History

In Search of Common Ground

Item: The West and China since 1500
Author: Colin Mackerras

by Colin Mackerras •

November 2003, no. 256

The West and China since 1500 by John S. Gregory

Palgrave Macmillan, $56pb, 272pp, $157hb

History

In Search of Common Ground

by Colin Mackerras •

November 2003, no. 256

Jack Gregory has devoted much of his long career in China studies to teaching and studying the ways in which the West and China have interrelated. He is well qualified to write on the subject. Classes that Gregory has given in Melbourne to students attending University of the Third Age classes have inspired this book. In style and structure, it is highly suitable for teaching. The writing is clear, interesting and accessible. Though the book could have done with some pictures, it does have a map and the presentation is attractive.

Colin Mackerras

Professor Colin Mackerras is a specialist on Chinese history, musical theatre and ethnic minorities, as well as Australia-China relations and Western images of China, and has published widely on all those subjects. He has written or edited over forty books and authored nearly 200 scholarly papers about China.

He worked at Griffith University from 1974 to 2004 and has been a professor Emeritus at the University since retirement. He taught first at the Beijing Foreign Studies University from 1964 to 1966 and has taught there many times since. He has also taught several times at the Renmin University of China in Beijing.

His books include The Rise of the Peking Opera, 1770–1870 (Clarendon Press, 1972); Chinese Drama, A Historical Survey (New World Press, 1990); China’s Minorities: Integration and modernization in the twentieth-century (Oxford University Press, 1994); Western Images of China, Revised Edition (Oxford University Press, 1999); China’s Ethnic Minorities and Globalisation (Routledge Curzon, 2003).