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Author: Alain Le Pichon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2006-08-10
Total Pages: 672
ISBN-13: 9780197263372
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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
Author: Howard T. Fry
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
Published: 2016-12-15
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 1445664992
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →With the rival imperial powers of Europe girdling the globe with trade, how did Australia come to be British?
Author: Stephen R. Platt
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2018-05-15
Total Pages: 592
ISBN-13: 0307961745
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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: G. B. Souza
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2004-07-08
Total Pages: 308
ISBN-13: 9780521531351
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →In this original study of the Portuguese Empire in the East, the Estado da India, George Souza looks in detail at the activities of Macao. His aim is to enquire into the nature of Portuguese society in China and the South China Sea and explain why the political and economic activities of the Portuguese crown did not inhibit the growth of local entrepreneurial trade. He also examines the nature of Portuguese maritime trade in Asia and analyses the focal role of Macao as an adjunct to the Canton market. The operations of Portuguese private merchants, the so-called 'country traders', are described and tellingly assessed in the wider context of the economic development of China and Southeast Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Author: Odd Arne Westad
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2012-08-28
Total Pages: 536
ISBN-13: 0465029361
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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: Han Shih Toh
Publisher: World Scientific
Published: 2016-11-28
Total Pages: 292
ISBN-13: 9814667447
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →With the rapid increase in China's overseas investment and trade, China's global economic clout is increasing by the day. Does China's global economic reach make it an empire in the 21st century? What sort of impact will China's trade and investment have on its global counterparts? Chinese investment projects around the world, from railways in Africa and dams in Latin America to the acquisition of landmark buildings in the US, look to alter global patterns of influence and power. How would other countries react to China's rising international influence? The US government and many Americans deny their country is an empire, although the US status as the leading superpower makes it an empire in all but name. How will China coexist with the US, which has arguably been an imperialist power since the end of World War II? How will the incumbent neo-imperialist power, the US, deal with an emergent China? With its acute analysis of Sino–US relations, the book will interest readers who wish to understand the impact of China on various countries, its place on the world stage as well as the geopolitical implications for all in the 21st century.
Author: Dael A. Norwood
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2022-01-18
Total Pages: 279
ISBN-13: 0226815587
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Introduction: America's Business with China -- Founding a Free, Trading Republic -- The Paradox of a Pacific Policy -- Troubled Waters -- Sovereign Rights, or America's First Opium Problem -- The Empire's New Roads -- This Slave Trade of the Nineteenth Century -- A Propped-Open Door -- Death of a Trade, Birth of a Market.
Author: Edward L. Shaughnessy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2005
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780195182873
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →To Western eyes, China is one of the most mysterious and intriguing of all civilizations. The legacy of its long dynastic rule, extending back more than 3,000 years, includes fascinating contributions to philosophy, religion, art, science, and mythology that continue to influence the modern world. China explores the ideas and achievements of this unique culture through a combination of authoritative, accessible scholarship and magnificent imagery. Drawing on the most recent discoveries and theories, the book presents China's history, society, and beliefs from the legends of prehistory to the end of imperial power in 1912. It investigates the key cultural, spiritual, and artistic traditions of this vast civilization and describes the country's major scientific and technological innovations, such as gunpowder, printing, and the compass. An investigation of trading routes, both by land and sea, challenges the conventional view of China as an isolated, insular civilization, stressing instead the impact of its sophisticated society upon the world. A final section discusses the continuing legacy of the imperial period through the turbulent years of the twentieth century up to the present day. A wealth of color photography and imaginative artwork, together with a lively and authoritative text, vividly evokes the pinnacles of Chinese civilization as well as the realities of everyday life, from life in the Imperial court to the most rural villages.
Author: Jin Xu
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2021-02-23
Total Pages: 385
ISBN-13: 0300258275
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A thousand-year history of how China’s obsession with silver influenced the country’s financial well-being, global standing, and political stability This revelatory account of the ways silver shaped Chinese history shows how an obsession with “white metal” held China back from financial modernization. First used as currency during the Song dynasty in around 900 CE, silver gradually became central to China’s economic framework and was officially monetized in the middle of the Ming dynasty during the sixteenth century. However, due to the early adoption of paper money in China, silver was not formed into coins but became a cumbersome “weighing currency,” for which ingots had to be constantly examined for weight and purity—an unwieldy practice that lasted for centuries. While China’s interest in silver spurred new avenues of trade and helped increase the country’s global economic footprint, Jin Xu argues that, in the long run, silver played a key role in the struggles and entanglements that led to the decline of the Chinese empire.
Author: Raoul McLaughlin
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2016-11-11
Total Pages: 249
ISBN-13: 1473889812
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →A fascinating history of the intricate web of trade routes connecting ancient Rome to Eastern civilizations, including its powerful rival, the Han Empire. The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes investigates the trade routes between Rome and the powerful empires of inner Asia, including the Parthian Empire of ancient Persia, and the Kushan Empire which seized power in Bactria (Afghanistan), laying claim to the Indus Kingdoms. Further chapters examine the development of Palmyra as a leading caravan city on the edge of Roman Syria. Raoul McLaughlin also delves deeply into Rome’s trade ventures through the Tarim territories, which led its merchants to the Han Empire of ancient China. Having established a system of Central Asian trade routes known as the Silk Road, the Han carried eastern products as far as Persia and the frontiers of the Roman Empire. Though they were matched in scale, the Han surpassed its European rival in military technology. The first book to address these subjects in a single comprehensive study, The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes explores Rome’s impact on the ancient world economy and reveals what the Chinese and Romans knew about their rival Empires.
