Through biographies of China's most colorful and famous personalities, John Wills displays the five-thousand-year sweep of Chinese history from the legendary sage emperors to the tragedy of Tiananmen Square. This unique introduction to Chinese history and culture uses more than twenty exemplary lives--biographies of China's most colorful and famous personalities--including those of statesmen, philosophers, poets, and rulers, to provide the focus for accounts of key historical trends and pe...

In The World from 1450 to 1700, historian John Wills takes a fresh look at one of the most fascinating and tumultuous periods in world history. Assuming a global perspective, rather than the traditional Eurocentric view, Wills traces the interwoven changes that led from the world of Columbus, Luther, and the Mughal emperor Babur to the world of Locke, Louis XIV, and the Kangxi emperor. The book's multi-centered approach explores historical events not in isolation but rather in a d...

In recent times, the Asia-Pacific region has far surpassed Europe in terms of reciprocal trade with the United States, and since the 1980s immigrants from Asia entering the United States have exceeded their counterparts from Europe, reversing a longstanding historical trend and making Asian Americans the country’s fastest growing racial group. What does transpacific history look like if the arc of the story is extended to the present?The essays in this volume offer answers to this ...

Sea Rovers, Silver, and Samurai traces the roots of modern global East Asia by focusing on the fascinating history of its seaways. The East Asian maritime realm, from the Straits of Malacca to the Sea of Japan, has been a core region of international trade for millennia, but during the long seventeenth century (1550 to 1700), the velocity and scale of commerce increased dramatically. Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese smugglers and pirates forged autonomous networks and maritime po...

China and Maritime Europe, 1500–1800 looks at early modern China in some of its most complicated and intriguing relations with a world of increasing global interconnection. New World silver, Chinese tea, Jesuit astronomers at the Chinese court, and merchants and marauders of all kinds play important roles here. Although pieces of these stories have been told before, these chapters provide the fullest and clearest available summaries, based on sources in Chinese and in European languages, m...

An authoritative account of five thousand years of Chinese history.**"Exquisitely written." —**GuardianMany nations define themselves in terms of territory or people; China defines itself in terms of history. Taking into account the country's unrivaled, voluminous tradition of history writing, John Keay has composed a vital and illuminating overview of the nation's complex and vivid past.Keay's authoritative history examine...

The turbulent and chequered past of the world's most populous country is one of the most fascinating in world history, and relatively little known in the West. From the beginnings of Chinese prehistory right through to internet censorship with the 'Great Firewall of China', Gordon Kerr offers a comprehensive introduction to the sprawling history of this enormous country. A Short History of China provides an absorbing introduction to more than 4,000 years of Chinese history, telling the sto...

A "gripping, colorful" history of China's Great Wall that explores the conquests and cataclysms of the empire from 1000 BC to the present day ( Publishers Weekly).Over two thousand years old, the Great Wall of China is a symbolic and physical dividing line between the civilized Chinese and the "barbarians" at their borders. Historian Julia Lovell looks behind the intimidating fortification and its mythology to uncover a complex history far more fragmented ...

From the founding of the Ming dynasty in 1368 to the start of the Opium Wars in 1841, China has engaged in only two large-scale conflicts with its principal neighbors, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. These four territorial and centralized states have otherwise fostered peaceful and long-lasting relationships with one another, and as they have grown more powerful, the atmosphere around them has stabilized.Focusing on the role of the "tribute system" in maintaining stability in East Asia ...

An internationally recognized authority on Chinese history and a leading innovator in its telling, Cho-yun Hsu constructs an original portrait of Chinese culture. Unlike most historians, Hsu resists centering his narrative on China's political evolution, focusing instead on the country's cultural sphere and its encounters with successive waves of globalization. Beginning long before China's written history and extending through the twentieth century, Hsu follows the content and expansion o...

This powerful work puts to rest the long-held myth that Chinese civilization is monolithic, unchanging, and perennially cut off from the rest of the world.An inviting history of China from the days of the ancient Silk Road to the present, this book describes a civilization more open and engaged with the rest of the world than we think. Whether in trade, religious belief, ideology, or technology, China has long taken part in fruitful exchange with other cultures. Wi...

China’s unmatched ability to reinvent itself over the centuries is perhaps its most timeless asset. Even in the wake of violent civil wars, Mongol invaders, and turbulent governance, China has endured and, in recent times, achieved a level of prosperity rivaled by few other countries in the world. The events that transformed China from an imperial nation to a superpower are chronicled in this comprehensive volume that introduces the history of the world’s largest and one of its most dynami...