British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers

British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers PDF Author: Pamela Atwell
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Drawing on previously untapped British and Chinese documents, this is a comparative study of British and Chinese administrative methods in the small rural district of Weihaiwei in the northeast Shantung Province. The British leased the territory from the Chinese in 1898 with the intention of maintaining traditional forms of government whenever possible. But in 1930, the Chinese officials of Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist government stepped in to administer the area. Ignoring the province's governmental heritage, instituting an inappropriate bureaucratic structure, and imposing continuous tax demands, they ultimately lost the faith and respect of the local people. A foreword by Dr. N. J. Miners compares and contrasts Weihaiwei's rendition to China in 1930 with the forthcoming return to Hong Kong to China in 1997.

British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers

British Mandarins and Chinese Reformers PDF Author: Pamela Atwell
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book Here

Book Description
Drawing on previously untapped British and Chinese documents, this is a comparative study of British and Chinese administrative methods in the small rural district of Weihaiwei in the northeast Shantung Province. The British leased the territory from the Chinese in 1898 with the intention of maintaining traditional forms of government whenever possible. But in 1930, the Chinese officials of Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist government stepped in to administer the area. Ignoring the province's governmental heritage, instituting an inappropriate bureaucratic structure, and imposing continuous tax demands, they ultimately lost the faith and respect of the local people. A foreword by Dr. N. J. Miners compares and contrasts Weihaiwei's rendition to China in 1930 with the forthcoming return to Hong Kong to China in 1997.

Britain in China

Britain in China PDF Author: Robert Bickers
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526119609
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This is a study of Britain's presence in China both at its peak, and during its inter-war dissolution in the face of assertive Chinese nationalism and declining British diplomatic support. Using archival materials from China and records in Britain and the United States, the author paints a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging our understanding of British imperialism there. Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design, but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into conflict not only with the Chinese population, but with the British imperial government. The book also analyzes the formation and maintenance of settler identities, and then investigates how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British.

The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume IV: The Twentieth Century

The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume IV: The Twentieth Century PDF Author: Judith Brown
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191542393
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 801

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Book Description
The Oxford History of the British Empire is a major new assessment of the Empire in the light of recent scholarship and the progressive opening of historical records. From the founding of colonies in North America and the West Indies in the seventeenth century to the reversion of Hong Kong to China at the end of the twentieth, British imperialism was a catalyst for far-reaching change. The Oxford History of the British Empire as a comprehensive study allows us to understand the end of Empire in relation to its beginnings, the meaning of British imperialism for the ruled as well as the rulers, and the significance of the British Empire as a theme in world history. Volume IV considers many aspects of the 'imperial experience' in the final years of the British Empire, culminating in the mid-century's rapid processes of decolonization. It seeks to understand the men who managed the empire, their priorities and vision, and the mechanisms of control and connection which held the empire together. There are chapters on imperial centres, on the geographical 'periphery' of empire, and on all its connecting mechanisms, including institutions and the flow of people, money, goods, and services. The volume also explores the experience of 'imperial subjects' - in terms of culture, politics, and economics; an experience which culminated in the growth of vibrant, often new, national identities and movements and, ultimately, new nation-states. It concludes with the processes of decolonization which reshaped the political map of the late twentieth-century world.

The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume V: Historiography

The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume V: Historiography PDF Author: Robin Winks
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191542415
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 757

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Book Description
The Oxford History of the British Empire is a major new assessment of the Empire in the light of recent scholarship and the progressive opening of historical records. From the founding of colonies in North America and the West Indies in the seventeenth century to the reversion of Hong Kong to China at the end of the twentieth, British imperialism was a catalyst for far-reaching change. The Oxford History of the British Empire as a comprehensive study helps us to understand the end of Empire in relation to its beginning, the meaning of British imperialism for the ruled as well as for the rulers, and the significance of the British Empire as a theme in world history. This fifth and final volume shows how opinions have changed dramatically over the generations about the nature, role, and value of imperialism generally, and the British Empire more specifically. The distinguished team of contributors discuss the many and diverse elements which have influenced writings on the Empire: the pressure of current events, access to primary sources, the creation of relevant university chairs, the rise of nationalism in former colonies, decolonization, and the Cold War. They demonstrate how the study of empire has evolved from a narrow focus on constitutional issues to a wide-ranging enquiry about international relations, the uses of power, and impacts and counterimpacts between settler groups and native peoples. The result is a thought-provoking cultural and intellectual inquiry into how we understand the past, and whether this understanding might affect the way we behave in the future.

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist)

Kingdom of Characters (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) PDF Author: Jing Tsu
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735214743
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 What does it take to reinvent a language? After a meteoric rise, China today is one of the world’s most powerful nations. Just a century ago, it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, as the world underwent a massive technological transformation that threatened to leave them behind. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu argues that China’s most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: the century-long fight to make the formidable Chinese language accessible to the modern world of global trade and digital technology. Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who reinvented the Chinese language, among them an exiled reformer who risked a death sentence to advocate for Mandarin as a national language, a Chinese-Muslim poet who laid the groundwork for Chairman Mao's phonetic writing system, and a computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup from the floor of a jail cell. Without their advances, China might never have become the dominating force we know today. With larger-than-life characters and an unexpected perspective on the major events of China’s tumultuous twentieth century, Tsu reveals how language is both a technology to be perfected and a subtle, yet potent, power to be exercised and expanded.

V.K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China

V.K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China PDF Author: Stephen G. Craft
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813181607
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Chinese diplomat V.K. Wellington Koo (1888-1985) was involved in virtually every foreign and domestic crisis in twentieth-century China. After earning a Ph.D. from Columbia University, Koo entered government service in 1912 intent on revising the unequal treaty system imposed on China in the nineteenth century, believing that breaking the shackles of imperialism would bring China into the "family of nations." His pursuit of this nationalistic agenda was immediately interrupted by Chinese civil war and Japanese imperialism during World War I. In the 1930s Koo attempted to use international law to force western powers to honor their treaty obligations to punish Japanese expansion. Koo also participated in creating the League of Nations and later the United Nations in the hope that collective security would become reality.

Keeping Democracy at Bay

Keeping Democracy at Bay PDF Author: Suzanne Pepper
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742508774
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
This thoroughly researched study provides an invaluable account of Hong Kong's political evolution from its founding as a British colony to the present. Exploring the interplay between colonial, capitalist, communist, and democratic forces in shaping Hong Kong's political institutions and culture, Suzanne Pepper offers a fresh perspective on the territory's development and a gripping account of the transition from British to Chinese rule. The author carries her narrative forward through the lives of significant figures, capturing the personalities and issues central to understanding Hong Kong's political history. Bringing a balanced view to her often contentious subject, she places Hong Kong's current partisan debates between democrats and their opponents within the context of China's ongoing search for a viable political form. The book considers Beijing's increasing intervention in local affairs and focuses on the challenge for Hong Kong's democratic reformers in an environment where ultimate political power resides with the communist-led mainland government and its appointees.

Legal Orientalism

Legal Orientalism PDF Author: Teemu Ruskola
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674075765
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
After the Cold War, how did China become a global symbol of disregard for human rights, while the U.S positioned itself as the chief exporter of the rule of law? Teemu Ruskola investigates globally circulating narratives about what law is and who has it, and shows how “legal Orientalism” developed into a distinctly American ideology of empire.

Precarious Balance

Precarious Balance PDF Author: Ming K. Chan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131746222X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
This work closely considers the history and political importance of Hong Kong in the period 1842 to 1992.

Women and Chinese Patriarchy

Women and Chinese Patriarchy PDF Author: Maria Jaschok
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN: 9781856491266
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This collection reveals many forms of servitude that Chinese women have endured, and the avenues of escape open to some of them. The authors are anthropologists, historians and sociologists, but the book is enriched also by contributions from the participants - a social worker, a mui tsai, and a colonial civil servant. The chapters are based on original documentary or oral research and personal experience, and, throughout the book, the voices of the women, their owners and their missionary rescuers can be clearly heard.