebrey’s flair for assimilating fragmentary evidence will greatly benefit Sung scholarship and provides a useful model for historical investigation where the sources are rare or biased.
Finally, Ebrey’s strength is that she convinces her reader that a gender perspective should be integral to the consideration of every culture and society. Ebrey fittingly concludes ‘Chinese history and culture, look different after we have taken the effort to think about where the women were ’. I wholeheartedly agree and think Ebrey has made ‘The Inner Quarters a place we need to enter . 

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