Author: John Slade
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Author: Paul A. Van Dyke
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9622097499
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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This study utilizes a wide range of new source materials to reconstruct the day-to-day operations of the port of Canton during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. Using a bottom-up approach, it provides a fresh look at the successes and failures of the trade by focusing on the practices and procedures rather than on the official policies and protocols. The narrative, however, reads like a story as the author unravels the daily lives of all the players from sampan operators, pilots, compradors and linguists, to country traders, supercargoes, Hong merchants and customs officials. New areas to studies of this kind are covered as well, such as Armenians, junk traders and rice traders, all of whom played intricate roles in moving the commerce forward. The Canton Trade shows that contrary to popular belief, the trade was stable, predictable and secure, with many incentives built into the policies to encourage it to grow. The huge expansion of trade was, in fact, one of the factors that contributed to its collapse as the increase in revenues blinded government officials to the long-term deterioration of the lower administrative echelons. In the end, the system was toppled, but that happened mainly because it had already defeated itself. General readers and academicians interested in world and Asian history, trading companies, country trade, Hong merchants, and articles of trade will find much new and relevant information here.

Author: Christopher Cowell
Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
ISBN: 9882372902
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Form Follows Fever is the first in-depth account of the turbulent early years of settlement and growth of colonial Hong Kong across the 1840s. During this period, the island gained a terrible reputation as a diseased and deadly location. Malaria, then perceived as a mysterious vapour or miasma, intermittently carried off settlers by the hundreds. Various attempts to arrest its effects acted as a catalyst, reconfiguring both the city’s physical and political landscape, though not necessarily for the better. Caught in a frenzy to rebuild the city in the devastating aftermath, this book charts the complex interplay between a cast of figures, from military surveyors, naval doctors, Indian sepoys, and corrupt and paranoid officials to opium traders, arsonists, Chinese contractors, and sojourner architects and artists. However, Hong Kong’s ‘construction’ was not just physical but also imagined. Architecture, cartography, epidemiology, and urban infrastructure offer a critical forensic lens through which to examine the shifting ideologies of public health and space, race and place-making, and commerce and politics, all set against the radical alteration of the settlement—from shore-hugging to climbing city—in response to miasma theory, a pre-bacteriological belief in gaseous emanations from a sickly environment. This kaleidoscopic study draws upon many unpublished textual sources, including medical reports, personal diaries and letters, government records, journal accounts, newspaper articles, and advertisements. As this history is set a decade before the introduction of photography to the colony, the book relies upon a variety of alternate visual evidence—from previously lost watercolour illustrations of the city to maps, plans, and drawings— that individually and in combination provide trace material enabling the reconstruction of this strange and rapidly evolving society. Form Follows Fever sheds new light on a period often considered the colonial Dark Ages in the territory’s history. ------------------------------------------------------------- Christopher Cowell’s account of British Hong Kong offers the most detailed account yet of the crucial first decade of the colony’s existence. His engagement with the medley of actors, from across the globe, that contributed to the colony’s ultimate success is both intriguing and revealing. It is a brilliant miniature of colonial urban development in action. —Alex Bremner, Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Edinburgh This is a beautifully written book. Cowell offers fresh perspectives on how malaria played a decisive role in shaping the forms of the colonial built environment and the future course of the city. It is a must-read for anyone interested in Hong Kong history and urbanism. —Cecilia L. Chu, School of Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong A wonderfully rich and detailed architectural history of Hong Kong’s first decade as a British colony that sheds new light on the consequential effects of disease and climate on what was built, by whom, and why. —Cole Roskam, Department of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong Form Follows Fever shows how Hong Kong’s path from a so-called ‘barren island’ to a thriving port city was often a perilous one. It is a wonderfully original and insightful study that weaves together an unlikely melange of urban history, military engineering, and medical history. —John M. Carroll, Department of History, The University of Hong Kong

Author: Stephen R. Platt
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0345803027
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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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:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 922

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Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 948

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Author: Michael Greenberg
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN:
Category : Opium trade
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : China
Languages : en
Pages : 616

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Author: Robert Peckham
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888208446
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Empires of Panic is the first book to explore how panics have been historically produced, defined, and managed across different colonial, imperial, and post-imperial settings—from early nineteenth-century East Asia to twenty-first-century America. Contributors consider panic in relation to colonial anxieties, rumors, indigenous resistance, and crises, particularly in relation to epidemic disease. How did Western government agencies, policymakers, planners, and other authorities understand, deal with, and neutralize panics? What role did evolving technologies of communication play in the amplification of local panics into global events? Engaging with these questions, the book challenges conventional histories to show how intensifying processes of intelligence gathering did not consolidate empire, but rather served to produce critical uncertainties—the uneven terrain of imperial panic. Robert Peckham is associate professor in the Department of History and co-director of the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine at the University of Hong Kong. "Charting the relays of rumor and knowledge that stoke colonial fears of disease, disorder, and disaster, Empires of Panic offers timely and cautionary insight into how viscerally epidemics inflame imperial anxieties, and how words and their communication over new technologies accelerate panic, rally government intervention, and unsettle and entrench the exercise of global power. Relevant a century ago and even more so today." — Nayan Shah, University of Southern California; author ofContagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown "Empires generated anxiety as much as ambition. This fine study focuses on anxieties generated by disease. It is the first book of its kind to track shifting forms of panic through different geopolitical regimes and imperial formations over the course of two centuries. Working across medical and imperial histories, it is a major contribution to both." — Andrew S. Thompson, University of Exeter; author of Empire and Globalisation: Networks of People, Goods and Capital in the British World, c. 1850–1914(with Gary B. Magee)

Author: Paul A. Van Dyke
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888083929
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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The theme of this volume is the American relationship with Macao and its region through trade, politics and culture, and the focus is mainly on the late 18th and 19th centuries. The essays address topics such as the role of the China trade in US pacific expansion and exploration, US consuls, smuggling networks, missionary and educational work, and American women's perceptions of China. In all of the encounters, Macao emerges as a central player, adding a new dimension to our understanding of Sino-American relations.