Encounters with China: Merchants, Missionaries and Mandarins

Trea Wiltshire

This book spans a turbulent century of encounter that began when foreign merchants and missionaries first secured a tenuous foothold in China in the 1840s, and ends when China again retreated into self-imposed isolation following the birth of the People's Republic in 1949. It was a century that produced a cavalcade of unforgettable characters that could well have been the inventions of fiction - the concubine who rose to power in the Forbidden City and the dapper Irishman who was her supporter and the doven of Peking's diplomatic community; the merchant princes who made fortunes by smuggling opium; the high-minded mandarins who triggered the notorious Opium War, and finally the revolutionaries whose spirit fuelled the birth of 29th century China.

Price: US$19.95