“Chronicle of the Chinese Emperors: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial China”, by Ann Paludan

224 pages, Thames & Hudson, ISBN-13: 978-0500050903

I must really have a thing for these “Chronicle” books, seeing as Ann Paludan’s Chronicle of the Chinese Emperors: The Reign-by-Reign Record of the Rulers of Imperial China is the fourth of these things that I have done so for (the others being Chronicle of the Roman Republic, Chronicle of the Roman Emperors and Chronicle of the Russian Tsars…in case you were wondering, as you no doubt were). Perhaps it is for that reason that I find myself somewhat disappointed by this entry in the series. Perhaps it has to do with the complexity of the subject matter and the politics of the Chinese Imperial Court itself, but I found the book jumping from reign to reign describing many of the emperors with only a sentence or two. Furthermore, it seemed like the book spent more time talking about the other players in court life rather than the emperor himself. Ah, well: given the dearth of good English language books on Chinese history that are meant for the general public, it is refreshing to find a book tackling this area; however, it is all but impossible to cover all of the emperors of China in her 3,000 years of history in just over 200 pages, so this book is really only suitable as an introduction, as are all of these “Chronicle” books.

My final complaint with the book is that it would talk about other players in court life or politics without introducing them or putting their role in context: for example, the book often says something such as “following the death of Emperor X, Mr. Y was able to place the infant son of so-and-so on the throne where thereafter Mr. Y dominated Chinese government for the next 50 years”, but then say nothing more about the emperor or Mr. Y and the book would just jump to the next emperor. I can understand that it is beyond the scope of the book, but over and over the author points out that often the power behind the throne was a woman but then never really describes the woman or how she came to exert such influence. Overall I enjoyed the book very much, but the text seemed to raise many questions and skip around. As a result, after I finished the book I felt I knew less about the Chinese Emperors than I did the Roman Emperors or Russian Tsars after reading those books. In spite of the faults I found with the book, it was still an enjoyable book to read and the pictures were interesting.