Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services
Harvard University Press
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed
Requires Authentication
Quest for Power
European Imperialism and the Making of Chinese Statecraft
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2015
About this book
China’s late-imperial history has been framed as a long coda of decline, played out during the Qing dynasty. Reappraising this narrative, Stephen Halsey traces the origins of China’s current great-power status to this so-called decadent era, when threats of war with European and Japanese empirestriggered innovative state-building and statecraft.
Reviews
This is an outstanding new study of Imperial China’s relationship with the Western powers in the middle of the nineteenth century. Halsey offers surprisingly fresh data, many from the local archives, and shows that the conventional story of China’s meek ‘response’ to the West is extremely one-sided. The book convincingly demonstrates that the Chinese authorities, at the center as well as at the local level, had a rather sophisticated understanding of the international situation and took the initiative to undertake administrative and political reforms to cope with the situation.
-- Akira Iriye, editor of Global Interdependence
-- Akira Iriye, editor of Global Interdependence
A bold argument about modern Chinese statecraft that finds nineteenth-century China successful in forging a military–fiscal state worthy of comparison with familiar European examples of modern national state formation. In contrast to recent American scholarship seeking to put China into the broader African and Asian world of European colonialism, the author argues the political significance of China not becoming a formal colony, and offers a fresh account and challenging interpretation about the origins of the modern Chinese state.
-- R. Bin Wong, co-author of Before and Beyond Divergence
-- R. Bin Wong, co-author of Before and Beyond Divergence
Topics
-
Download PDFPublicly Available
Frontmatter
i -
Download PDFPublicly Available
Contents
vii -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Preface
ix -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Introduction: State-Making and Empire in a World-Historical Context
1 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
1. Europe’s Global Conquest
24 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
2. Foreign Trade
52 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
3. Money
81 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
4. Bureaucracy
113 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
5. Guns
146 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
6. Transportation
184 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
7. Communication
213 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Epilogue: State- Making in China, 1850–1949
238 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Notes
259 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Bibliography
313 -
Download PDFRequires Authentication UnlicensedLicensed
Index
337
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
October 12, 2015
eBook ISBN:
9780674089129
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
Main content:
360
Other:
1 map, 6 graphs, 10 tables
