Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China: Mao's Great Leap Forward Famine and the Origins of Righteous Resistance in Da Fo Village (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics)
"...a horrifying and convincing condemnation of the Maoist programs that during the Great Leap Forward caused starvation among the rural population between 1959 and 1961 and beyond.  Over almost twenty years Thaxton interviewed four hundred residents of Da Fo, in Henan province, people who had been traumatized by years of famine, humiliation, torture, and death....If there is another book that shows more profoundly how Mao, whose portrait still hangs in Tiananmen Square, inflicted disaster on a particular place, I haven't read it."Jonathan Mirsky, The New York Review of Books"This book is a major achievement. Based on more than 20 years of field research, it paints a vivid picture of how the Great Leap Forward was experienced in one village. It shows that enforcement of policies disastrous for villagers precipitated bitter conflicts between peasants seeking to protect their customary family entitlements and brutal and cruel cadres who did the bidding of a regime blinded by utopian dreams, hubris and fanaticism. Thaxton places this rivetting story in the context of the history of the village from the l930s on and of the decades since the collapse of the Leap. This enables him convincingly to show that violence and brutality were deeply embedded in earlier revolutionary processes. And it enables him to argue provocatively that the legacies of Great Leap abuses continue to inform the mentalities of villagers to this day."-Thomas P.Bernstein, Professor emeritus, Columbia University"Having gained extraordinary access to hitherto unavailable sources in rural China, Ralph Thaxton has written a path-breaking book which continues a career of important scholarship aimed at exploring the vicissitudes of popular responses to painful traumas and cruel local officials. A major work."-Edward Friedman, University of Wisconsin"Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China offers an all-too-rare picture of what it was like for peasants to survive the Great Famine caused by the Great Leap. Thaxton's volume is an iconic and deeply arresting account of mass starvation, trauma and suffering, but also of endurance and resistance. This is a work of real importance that will be influential with China scholars and scholars of catastrophe and resistance generally. A strong achievement!"-Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University"This is a remarkable study of a Chinese village and county, based on in-depth on-site research. The farmers in this region experienced the darker side of the Chinese revolution, and Ralph Thaxton's devastating, intriguing account vividly brings to life their trials and travails from the 1950s up into the post-Mao 'reform era'."-Jonathan Unger, Director, Contemporary China Center, Australian National University"This excellent book adds to the literature on the causes, events, and consequences of Mao's disastrous policies, which created famine, then civil war...Highly Recommended"Choice