| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Anne Behnke Kinney. Representations of Childhood and Youth in Early China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2004. Pp. x, 294. $55.00.

This pioneering work is the first scholarly monograph in any language that examines children and adolescents from the beginning of China's historical record until the end of the Han dynasty (206 b.c.–a.d. 220). Since available sources are mostly prescriptive and not descriptive, rather than systematically depicting the living conditions of young people, Anne Behnke Kinney charts how early Chinese envisioned children and used them rhetorically. The primary question the author seeks to answer is why children for the first time became an important topic in Han dynasty political and philosophical discourse. To do so, she masterfully employs a wide range of sources: histories, legends, philosophical tracts, poetry, law codes, medical treatises, and mantic handbooks. Examination of these materials leads her to conclude that the creation of the centralized empire was the most important factor responsible for the prominence of children in Han dynasty discussions.

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