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Author: Ssu-yü Teng
Publisher: Oxford : Clarendon P.
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 550
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Book Description
Author: Ssu-yü Teng
Publisher: Oxford : Clarendon P.
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 550
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Stephen R. Platt
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307271730
Category : Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 514
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Book Description
A gripping account of China's nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion, one of the largest civil wars in history. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom brims with unforgettable characters and vivid re-creations of massive and often gruesome battles--a sweeping yet intimate portrait of the conflict that shaped the fate of modern China. The story begins in the early 1850s, the waning years of the Qing dynasty, when word spread of a major revolution brewing in the provinces, led by a failed civil servant who claimed to be the son of God and brother of Jesus. The Taiping rebels drew their power from the poor and the disenfranchised, unleashing the ethnic rage of millions of Chinese against their Manchu rulers. This homegrown movement seemed all but unstoppable until Britain and the United States stepped in and threw their support behind the Manchus: after years of massive carnage, all opposition to Qing rule was effectively snuffed out for generations. Stephen R. Platt recounts these events in spellbinding detail, building his story on two fascinating characters with opposing visions for China's future: the conservative Confucian scholar Zeng Guofan, an accidental general who emerged as the most influential military strategist in China's modern history; and Hong Rengan, a brilliant Taiping leader whose grand vision of building a modern, industrial, and pro-Western Chinese state ended in tragic failure. This is an essential and enthralling history of the rise and fall of the movement that, a century and a half ago, might have launched China on an entirely different path into the modern world.
Author: Jonathan D. Spence
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393285863
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
"A magnificent tapestry . . . a story that reaches beyond China into our world and time: a story of faith, hope, passion, and a fatal grandiosity."--Washington Post Book World Whether read for its powerful account of the largest uprising in human history, or for its foreshadowing of the terrible convulsions suffered by twentieth-century China, or for the narrative power of a great historian at his best, God's Chinese Son must be read. At the center of this history of China's Taiping rebellion (1845-64) stands Hong Xiuquan, a failed student of Confucian doctrine who ascends to heaven in a dream and meets his heavenly family: God, Mary, and his older brother, Jesus. He returns to earth charged to eradicate the "demon-devils," the alien Manchu rulers of China. His success carries him and his followers to the heavenly capital at Nanjing, where they rule a large part of south China for more than a decade. Their decline and fall, wrought by internal division and the unrelenting military pressures of the Manchus and the Western powers, carry them to a hell on earth. Twenty million Chinese are left dead.
Author: Stephen R. Platt
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307961745
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 609
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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.
Author: David J. Silbey
Publisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 1429942576
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
A concise history of an uprising that took down a three-hundred-year-old dynasty and united the great powers. The year is 1900, and Western empires are locked in entanglements across the globe. The British are losing a bitter war against the Boers while the German kaiser is busy building a vast new navy. The United States is struggling to put down an insurgency in the South Pacific while the upstart imperialist Japan begins to make clear to neighboring Russia its territorial ambition. In China, a perennial pawn in the Great Game, a mysterious group of superstitious peasants is launching attacks on the Western powers they fear are corrupting their country. These ordinary Chinese—called Boxers by the West because of their martial arts showmanship—rise up seemingly out of nowhere. Foreshadowing the insurgencies of our recent past, they lack a centralized leadership and instead tap into latent nationalism and deep economic frustration to build their army. Many scholars brush off the Boxer Rebellion as an ill-conceived and easily defeated revolt, but in The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China, the military historian David J. Silbey shows just how close the Boxers came to beating back the combined might of the imperial powers. Drawing on the diaries and letters of allied soldiers and diplomats, he paints a vivid portrait of the war. Although their cause ended just as quickly as it began, the Boxers would inspire Chinese nationalists—including a young Mao Zedong—for decades to come.
Author: William T. Rowe
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674054555
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
In a brisk revisionist history, William Rowe challenges the standard narrative of Qing China as a decadent, inward-looking state that failed to keep pace with the modern West. This original, thought-provoking history of China's last empire is a must-read for understanding the challenges facing China today.
Author: Harold Miles Tanner
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 0872209156
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 626
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Book Description
A deep and rigorous, yet eminently accessible introduction to the political, social, and cultural development of imperial Chinese civilisation, this volume develops a number of important themes -- such as the ethnic diversity of the early empires -- that other editions omit entirely or discuss only minimally. Includes a general introduction, chronology, bibliography, illustrations, maps, and an index.
Author: Paul Kennedy
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141983833
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 592
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Book Description
Paul Kennedy's classic naval history, now updated with a new introduction by the author This acclaimed book traces Britain's rise and fall as a sea power from the Tudors to the present day. Challenging the traditional view that the British are natural 'sons of the waves', he suggests instead that the country's fortunes as a significant maritime force have always been bound up with its economic growth. In doing so, he contributes significantly to the centuries-long debate between 'continental' and 'maritime' schools of strategy over Britain's policy in times of war. Setting British naval history within a framework of national, international, economic, political and strategic considerations, he offers a fresh approach to one of the central questions in British history. A new introduction extends his analysis into the twenty-first century and reflects on current American and Chinese ambitions for naval mastery. 'Excellent and stimulating' Correlli Barnett 'The first scholar to have set the sweep of British Naval history against the background of economic history' Michael Howard, Sunday Times 'By far the best study that has ever been done on the subject ... a sparkling and apt quotation on practically every page' Daniel A. Baugh, International History Review 'The best single-volume study of Britain and her naval past now available to us' Jon Sumida, Journal of Modern History
Author: Odd Arne Westad
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465029361
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536
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Book Description
As the twenty-first century dawns, China stands at a crossroads. The largest and most populous country on earth and currently the world's second biggest economy, China has recently reclaimed its historic place at the center of global affairs after decades of internal chaos and disastrous foreign relations. But even as China tentatively reengages with the outside world, the contradictions of its development risks pushing it back into an era of insularity and instability -- a regression that, as China's recent history shows, would have serious implications for all other nations. In Restless Empire, award-winning historian Odd Arne Westad traces China's complex foreign affairs over the past 250 years, identifying the forces that will determine the country's path in the decades to come. Since the height of the Qing Empire in the eighteenth century, China's interactions -- and confrontations -- with foreign powers have caused its worldview to fluctuate wildly between extremes of dominance and subjugation, emulation and defiance. From the invasion of Burma in the 1760s to the Boxer Rebellion in the early 20th century to the 2001 standoff over a downed U.S. spy plane, many of these encounters have left Chinese with a lingering sense of humiliation and resentment, and inflamed their notions of justice, hierarchy, and Chinese centrality in world affairs. Recently, China's rising influence on the world stage has shown what the country stands to gain from international cooperation and openness. But as Westad shows, the nation's success will ultimately hinge on its ability to engage with potential international partners while simultaneously safeguarding its own strength and stability. An in-depth study by one of our most respected authorities on international relations and contemporary East Asian history, Restless Empire is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the recent past and probable future of this dynamic and complex nation.
Author: David M. Pletcher
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826263534
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 393
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Book Description
Annotation Like its predecessor, this important new work is focused on the connection between trade and investment on the one hand and U.S. foreign policy on the other. David Pletcher describes the trade of the United States with the Far East, the islands of the Pacific, and the northwest coast of North America from 1784 (the year of the first American trading expedition to China) to 1844 (the year of the first trade treaty with China, followed immediately by the U.S. acquisition of Oregon and California). He then traces the growth of trade and investment in Alaska, Hawaii, and the South Pacific from 1844 to 1890 and proceeds to do the same for China, Japan, and Korea. In the ensuing chapters, Pletcher covers the 1890s, including the annexation of Hawaii, the Sino-Japanese War, the acquisition of the Philippines, and the Open Door policy in China. He concludes that the American expansion across the Pacific and into the Far East was not a deliberate, consistent drive for economic hegemony but a halting, experimental, improvised movement, carried out against determined opposition and indifference and dotted with setbacks and failures. Providing his own judgments about the wisdom and effectiveness of America's new endeavors, Pletcher summarizes the problems and handicaps involved, demonstrating that errors of the twentieth century were at least partly the result of poor preparation in the 1880s and 1890s. Touching on every place where Americans undertook significant economic activity, The Diplomacy of Involvementwill be an important aid for seasoned scholars, as well as an excellent introduction for the novice
