Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age
Stephen R. Platt
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age
Stephen R. Platt
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
As the West’s entanglement with China has deepened since the 1990s, so too has fascination with the Opium War, and every China-watcher will want to read Stephen R. Platt’s fascinating and beautifully constructed new book.
As Stephen R. Platt describes in his masterly Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age, Chinese commerce with Western countries has been consistently defined by the dynamics of flattery and scorn, wonder and chastisement, fairness and greed. Mr. Platt, a historian at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is careful not to project the concerns of the present back onto the past. But the resonances are inescapable, and his book is important reading not only for those interested in China’s history but also for anyone seeking to understand the explosive intersection between trade and politics today.
Stephen R. Platt’s excellent new history of China and its relations with Britain and the U.S. in the 50 years up to 1839 could hardly be more timely. One of the best anglophone historians of late imperial China writing today, Platt immerses the reader in the friendships and frustrations, pleasures and hazards of a formative period in Sino-western relations.
The main takeaway from Stephen R. Platt’s wonderful new book.
Stephen Platt’s Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age may be the first book for general readers about the decline of the Qing before 1850.
Readers will find a variety of perspectives represented.
A deeply researched study of an early clash of civilizations, when England attempted to impose its will on East Asia.
...a fresh perspective on the first Opium War.