Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Wong argues that the opium trade played a large causative role in the Anglo-Chinese Arrow War.

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.

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.

This accessible collection examines twelve historic events in the international relations of East Asia.

In Visualizing China, the authors launch a broad inquiry aimed at a synergistic understanding of the story of visuality in modern China. The essays cluster around several nodal points including photographs, advertising, posters and movies, from the 1840s to the 1960s.