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Merchants of war and peace British knowledge of China in the making of the Opium War
Author
Title
Merchants of war and peace [electronic resource] : British knowledge of China in the making of the Opium War / Song-Chuan Chen.
ISBN
9789888390274
9789888390564
Published
Baltimore, Maryland : Project Muse, 2017 (Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2015)
Hong Kong [China] : Hong Kong University Press, [2017] (Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2015)
Physical Description
1 online resource (1 PDF (ix, 230 pages) :) : map
Local Notes
Access is available to the Yale community.
Notes
Issued as part of book collections on Project MUSE.
Description based on print version record.
Access and use
Access restricted by licensing agreement.
Summary
Merchants of War and Peace challenges conventional arguments that the major driving forces of the First Opium War were the infamous opium smuggling trade, the defense of British national honor, and cultural conflicts between 'progressive' Britain and 'backward' China. Instead, it argues that the war was started by a group of British merchants in the Chinese port of Canton in the 1830s, known as the 'Warlike Party'. Living in a period when British knowledge of China was growing rapidly, the Warlike Party came to understand China's weakness and its members returned to London to lobby for intervention until war broke out in 1839. However, the Warlike Party did not get its way entirely. Another group of British merchants known in Canton as the 'Pacific Party' opposed the war. In Britain, the anti-war movement gave the conflict its infamous name, the 'Opium War', which has stuck ever since. Using materials housed in the National Archives, UK, the First Historical Archives of China, the National Palace Museum, the British Library, SOAS Library, and Cambridge University Library, this meticulously researched and lucid volume is a new history of the cause of the First Opium War.
Variant and related titles
Project MUSE - 2017 Complete.
UPCC book collections on Project MUSE.
Project MUSE - 2017 Asian and Pacific Studies.
Project MUSE - 2017 History.
Other formats
Print version:
Format
Books / Online
Language
English
Added to Catalog
June 08, 2017
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages [196]-221) and index.
Contents
Prologue
1. Introduction
2. The Warlike and Pacific parties
3. Breaking the soft border
4. Intellectual artillery
5. A war of words over 'barbarian'
6. Reasoning Britain into a war
7. The regret of a nation
8. Conclusions : profit orders of Canton.
Subjects
Also listed under
Project Muse, distributor.
Project Muse.
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