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Why did defeat in the Opium War not lead Ch'ing China to a more realistic appreciation of Western might and Chinese weakness? James Polachek's revisionist analysis exposes the behind-the-scenes political struggles that not only shaped foreign-policy decisions in the 1830s and 1840s but have continued to affect the history of Chinese nationalism in modern times. Polachek looks closely at the networks of literati and officials, self-consciously reminiscent of the late Ming era that sought and gained the ear of the emperor. Challenging the conventional view that Lin Tse-hsu and his supporters were selfless patriots who acted in China's best interests, Polachek agrues that, for reasons having more to do with their own domestic political agenda, these men advocated a futile policy of militant resistance to the West. Linking political intrigue, scholarly debates, and foreign affairs, local notables in Canton and literati lobbyists in Perking this book sets the Opium War for the first times in its "inner," domestic political context.
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A text book of notes on China and the Chinese.
The compilation of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (Ssu-k'u ch' an-shu) was one of the most ambitious intellectual projects of the Ch'ing dynasty. Initiated by imperial command in 1772, the project sought to evaluate, edit, and reproduce the finest Chinese writings in the four traditional categories: Confucian classics, histories, philosophy, and belles lettres. The final products, created over a twenty-two year period, were an annotated catalog of some ten thousand titles and seven new manuscript libraries of nearly thirty-six hundred titles. The project had its darker side as well, for together with the evaluation of books there developed a campaign of censorship and proscripti...