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

ISBN: 0345803027

Author: Platt, Stephen R.

Condition: New

As China reclaims its position as a world power, Imperial Twilight looks back to tell the story of the countrys 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 countrys modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that todays 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 Chinas imperial rulers were struggling to manage their countrys decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to Chinas 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 todays uncertain and ever-changing political climate.