America's First Adventure in China

America's First Adventure in China PDF Author: John R Haddad
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1439906912
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
In 1784, when Americans first voyaged to China, they confronted Chinese authorities who were unaware that the United States even existed. Nevertheless, a long, complicated, and fruitful trade relationship was born after American traders, missionaries, diplomats, and others sailed to China with lofty ambitions: to acquire fabulous wealth, convert China to Christianity, and even command a Chinese army. In America's First Adventure in China, John Haddad provides a colorful history of the evolving cultural exchange and interactions between these countries. He recounts how American expatriates adopted a pragmatic attitude-as well as an entrepreneurial spirit and improvisational approach-to their dealings with the Chinese. Haddad shows how opium played a potent role in the dreams of Americans who either smuggled it or opposed its importation, and he considers the missionary movement that compelled individuals to accept a hard life in an alien culture. As a result of their efforts, Americans achieved a favorable outcome—they established a unique presence in China—and cultivated a relationship whose complexities continue to grow.

America's First Adventure in China

America's First Adventure in China PDF Author: John R Haddad
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1439906912
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1784, when Americans first voyaged to China, they confronted Chinese authorities who were unaware that the United States even existed. Nevertheless, a long, complicated, and fruitful trade relationship was born after American traders, missionaries, diplomats, and others sailed to China with lofty ambitions: to acquire fabulous wealth, convert China to Christianity, and even command a Chinese army. In America's First Adventure in China, John Haddad provides a colorful history of the evolving cultural exchange and interactions between these countries. He recounts how American expatriates adopted a pragmatic attitude-as well as an entrepreneurial spirit and improvisational approach-to their dealings with the Chinese. Haddad shows how opium played a potent role in the dreams of Americans who either smuggled it or opposed its importation, and he considers the missionary movement that compelled individuals to accept a hard life in an alien culture. As a result of their efforts, Americans achieved a favorable outcome—they established a unique presence in China—and cultivated a relationship whose complexities continue to grow.

Meeting China Halfway

Meeting China Halfway PDF Author: Lyle J. Goldstein
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 162616634X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Though a US-China conflict is far from inevitable, major tensions are building in the Asia-Pacific region. These strains are the result of historical enmity, cultural divergence, and deep ideological estrangement, not to mention apprehensions fueled by geopolitical competition and the closely related “security dilemma.” Despite worrying signs of intensifying rivalry, few observers have provided concrete paradigms to lead this troubled relationship away from disaster. This book is dramatically different in that Lyle J. Goldstein’s focus is on laying bare both US and Chinese perceptions of where their interests clash and proposing new paths to ease bilateral tensions through compromise. Each chapter contains a “cooperation spiral” —the opposite of an escalation spiral—to illustrate these policy proposals. Goldstein makes one hundred policy proposals over the course of this book to inaugurate a genuine debate regarding cooperative policy solutions to the most vexing problems in US-China relations. Goldstein not only parses findings from American scholarship but also breaks new ground by analyzing hundreds of Chinese-language sources, including military publications, never before evaluated by Western experts. Meeting China Halfway, new in paperback, remains a refreshing and unique contribution to the study of the world’s most important bilateral relationship.

When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail

When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail PDF Author: Eric Jay Dolin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871404338
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Traces the history of the relationship between America and China back to its earliest days, when the United States traded with China for furs, opium, and rare sea cucumbers, but left an ecological and human rights disaster that still reverberates today.

American Policy Discourses on China

American Policy Discourses on China PDF Author: Yan Chang Bennett
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1036408132
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
This book’s compelling analysis examines the narratives surrounding US-China relations from early American perspectives to the present day, revealing enduring perceptions of China that continue to significantly influence policy decisions. As revealed through discourse, Americans find China to be an amalgam of the curious and fantastic, a “swirling kaleidoscope” of emotion and intellectual challenge. 19th century depictions of China amounted to an odd assortment of images that did not add up to a single cohesive vision. 20th century perceptions about China merged ancient philosophers with political leaders, knitted ancient philosophy with socialist ideals, and amplified the exotic while minimizing the more mundane, evoking a spectrum of American passions, hopes, and fears. In the 21st century, this "swirling kaleidoscope" continues to shape American perspectives on China. The book offers a unique examination of the complex history of the modern world’s most important bilateral relationship. Through the lens of discourse analysis, it provides a fresh perspective, unveiling previously overlooked narratives, illuminating the dynamics between these global powerhouses, and suggesting pathways for the future.

Smoke and Ashes

Smoke and Ashes PDF Author: Amitav Ghosh
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374711992
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Foreign Policy, Literary Hub, and The Millions Ghosh unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own family―the climax of a yearslong project. When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis Trilogy, he was startled to learn how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote about were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those currents: opium. Most surprising of all, however, was the discovery that his own identity and family history were swept up in the story. Smoke and Ashes is at once a travelogue, a memoir, and an essay in history, drawing on decades of archival research. In it, Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, and China, as well as the world at large. The trade was engineered by the British Empire, which exported Indian opium to sell to China to redress their great trade imbalance, and its revenues were essential to the empire’s financial survival. Following the profits further, Ghosh finds opium central to the origins of some of the world’s biggest corporations, of America’s most powerful families and prestigious institutions (from the Astors and Coolidges to the Ivy League), and of contemporary globalism itself. Moving deftly between horticultural history, the mythologies of capitalism, and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism, in Smoke and Ashes Ghosh reveals the role that one small plant has had in making our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.

The Fabric of Empire

The Fabric of Empire PDF Author: Danielle C. Skeehan
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421439689
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Revealing the entangled lives of texts and textiles in the early modern Atlantic world. "Textiles are the books that the colony was not able to burn."—Asociación Femenina para el Desarrollo de Sacatepéquez (AFEDES) A history of the book in the Americas, across deep time, would reveal the origins of a literary tradition woven rather than written. It is in what Danielle Skeehan calls material texts that a people's history and culture is preserved, in their embroidery, their needlework, and their woven cloth. In defining textiles as a form of cultural writing, The Fabric of Empire challenges long-held ideas about authorship, textuality, and the making of books. It is impossible to separate text from textiles in the early modern Atlantic: novels, newspapers, broadsides, and pamphlets were printed on paper made from household rags. Yet the untethering of text from textile served a colonial agenda to define authorship as reflected in ink and paper and the pen as an instrument wielded by learned men and women. Skeehan explains that the colonial definition of the book, and what constituted writing and authorship, left colonial regimes blind to nonalphabetic forms of media that preserved cultural knowledge, history, and lived experience. This book shifts how we look at cultural objects such as books and fabric and provides a material and literary history of resistance among the globally dispossessed. Each chapter examines the manufacture and global circulation of a particular type of cloth alongside the complex print networks that ensured the circulation of these textiles, promoted their production, petitioned for or served to curtail the rights of textile workers, facilitated the exchange of textiles for human lives, and were, in turn, printed and written on surfaces manufactured from broken-down linen and cotton fibers. Bringing together methods and materials traditionally belonging to literary studies, book history, and material culture studies, The Fabric of Empire provides a new model for thinking about the different media, languages, literacies, and textualities in the early Atlantic world.

Missionary Diplomacy

Missionary Diplomacy PDF Author: Emily Conroy-Krutz
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150177400X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Missionary Diplomacy illuminates the crucial place of religion in nineteenth-century American diplomacy. From the 1810s through the 1920s, Protestant missionaries positioned themselves as key experts in the development of American relations in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Middle East. Missionaries served as consuls, translators, and occasional trouble-makers who forced the State Department to take actions it otherwise would have avoided. Yet as decades passed, more Americans began to question the propriety of missionaries' power. Were missionaries serving the interests of American diplomacy? Or were they creating unnecessary problems? As Emily Conroy-Krutz demonstrates, they were doing both. Across the century, missionaries forced the government to articulate new conceptions of the rights of US citizens abroad and of the role of the US as an engine of humanitarianism and religious freedom. By the time the US entered the first world war, missionary diplomacy had for nearly a century created the conditions for some Americans to embrace a vision of their country as an internationally engaged world power. Missionary Diplomacy exposes the longstanding influence of evangelical missions on the shape of American foreign relations.

Historical Dictionary of the Early American Republic

Historical Dictionary of the Early American Republic PDF Author: Richard Buel Jr.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442262990
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
The drafting and ratification of the federal constitution between 1787 and 1788 capped almost 30 years of revolutionary turmoil and warfare. The supporters of the new constitution, known at the time as Federalists, looked to the new national government to secure the achievements of the Revolution. But they shared the same doubts that the Anti-federalists had voiced about whether the republican form of government could be made to work on a continental scale. Nor was it a foregone conclusion that the new government would succeed in overcoming parochial interests to weld the separate states into a single nation. During the next four decades the institutions and precedents governing the behavior of the national government took shape, many of which are still operative today. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Early American Republic contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about American history.

Terminus

Terminus PDF Author: Stuart Rollo
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421447398
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
A sweeping narrative of America's imperial history and its long entanglement with China. In Terminus, Stuart Rollo examines the origins and trajectory of American empire in the Asia-Pacific region, focusing on its westward expansion and historic entanglement with China. American foreign and strategic policy in this region, Rollo argues, has always been shaped by broader economic and political concerns centered on China. China's current rise, and the economic and strategic systems that China is developing, represents the most serious challenge to the structure of American empire to date. Rollo paints a sweeping historical narrative of American imperial history and its relationship with China from 1776 to the present. Grounded in archival research, official and personal correspondence, policy documents, declassified intelligence material, and congressional records, Terminus traces the development of American empire building from the pre-independence period to the eve of World War I, arguing that this new empire was primarily driven by commercial interests in China. Rollo explores shifts in global power, resource politics, and international economic structures that led the United States to transition from one of several imperial powers to the world's sole superpower by the last decade of the twentieth century. Finally, he examines the decline of American empire since its brief period of unipolarity in the 1990s, explaining the new pressures and challenges posed by the rise of China. Rollo proposes three scenarios for how the United States might manage its inevitable imperial decline: a vain attempt to shore up and extend the empire, an exploitative hegemony, or a post-imperial foreign policy. This last option would work to repair the damaged fabric of American social and political life, providing a long-term, stable foundation for national security, prosperity, and the well-being of its citizens. All empires eventually end, but with the benefit of hindsight, Rollo urges us to consider how to engineer a softer landing.

The Private Side of the Canton Trade, 1700–1840

The Private Side of the Canton Trade, 1700–1840 PDF Author: Paul A. Van Dyke
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888390937
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
It is not often recognized that China was one of the few places in the early modern world where all merchants had equal access to the market. This study shows that private traders, regardless of the volume of their trade, were granted the same privileges in Canton as the large East India companies. All of these companies relied, to some extent, on private capital to finance their operations. Without the investments from individuals, the trade with China would have been greatly hindered. Competitors, large and small, traded alongside each other while enemies traded alongside enemies. Buddhists, Muslims, Catholics, Protestants, Parsees, Armenians, Hindus, and others lived and worked within the small area in the western suburbs of Canton designated for foreigners. Cantonese shopkeepers were not allowed to discriminate against any foreign traders. In fact, the shopkeepers were generally working in a competitive environment, providing customer-oriented service that generated goodwill, friendship, and trust. These contributed to the growth of the trade as a whole. While many private traders were involved in smuggling opium, others, such as Nathan Dunn, were much opposed to it. The case studies in this volume demonstrate that fortunes could be made in China by trading in legitimate items just as successfully as in illegitimate ones, which tellingly suggests that the rapid spread of opium smuggling in China could be a result of inadequate, rather than excessive, regulation by the Qing government. ‘For this absorbing book, Van Dyke and Schopp have convened excellent scholars, junior and senior, to throw new light on the foreign merchants outside the East India companies who shaped China’s engagement with the world at least as much as the companies’ men did, if not more. The slumbering field of foreign trade in Qing China has come back to life.’ —Timothy Brook, University of British Columbia ‘Much scholarship on the China trade has focused on the activities of the vast state-sponsored companies. This book flips the script. Now we know that, right under the noses of those economic behemoths, smaller private traders from Europe, America, and China were quietly reshaping the trade with their innovation, networking, grit, and dreams.’ —John R. Haddad, The Pennsylvania State University