Download or read book The First Opium War The Chinese Expedition 1840 1842 The Illustrated Edition written by Duncan McPherson and published by . This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first Anglo-Chinese War of 1839-1842 was fought essentially over trade restrictions between the British Empire and the Qing Dynasty. European traders were only permitted to sell though a cartel of Chinese merchants known as the Thirteen Hongs, and were not allowed to travel, live or trade in any other part of China apart from the Thirteen Factories in Canton. Due to the ever-growing demands of the home market for tea, and China's insistence on payment in silver, a trade imbalance in China's favour developed, and so the British, via the East India Company, began to trade in opium. Initially the Chinese authorities tolerated this, but in 1839, the new governor of Canton seized all the opium, banned its sale under threat of death, and closed the channel to Canton, effectively holding the British traders hostage. The resulting retaliation from the British was somewhat delayed, but in April 1840 the Chinese Expedition, a force of 3000 soldiers and a small naval force arrived in Singapore. After decisively defeating the Chinese in the summer 1842, the war finally ended with the signing of the Treaty of Nanking and the ceding of Hong Kong to the British Crown. Fully illustrated throughout with contemporary paintings, engravings and maps, this authoritative eye-witness account of the First Opium War was written by Duncan McPherson, a surgeon with the 37th Madras Native Infantry. Highly readable, McPherson's vivid descriptions of China and its people, and his detailed accounts of the battles give a unique perspective to the conflict. Also included is an in-depth appendix featuring the official battle reports, general orders, circulars, notifications and returns of the dead and wounded.
Download or read book China and the International System 1840 1949 written by David Scott and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2008-11-07 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the images, hopes, and fears that were evoked during China’s century-long subservience to external powers.
Download or read book Imperial Twilight written by Stephen R. Platt and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Warfare written by DK and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-04-16 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previously published in hardcover as War: The Definitive Visual History War has been central to the rise and fall of civilizations since the dawn of time. The history of warfare first emerges from legend in Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, around 3,000 years before the birth of Christ. The first armies that we know about fought in Sumeria, Ancient Egypt, and Syria. From these first battles, fought with spears or axes on horseback or on foot, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Warfare traces the campaigns and conflicts that have shaped world history and examines the evolution of military tactics and technology. The story of the development from these primitive battles to the global conflicts of the 20th century and the modern "War on Terror" is the story of humanity itself, reflecting the same political, cultural and technological forces that have defined human history. From longbows to laser-guided missiles; from chariots to jet aircraft; and from Samurai warriors to SAS soldiers, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Warfare provides the definitive visual chronicle of this intense, brutal, and often heroic tale. War combines a coherent and compelling spread-by-spread historical narrative with a wealth of supporting features on weapons and technology, strategy and tactics, the experience of war, and history's fighting elites to recount the epic 5,000-year story of warfare and combat through the ages.
Download or read book History of the Opium Problem written by Hans Derks and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-04-18 with total page 851 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering a period of about four centuries, this book demonstrates the economic and political components of the opium problem. As a mass product, opium was introduced in India and Indonesia by the Dutch in the 17th century. China suffered the most, but was also the first to get rid of the opium problem around 1950.
Download or read book Return of a King written by William Dalrymple and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From William Dalrymple—award-winning historian, journalist and travel writer—a masterly retelling of what was perhaps the West’s greatest imperial disaster in the East, and an important parable of neocolonial ambition, folly and hubris that has striking relevance to our own time. With access to newly discovered primary sources from archives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and India—including a series of previously untranslated Afghan epic poems and biographies—the author gives us the most immediate and comprehensive account yet of the spectacular first battle for Afghanistan: the British invasion of the remote kingdom in 1839. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed helmets, and facing little resistance, nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the mountain passes from India into Afghanistan in order to reestablish Shah Shuja ul-Mulk on the throne, and as their puppet. But after little more than two years, the Afghans rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into rebellion. This First Anglo-Afghan War ended with an entire army of what was then the most powerful military nation in the world ambushed and destroyed in snowbound mountain passes by simply equipped Afghan tribesmen. Only one British man made it through. But Dalrymple takes us beyond the bare outline of this infamous battle, and with penetrating, balanced insight illuminates the uncanny similarities between the West’s first disastrous entanglement with Afghanistan and the situation today. He delineates the straightforward facts: Shah Shuja and President Hamid Karzai share the same tribal heritage; the Shah’s principal opponents were the Ghilzai tribe, who today make up the bulk of the Taliban’s foot soldiers; the same cities garrisoned by the British are today garrisoned by foreign troops, attacked from the same rings of hills and high passes from which the British faced attack. Dalryrmple also makes clear the byzantine complexity of Afghanistan’s age-old tribal rivalries, the stranglehold they have on the politics of the nation and the ways in which they ensnared both the British in the nineteenth century and NATO forces in the twenty-first. Informed by the author’s decades-long firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan, and superbly shaped by his hallmark gifts as a narrative historian and his singular eye for the evocation of place and culture, The Return of a King is both the definitive analysis of the First Anglo-Afghan War and a work of stunning topicality.
Download or read book The Cambridge Illustrated History of China written by Patricia Buckley Ebrey and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-05-13 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at the over eight thousand year history and civilization of China.
Download or read book Japan and China written by Matsuda Wataru and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume ties together the histories of Japan and China for the modern period prior to the 20th century. The chapters look at Chinese and Japanese works which were written in response to events in the other country. None of these works has received any sustained attention in the west. As a result we get a view of how Chinese and Japanese saw each other at a time when there were few personal contacts allowed. Many of these texts were built on fanciful embellishments of stories that migrated from one land to the other. But the unique qualities of the Sino-Japanese cultural bond seem to have conditioned the interaction so that these texts all reveal a fascinatingly well-defined area.
Download or read book My Life in China and America written by Wing Yung and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book When China Rules the World written by Martin Jacques and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-11-12 with total page 631 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greatly revised and expanded, with a new afterword, this update to Martin Jacques’s global bestseller is an essential guide to understanding a world increasingly shaped by Chinese power Soon, China will rule the world. But in doing so, it will not become more Western. Since the first publication of When China Rules the World, the landscape of world power has shifted dramatically. In the three years since the first edition was published, When China Rules the World has proved to be a remarkably prescient book, transforming the nature of the debate on China. Now, in this greatly expanded and fully updated edition, boasting nearly 300 pages of new material, and backed up by the latest statistical data, Martin Jacques renews his assault on conventional thinking about China’s ascendancy, showing how its impact will be as much political and cultural as economic, changing the world as we know it. First published in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim - and controversy - When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order has sold a quarter of a million copies, been translated into eleven languages, nominated for two major literary awards, and is the subject of an immensely popular TED talk.
Download or read book Development Centre Studies Chinese Economic Performance in the Long Run written by Maddison Angus and published by OECD Publishing. This book was released on 1998-09-25 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study provides a major reassessment of the scale and scope of China’s resurgence over the past half century, employing quantitative measurement techniques which are standard practice in OECD countries, but which have not hitherto been available for China.
Download or read book Felice Beato written by Anne Lacoste and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2010 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fascinating life and work of an artist who captured some of the first photographs of the Far East are presented in this gorgeous volume.
Download or read book Qing Travelers to the Far West written by Jenny Huangfu Day and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fundamentally new interpretation of the Qing reveals how Sino-Western engagements transformed traditions, institutions, and networks of communications.
Download or read book From Frontier Policy to Foreign Policy written by Matthew Mosca and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-20 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, Qing rulers, officials, and scholars fused diverse, fragmented perceptions of foreign territory into one integrated worldview. In the same period, a single "foreign" policy emerged as an alternative to the many localized "frontier" policies hitherto pursued on the coast, in Xinjiang, and in Tibet. By unraveling Chinese, Manchu, and British sources to reveal the information networks used by the Qing empire to gather intelligence about its emerging rival, British India, this book explores China's altered understanding of its place in a global context. Far from being hobbled by a Sinocentric worldview, Qing China's officials and scholars paid close attention to foreign affairs. To meet the growing British threat, they adapted institutional practices and geopolitical assumptions to coordinate a response across their maritime and inland borderlands. In time, the new and more active response to Western imperialism built on this foundation reshaped not only China's diplomacy but also the internal relationship between Beijing and its frontiers.
Download or read book Opium Regimes written by Timothy Brook and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000-09-18 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opium Regimes draws on a range of research to show that the opium trade was not purely a British operation, but involved Chinese merchants and state agents, and Japanese imperial agents as well.
Download or read book The National System of Political Economy written by Friedrich List and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Englishman in China During the Victorian Era written by Alexander Michie and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: