Imperial Twilight Imperial Twilight

Imperial Twilight

The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age

    • 4.5 • 18 Ratings
    • $7.99
    • $7.99

Publisher Description

As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the country’s last age of ascendance and how it came to an end in the nineteenth-century Opium War.
 
As one of the most potent turning points in the country’s modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today’s China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to “open” China even as China’s imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country’s decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China’s advantage. The book paints an enduring portrait of an immensely profitable—and mostly peaceful—meeting of civilizations that was destined to be shattered by one of the most shockingly unjust wars in the annals of imperial history. Brimming with a fascinating cast of British, Chinese, and American characters, this riveting narrative of relations between China and the West has important implications for today’s uncertain and ever-changing political climate.

GENRE
History
RELEASED
2018
May 15
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
592
Pages
PUBLISHER
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
SELLER
Penguin Random House LLC
SIZE
80.7
MB

Customer Reviews

Gooddaymanboy ,

A sudden ending left with riddles.

Why Lin Zexu so radical? Is that a kind of communism prologue?
House of Commons Staunton
House of Lords ... Lord
Double reversals and 5 votes determine a war.
Pragmatically honorable giant in contrast to idealistically pompous dwarf.

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