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Dr Rafe de Crespigny (full name: Richard Rafe Champion de Crespigny; born 1936) is a retired Adjunct Professor with the China and Korea Centre, Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. He specialises in Chinese history, geography and literature in the Han Dynasty period and has been acknowledged internationally as a pioneer in the translation and historiography of historical material concerning the Three Kingdoms period. Dr. de Crespigny received his tertiary education at Cambridge University (B.A. Honours History 1957; M.A. History 1961) and from the Australian National University (B.A. ANU Honours Chinese 1962; M.A. Oriental Studies Honours 1964; Ph.D. Far Eastern History 1968). During his early years as a scholar and academic, he benefited from the guidance of such sinologists as Hans Bielenstein, Patrick Fitzgerald and Hs? Cho-y?n, Miyazaki Ichisada and developed an interest in the late Han via the classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms. His seminal dissertation in 1964 was "The Development of the Chinese Empire in the South; a discussion of the origins of the state of Wu of the Three Kingdoms", which provided the basis for much of his later work, including his most well-known monograph Generals of the South: the Foundation and Early History of the Three Kingdoms State of Wu. Some of Dr. de Crespigny's other publications include China: The Land and its People (Melbourne, 1971); China This Century ( Melbourne 1975; 2nd Edition Hong Kong 1992), both discussions of modern Chinese history. But undoubtedly his most significant works are those in relation to late Han Dynasty politics. Among these are Northern Frontier: The Policies and Strategy of the Later Han Empire (Canberra, 1984); and, To Establish Peace (Canberra, 1996), a partial translation of Sima Guang's Zizhi Tongjian. He has also written more than a dozen articles, published in such journals as Papers on Far Eastern History and Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia. The defining work of Dr. de Crespigny's career would have to be Generals of the South, which narrates the rise of the Sun clan and the formation of the Three Kingdoms tripartite. It builds on the broad range of his translation experience and is telling about his historical interests. Like Northern Frontier, the work focuses on the narrative of strategies, campaigns and personalities. The approach owes a great deal to the narrative tradition of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Generals of the South discusses the population and development of Southern China from the second century A.D. onwards as well as the military defence of the south via the boundary of the Yangtze River. It contains the best discussion of the Battle of Red Cliffs and early Chinese riverine warfare available in English. The work also provides an important prelude to further research into the north-south division which occurred in the fifth century (see Northern and Southern Dynasties) and the cultural divisions which endured long after that. Dr. de Crespigny is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He is also a Fellow of the Oriental Society of Australasia and a member of the Australian Institute of International Affairs; the Asian Studies Association of Australia; the Historical Association (UK); the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia; and, the International Congress for Asian and North African Studies.
At present de Crespigny is compiling a Dictionary of Later Han biography 20-220 AD and writing a chapter for a forthcoming volume in the Cambridge History of China series.
Category:Sinologists|De Crespigny, Rafe This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Rafe de Crespigny".
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