REVIEWS OF RECENT BOOKS. 



Histoire General de la Chine Et de ses Relations avec les pays 

 Etrangers Depuis les Temps les Plus Anciens Jusqu'a 1a 

 Chute de la Dynastie Mandchou. Par Henri Cordier, Membre 

 de l'institut. Paris. — Librairie Paul Geuthner. 1920. 



Like Confucius, M. Cordier is a great annalist, if not a great creator. 

 He is a great student as well as a busy one. His past works show 

 him to be the supreme authority on the bibliography relating to 

 China, and consequently he must know things Chinese better than 

 any one living. Students have been greatly indebted to his past 

 works, and by this new history, he has placed readers under further 

 obligation to his industry and knowledge. Here they have a com- 

 pendium of the vast amount of material contributed by many scholars 

 in past times, arranged in a consecutive narrative, forming a most 

 readable history of this vast empire from the most ancient times to 

 the present. And as though the long internal records of the people 

 were not enough, we have thrown in, the country's relations with 

 adjoining races and peoples both near and distant. But this may 

 be at one and the same time, its strength and weakness. For "Ses 

 Relation Avec Les Pays Etrangers" may have been an allurement to 

 be shunned, rather than an opportunity to be grasped. For it is a 

 certainty that no history of China could be adequately recorded in the 

 four volumes, before us, containing though they do about three 

 quarters of a million words. And when it is found that the best 

 part of two volumes are given to "Strangers," it will be readily 

 concluded that the history of the country itself will be that much 

 shorter in consequence. It is a remarkable fact how the magnet of the 

 circumference has attracted the foreign historian, We think of 

 Mr. E. H. Parker and M. Cordier in particular, not to mention 

 others, who have gone beyond the rich pastures of Hua Hsia, the 

 homeland, to brouse on the wide territories beyond with their poor 

 pasturage. Have they been allured by the great names and bloody 

 deeds of Mongol warriors? It is not implied that these outward 

 attractions should be altogether neglected, since the Tartar pressure, 

 and the virility of the Eleuthes, did affect the internal history of 



