Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750
- ISBN-10
- 1446485102
- ISBN-13
- 9781446485101
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 528
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2012-09-06
- Publisher
- Random House
- Author
- Odd Arne Westad
Description
Over the past 250 years of momentous change and dramatic upheaval, China has proved itself to be a Restless Empire. Tracing China’s course from the eighteenth-century Qing Dynasty to today's People’s Republic, Restless Empire shows how the country’s worldview has evolved. It explains how Chinese attitudes have been determined by both receptiveness and resistance to outside influence and presents the preoccupations that have set its foreign-relations agenda. Within two decades China is likely to depose the United States as the world’s largest economy. By then the country expects to have eradicated poverty among its population of more than one and a half billion, and established itself as the world’s technological powerhouse. Meanwhile, some – especially its neighbours – are afraid that China will strengthen its military might in order to bend others to its will. A new form of Chinese nationalism is rising. Many Chinese are angry about perceived past injustices and fear a loss of identity to commercial forces and foreign influences. So, will China’s attraction to world society dwindle, or will China continue to engage? Will it attempt to recreate a Sino-centric international order in Eastern Asia, or pursue a more harmonious diplomatic route? And can it overcome its lack of democracy and transparency, or are these characteristics hard-wired into the Chinese system? Whatever the case, we ignore China’s international history at our peril. Restless Empire is a magisterial and indispensible history of the most important state in world affairs today. WINNER OF THE 2013 ASIA SOCIETY BERNARD SCHWARTZ BOOK AWARD
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Empire and Righteous Nation
By Odd Arne WestadIlluminating both the ties and the tensions that have characterized the China-Korea relationship, Empire and Righteous Nation provides a valuable foundation for understanding a critical geopolitical dynamic.
-
Hadrian: The Restless Emperor
By Anthony R Birley, Anthony R. BirleyIn Hadrian: The Restless Emperor, Anthony Birley brings together the new evidence from inscriptions and papyri, and up-to-date and in-depth examination of the work of other scholars on aspects of Hadrian's reign and policies such as the ...
-
Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire
By Tony Ballantyne, Antoinette M. BurtonInvestigating how intimacy is constructed across the restless world of empire
-
Captivity
By György SpiróA literary sensation in Hungary, Gyorgy Spiro's Captivity is set in the tumultuous first century A.D., between the year of Christ's death and the outbreak of the Jewish War.
-
The Year 200
By Agustín de Rojas, Hebe PowellThe cult classic from the godfather of Cuban science fiction, Agustín de Rojas’s The Year 200 is both a visionary sci-fi masterwork and a bold political parable about the perils of state power.
-
The Cold War: A World History
By Odd Arne WestadQuoted in Michael Beschloss, ed., Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 401–3. 5. Quoted in Andrew Preston, The War Council: McGeorge Bundy, the NSC, and Vietnam (Cambridge, ...
-
Hadrian: Empire and Conflict
By Thorsten OpperIs this the common image today of the ruler of one of the greatest powers of the ancient world?" "Published to complement a major exhibition at the British Museum, this wide-ranging book rediscovers Hadrian.
-
Ancient Chinese Warfare
By Ralph D. SawyerA leading historical scholar offers the definitive account of the strategies and technology that shaped the earliest Chinese dynasties--from walled defenses to chariot-driven warriors.
-
Ottoman Odyssey: Travels through a Lost Empire
By Alev ScottAlev Scott's odyssey began when she looked beyond Turkey's borders for contemporary traces of the Ottoman Empire.
-
An Independent Empire: Diplomacy & War in the Making of the United States
By Michael Taylor, Michael S. KochinEdited by James F. Hopkins et al. 9 vols. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1959–. The Papers of Henry Laurens. Edited by David R. Chesnutt et al. 16 vols. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968–2002.