Author: Martin Powers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367545284
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
This book examines egalitarian social ideals and institutions that arose in preindustrial China and England, and in the process, uncovers China's forgotten role in the history of social justice debate and legislation during the eighteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of visual and documentary evidence, the author shows that many prominent individuals in both England and China adopted comparable strategies as a logical response to excesses of privilege and arbitrary power, with educated but non-noble persons taking advantage of print culture, a more literate population, an expanded art market, public spaces and other familiar 'early modern' developments to interrogate the system of inherited privilege and promote a more meritocratic society. This shared experience created common ground for transformative exchange between the two great traditions during the eighteenth century. By providing a more global account of what we call Western values, the book shows that early modern China and England had far more in common than is normally supposed, and thus challenges claims on the right and the left that the people of China lacked a concept of social justice and that China's cultural legacy should be treated as exceptional in regard to human rights.
China and England
Author: Martin Powers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367545284
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
This book examines egalitarian social ideals and institutions that arose in preindustrial China and England, and in the process, uncovers China's forgotten role in the history of social justice debate and legislation during the eighteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of visual and documentary evidence, the author shows that many prominent individuals in both England and China adopted comparable strategies as a logical response to excesses of privilege and arbitrary power, with educated but non-noble persons taking advantage of print culture, a more literate population, an expanded art market, public spaces and other familiar 'early modern' developments to interrogate the system of inherited privilege and promote a more meritocratic society. This shared experience created common ground for transformative exchange between the two great traditions during the eighteenth century. By providing a more global account of what we call Western values, the book shows that early modern China and England had far more in common than is normally supposed, and thus challenges claims on the right and the left that the people of China lacked a concept of social justice and that China's cultural legacy should be treated as exceptional in regard to human rights.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780367545284
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
This book examines egalitarian social ideals and institutions that arose in preindustrial China and England, and in the process, uncovers China's forgotten role in the history of social justice debate and legislation during the eighteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of visual and documentary evidence, the author shows that many prominent individuals in both England and China adopted comparable strategies as a logical response to excesses of privilege and arbitrary power, with educated but non-noble persons taking advantage of print culture, a more literate population, an expanded art market, public spaces and other familiar 'early modern' developments to interrogate the system of inherited privilege and promote a more meritocratic society. This shared experience created common ground for transformative exchange between the two great traditions during the eighteenth century. By providing a more global account of what we call Western values, the book shows that early modern China and England had far more in common than is normally supposed, and thus challenges claims on the right and the left that the people of China lacked a concept of social justice and that China's cultural legacy should be treated as exceptional in regard to human rights.
Imperial Twilight
Author: Stephen R. Platt
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307961745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609
Book Description
As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War. As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to “open” China even as China’s imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country’s decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China’s advantage. The book paints an enduring portrait of an immensely profitable—and mostly peaceful—meeting of civilizations that was destined to be shattered by one of the most shockingly unjust wars in the annals of imperial history. Brimming with a fascinating cast of British, Chinese, and American characters, this riveting narrative of relations between China and the West has important implications for today’s uncertain and ever-changing political climate.
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307961745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609
Book Description
As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War. As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to “open” China even as China’s imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country’s decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China’s advantage. The book paints an enduring portrait of an immensely profitable—and mostly peaceful—meeting of civilizations that was destined to be shattered by one of the most shockingly unjust wars in the annals of imperial history. Brimming with a fascinating cast of British, Chinese, and American characters, this riveting narrative of relations between China and the West has important implications for today’s uncertain and ever-changing political climate.
The Laws and Economics of Confucianism
Author: Taisu Zhang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107141117
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Book Description
Zhang argues that property institutions in preindustrial China and England were a cause of China's lagging development in preindustrial times.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107141117
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 319
Book Description
Zhang argues that property institutions in preindustrial China and England were a cause of China's lagging development in preindustrial times.
The Invention of China in Early Modern England
Author: Jonathan E. Lux
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783030840341
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The Invention of China in Early Modern England describes how several different English communities became aware of China. It begins by describing how early modern intellectuals used the utopian ideal of China to license all kinds of progressive innovation before chronicling how England’s growing commerce in southeast Asia radically changed China’s representation in the English discourse community. For the new community of English merchants proposing to trade in Chinese goods, China became the seminal example in the growing discourse community of English Orientalism. It was an absolute or arbitrary authoritarian state, associated with crooked business dealings, and cloaked in a rhetoric of secrecy and exclusion—a dangerous exception to the traditions, values, and identities of the emergent English speaking states. Finally, the book points out some of the ways that contemporary English language sources continue to represent this early modern English thought tradition, labelling the complexities of modern China with analytical vocabulary perhaps better suited to the pressing political anxieties of the seventeenth century.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783030840341
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The Invention of China in Early Modern England describes how several different English communities became aware of China. It begins by describing how early modern intellectuals used the utopian ideal of China to license all kinds of progressive innovation before chronicling how England’s growing commerce in southeast Asia radically changed China’s representation in the English discourse community. For the new community of English merchants proposing to trade in Chinese goods, China became the seminal example in the growing discourse community of English Orientalism. It was an absolute or arbitrary authoritarian state, associated with crooked business dealings, and cloaked in a rhetoric of secrecy and exclusion—a dangerous exception to the traditions, values, and identities of the emergent English speaking states. Finally, the book points out some of the ways that contemporary English language sources continue to represent this early modern English thought tradition, labelling the complexities of modern China with analytical vocabulary perhaps better suited to the pressing political anxieties of the seventeenth century.
For All the Tea in China
Author: Sarah Rose
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101190019
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186
Book Description
A dramatic historical narrative of the man who stole the secret of tea from China In 1848, the British East India Company, having lost its monopoly on the tea trade, engaged Robert Fortune, a Scottish gardener, botanist, and plant hunter, to make a clandestine trip into the interior of China—territory forbidden to foreigners—to steal the closely guarded secrets of tea horticulture and manufacturing. For All the Tea in China is the remarkable account of Fortune's journeys into China—a thrilling narrative that combines history, geography, botany, natural science, and old-fashioned adventure. Disguised in Mandarin robes, Fortune ventured deep into the country, confronting pirates, hostile climate, and his own untrustworthy men as he made his way to the epicenter of tea production, the remote Wu Yi Shan hills. One of the most daring acts of corporate espionage in history, Fortune's pursuit of China's ancient secret makes for a classic nineteenth-century adventure tale, one in which the fate of empires hinges on the feats of one extraordinary man.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101190019
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 186
Book Description
A dramatic historical narrative of the man who stole the secret of tea from China In 1848, the British East India Company, having lost its monopoly on the tea trade, engaged Robert Fortune, a Scottish gardener, botanist, and plant hunter, to make a clandestine trip into the interior of China—territory forbidden to foreigners—to steal the closely guarded secrets of tea horticulture and manufacturing. For All the Tea in China is the remarkable account of Fortune's journeys into China—a thrilling narrative that combines history, geography, botany, natural science, and old-fashioned adventure. Disguised in Mandarin robes, Fortune ventured deep into the country, confronting pirates, hostile climate, and his own untrustworthy men as he made his way to the epicenter of tea production, the remote Wu Yi Shan hills. One of the most daring acts of corporate espionage in history, Fortune's pursuit of China's ancient secret makes for a classic nineteenth-century adventure tale, one in which the fate of empires hinges on the feats of one extraordinary man.
China Trade and Empire
Author: Alain Le Pichon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780197263372
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 672
Book Description
263 letters written by or to William Jardine and James Matheson... covers a period of rapid growth for Jardine, Matheson & Co, from 1827 when the founders first joined forces, to Jardine's death in 1843, shortly after the end of the Opium War
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780197263372
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 672
Book Description
263 letters written by or to William Jardine and James Matheson... covers a period of rapid growth for Jardine, Matheson & Co, from 1827 when the founders first joined forces, to Jardine's death in 1843, shortly after the end of the Opium War
Performing China
Author: Chi-ming Yang
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421404419
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a model of economic and political strength, viewed by many as the greatest empire in the world. While the importance of China to eighteenth-century English consumer culture is well documented, less so is its influence on English values. Through a careful study of the literature, drama, philosophy, and material culture of the period, this book articulates how Chinese culture influenced English ideas about virtue. Discourses of virtue were significantly shaped by the intensified trade with the East Indies. Chi-ming Yang focuses on key forms of virtue—heroism, sincerity, piety, moderation, sensibility, and patriotism—whose meanings and social importance developed in the changing economic climate of the period. She highlights the ways in which English understandings of Eastern values transformed these morals. The book is organized by type of performance—theatrical, ethnographic, and literary—and by performances of gender, identity fraud, and religious conversion. In her analysis of these works, Yang brings to light surprising connections between figures as disparate as Confucius and a Chinese Amazon and between cultural norms as far removed as Hindu reincarnation and London coffeehouse culture. Part of a new wave of cross-disciplinary scholarship, where Chinese studies meets the British eighteenth century, this novel work will appeal to scholars in a number of fields, including performance studies, East Asian studies, British literature, cultural history, gender studies, and postcolonial studies.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421404419
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Book Description
China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a model of economic and political strength, viewed by many as the greatest empire in the world. While the importance of China to eighteenth-century English consumer culture is well documented, less so is its influence on English values. Through a careful study of the literature, drama, philosophy, and material culture of the period, this book articulates how Chinese culture influenced English ideas about virtue. Discourses of virtue were significantly shaped by the intensified trade with the East Indies. Chi-ming Yang focuses on key forms of virtue—heroism, sincerity, piety, moderation, sensibility, and patriotism—whose meanings and social importance developed in the changing economic climate of the period. She highlights the ways in which English understandings of Eastern values transformed these morals. The book is organized by type of performance—theatrical, ethnographic, and literary—and by performances of gender, identity fraud, and religious conversion. In her analysis of these works, Yang brings to light surprising connections between figures as disparate as Confucius and a Chinese Amazon and between cultural norms as far removed as Hindu reincarnation and London coffeehouse culture. Part of a new wave of cross-disciplinary scholarship, where Chinese studies meets the British eighteenth century, this novel work will appeal to scholars in a number of fields, including performance studies, East Asian studies, British literature, cultural history, gender studies, and postcolonial studies.
Opium, Soldiers and Evangelicals
Author: H. Gelber
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230000703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
This book questions the universal belief that England's 1840-42 war with China was an 'Opium War'. What really worried London was 'insults to the crown', the claim of a dilapidated and corrupt China to be superior to everyone, threats to British men and women and seizure of British property, plus the wish to expand and free trade everywhere. It was only much later that general Chinese resentment and Evangelical opinion at home - and in America - persuaded everyone that Britain had indeed been wicked and fought for opium.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230000703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
This book questions the universal belief that England's 1840-42 war with China was an 'Opium War'. What really worried London was 'insults to the crown', the claim of a dilapidated and corrupt China to be superior to everyone, threats to British men and women and seizure of British property, plus the wish to expand and free trade everywhere. It was only much later that general Chinese resentment and Evangelical opinion at home - and in America - persuaded everyone that Britain had indeed been wicked and fought for opium.
Paths toward the Modern Fiscal State
Author: Wenkai He
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674074637
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 326
Book Description
Wenkai He shows why England and Japan, facing crises in public finance, developed the tools and institutions of a modern fiscal state, while China, facing similar circumstances, did not. He’s explanation for China’s failure at a critical moment illuminates one of the most important but least understood transformations of the modern world.
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674074637
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 326
Book Description
Wenkai He shows why England and Japan, facing crises in public finance, developed the tools and institutions of a modern fiscal state, while China, facing similar circumstances, did not. He’s explanation for China’s failure at a critical moment illuminates one of the most important but least understood transformations of the modern world.
The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom
Author: John Pomfret
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805092501
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 705
Book Description
"Our relationship with China remains one of the most complex and rapidly evolving, and is perhaps one of the most important to our nation's future. Here, John Pomfret ... takes us deep into these two countries' shared history, and illuminates ... every major event, relationship, and ongoing development that has affected diplomacy between these two booming, influential nations"--
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805092501
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 705
Book Description
"Our relationship with China remains one of the most complex and rapidly evolving, and is perhaps one of the most important to our nation's future. Here, John Pomfret ... takes us deep into these two countries' shared history, and illuminates ... every major event, relationship, and ongoing development that has affected diplomacy between these two booming, influential nations"--