Background
Bianco, Lucien André was born on April 19, 1930 in Ugine, Savoie, France. Son of Jules Ambroise and Lucie Anna (Poënsin) Bianco.
(The original French edition of this book, published in 19...)
The original French edition of this book, published in 1967, was widely acclaimed as the best introduction to Chinese Communism ever published. A fresh, bold interpretative survey, it focuses on the dynamic social forces underlying the Chinese Communists' rise in three short decades from obscurity to power. The author seeks above all to relate the events of this tumultuous period to certain tentative generalizations about the nature and course of the revolution. He is concerned less with the May Fourth Movement as such, for example, than with the revolution's intellectual origins, less with the Communist party's early political history than with the place of Marxist ideology in that history, less with the military aspects of the war of 1937-45 than with the influence of nationalism in the growing success of the Communists. An important part of the book deals with the various governmental and non-governmental attempt at reform during the Kuomintang era, which the author shows were too little too late to dam the swelling flood of revolution. The conclusion evaluates the crucial role of imperialism, the peasantry, and the army in the Chinese "formula" for revolution and re-examines the relationship between Marxism and the Chinese Revolution.
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Bianco, Lucien André was born on April 19, 1930 in Ugine, Savoie, France. Son of Jules Ambroise and Lucie Anna (Poënsin) Bianco.
Agregation history, Ecole Normale Superieure, 1957. Chinese, Ecole National des Langues Orientales, 1962. Doctor of Philosophy of History, Sorbonne University, 1968.
He is the author of a reference book on the origins of the Chinese revolution and has co-edited the book China in the twentieth century. After attending high school Bianco enrolled in the École Normale Supérieure and the École nationale des Langues orientales, where he learned Chinese. In 1968 he obtained his degree in history from the University of Paris, where he wrote his thesis on the history of Thailand.
He later spent time teaching at Harvard University Princeton University, University of Michigan, Stanford, and in Taiwan and Hongkong.
Foreign many years he was director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and taught at the Institut d"Études Politiques de Paris. The release of Bianco"s 1967 book "Les origines de la révolution chinoise 1915-1949" proved to be highly influential in Chinese research in France and was translated into numerous languages, including English, German, and Japanese.
In the 1960s and 1970s Bianco was an outspoken critic of the government of China, and in particular Mao Zedong and Cultural Revolution. In awarding the prize, the Association for Asian Studies praised Bianco"s work as "a quarter-century of innovative and careful research about peasant discontent." The committee judged that
arguing that class consciousness and revolutionary activity did not come "naturally" but that they could certainly be nurtured, Bianco provides a thoroughly documented corrective to earlier narratives of peasant revolution.
In doing so, he helps students of the Chinese revolution understand not only the role of the peasant, but also the discourse of peasant revolution that is woven throughout social life.
Furthermore, through his constant revision of his earlier ideas and his evenhanded consideration of work by other scholars, Bianco exhibits a fine sensitivity to changes in the researcher’s intellectual approach over time, as well as to the biases inherent in historical sources.
(The original French edition of this book, published in 19...)
Peter Bernard Harris praised Bianco"s stance, stating that "Professor Lucien Bianco has boldly asserted his opposition not merely to the Gang of Four but, more particularly, to what he called "Maologie."" Bianco was also a critic of the 1973 Paris Peace Accord that ended the Vietnam War and joined a group of Asian specialists who protested the agreement because of the treatment of political prisoners by the South Vietnamese government. In 2003, Bianco"s book Peasants Without the Party: Grassroots Movements in 20th-Century China won the Joseph Levenson Book Prize.
Member Association Asian Studies, European Association Chinese Studies, Association Française d'Etudes Chinoises (vice president 1980-1982).
Married Marie Louise Mazagol, August 6, 1955. Children: Sylvie, Jean François.