1368 : China and the Making of the Modern World / Ali Humayun Akhtar.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Akhtar, Ali Humayun, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

China--History--Ming dynasty, 1368-1644.

China.

China--History--Qing dynasty, 1644-1912.

China--Commerce--History.

China--Foreign relations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (256 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

A new picture of China's rise since the Age of Exploration and its historical impact on the modern world. The establishment of the Great Ming dynasty in 1368 was a monumental event in world history. A century before Columbus, Beijing sent a series of diplomatic missions across the South China Sea and Indian Ocean that paved the way for China's first modern global era. 1368 maps China's ascendance from the embassies of Admiral Zheng He to the arrival of European mariners and the shock of the Opium Wars. In Ali Humayun Akhtar's new picture of world history, China's current rise evokes an earlier epoch, one that sheds light on where Beijing is heading today. Spectacular accounts in Persian and Ottoman Turkish describe palaces of silk and jade in Beijing's Forbidden City. Malay legends recount stories of Chinese princesses arriving in Melaka with gifts of porcelain and gold. During Europe's Age of Exploration, Iberian mariners charted new passages to China, which the Dutch and British East India Companies transformed into lucrative tea routes. But during the British Industrial Revolution, the rise of steam engines and factories allowed the export of the very commodities once imported from China. By the end of the Opium Wars and the arrival of Commodore Perry in Japan, Chinese and Japanese reformers called for their own industrial revolutions to propel them into the twentieth century. What has the world learned from China since the Ming, and how did China reemerge in the 1970s as a manufacturing superpower? Akhtar's book provides much-needed context for understanding China's rise today and the future of its connections with both the West and a resurgent Asia.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

CHAPTER 1 Five Hundred Years across the Indian Ocean and South China Sea

CHAPTER 2 Global Beijing under the Great Ming

CHAPTER 3 Picturing China in Persian along the Silk Routes

CHAPTER 4 Trading with China in Malay along the Spice Routes

CHAPTER 5 Europe’s Search for the Spice Islands

CHAPTER 6 A Sino-Jesuit Tradition of Science and Mapmaking

CHAPTER 7 Porcelain across the Dutch Empire

CHAPTER 8 Tea across the British Empire

CHAPTER 9 China’s Eclipse and Japan’s Modernization

EPILOGUE A New Turn to the East

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Jun 2022)

ISBN:

9781503612839

150361283X

9781503631519

1503631516

OCLC:

1276804710