作者: Robert Bickers
出版社: Allen Lane
出版年: 2011-2-24
页数: 512
定价: GBP 30.00
装帧: Hardcover
ISBN: 9780713997491
内容简介
In the early 19th century China remained almost untouched by Britain and other European powers – ferocious laws forbade all trade with the West outside one tiny area of Canton. Anyone teaching a European to speak Chinese was executed. But as new technology began to unbalance the relationship, foreigners gathered like wolves around the weakening Qing Empire. Would the Chinese suffer the fate of much of the rest of the world, carved into pieces by the Europeans? Or could they adapt rapidly enough to maintain their independence? Humiliated by military disaster, racked by rebellions that cost millions of lives and ultimately invaded during the Boxer Rebellion by thousands of foreign soldiers, it looked as though the colonial Scramble for Africa was about to be followed by the Scramble for China. This extraordinary new book tells this epic story both from the European (mainly British) point of view and the Chinese. The degradation of China in this period is crucially important to understanding China today, whose government and people are steeped in stories of this terrible time and never wish to appear weak again. “The Scramble for China” is both highly original and brilliantly written – it reimagines these encounters between two equally arrogant and scornful civilizations, whether from the point of view of a Chinese governor or a British soldier. It is an epic of squalor, romance, brutality and exoticism, and it changed the world.
目录
List of Illustrations xi
List of Maps and Figures xv
1 Introduction 1
2 Unwelcome Guests 18
3 On a Chinese Stage 51
4 Lindsay’s War and Peace 77
5 Model Settlements 113
6 China El Dorado 151
7 At the Heart of the Heart of the Empire 187
8 Inland Dreams 230
9 Coastwise 264
10 Jubilees 300
11 Extinction 337
12 History 374
Acknowledgments 400
Glossary of Place Names 402
Unpublished and Archival Sources 404
Abbreviations 407
Notes 408
Index 479