Overview

A pioneering history that transforms our understanding of the colonial era and China's place in it China has conventionally been considered a land empire whose lack of maritime and colonial reach contributed to its economic decline after the mid-eighteenth century. Distant Shores challenges this view, showing that the economic expansion of south

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9780691214887

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Winner of the Bentley Book Prize, World History Association [A] deeply researched study. . . . Distant Shores succeeds in its objective to further nuance the conventional narrative of China's decline throughout the long 19th century by shifting the gaze to the southeastern littoral. ---Yorim Spoelder, Asian Review of Books [An] excellent study. . . . This compelling work not only provides a fresh look at the rationale behind the first Opium War, but also importantly deconstructs the rhetoric of the widely accepted fundamental divergence of Europe and China supposed to have developed starting in the eighteenth century. ---Bart Dessein, Journal of the European Association for Chinese Studies

Author Information

Melissa Macauley is associate professor of history at Northwestern University. She is the author of Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China.

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