Joseph W. Esherick

Joseph W. Esherick is an emeritus professor of modern Chinese history at the University of California, San Diego. He is the holder of the . Esherick is a graduate of Harvard College. He received his Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of Joseph R. Levenson and Frederic Wakeman.
In addition to publishing research monographs, Esherick published a series of essays on historiography and reviews of the large questions in modern Chinese history. As a member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, for instance, Esherick in 1972 published a critique of the field and of his undergraduate professor, John K. Fairbank, "Harvard on Imperialism." Later such essays dealt with the Revolution of 1911, Chiang Kai-shek, and the Revolution of 1949. Esherick's favorite hanyu pinin abbreviation is "SYJ."

Publications

;BooksModern China: The Story of a Revolution, co-authored with Orville Schell.Lost Chance in China: The World War II Despatches of John S. Service.Reform and Revolution in China: the 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei.The Origins of the Boxer Uprising.

: Winner of 1987 John K. Fairbank Prize from American Historical Association; 1989 Joseph Levenson Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies; and the 1989 Berkeley Prize from the University of California Press.Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance, co-edited with Mary B. Rankin.Chinese Archives: An Introductory Guide, co-edited with Ye Wa.Remaking the Chinese City: Modernity and National Identity, 1900–1950, edited volume..Ancestral Leaves: A Family Journey through Chinese History.

;Major Articles

"," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 4:4.
"1911: A Review," the lead article of a symposium on 1911 in Modern China 2:2.
"The 'Restoration of Capitalism' in Mao's and Marxist Theory," Modern China 5:1.
"From Feudalism to Capitalism: Japanese Scholarship on the Transformation of Chinese Rural Society," co-authored with Linda Grove, Modern China 6:4.
"Number Games: A Note on Land Distribution in Prerevolutionary China," Modern China 7:4
"Acting Out Democracy: Political Theater in Modern China," co-authored with Jeffrey Wasserstrom. Journal of Asian Studies, November 1990.
"Founding a Republic, Electing a President: How Sun Yat-sen Became Guofu," in Harold Shiffrin and Eto Shinkichi, eds., China's Republican Revolution : pp. 129–152.
"Deconstructing the Construction of the Party-State: Gulin County in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region," China Quarterly, No. 140 : 1052–1079.
"Ten Theses on the Chinese Revolution," Modern China 21.1 : 45–76
"Cherishing Sources from Afar," Modern China 24.2
"Revolution in a Feudal Fortress: Yangjiagou Mizhi County, Shaanxi, 1937–1948," Modern China 24.4 : 339–377
"War and Revolution: Chinese Society During the 1940s," Twentieth-Century China 27.1 : 1–37