Great State: China and the World
by Timothy Brook
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The world-renowned scholar and author of Vermeer's Hat does for China what Mary Beard did for Rome in SPQR: Timothy Brook analyzes the last eight centuries of China's relationship with the world in this magnificent history that brings together accounts from civil servants, horse traders, spiritual leaders, explorers, pirates, emperors, migrant workers, invaders, visionaries, and traitors--creating a multifaceted portrait of this highly misunderstood nation. China is one of the oldest states show more in the world. It achieved its approximate current borders with the Ascendancy of the Yuan dynasty in the thirteenth century, and despite the passing of one Imperial dynasty to the next, has maintained them for the eight centuries since. China remained China through the Ming, the Qing, the Republic, the Occupation, and Communism. But despite the desires of some of the most powerful people in the Great State through the ages, China has never been alone in the world. It has had to contend with invaders as well as foreign traders and imperialists. Its rulers for the majority of the last eight centuries have not been Chinese. China became a mega-state not by conquering others, Timothy Brook contends, but rather by being conquered by others and then claiming right of succession to the empires of those Great States. What the Mongols and Manchu ruling families wrought, the Chinese ruling families of the Ming, the Republic, and the People's Republic, have perpetuated. Yet a contemporary Chinese idea of a 'fatherland' that is, and always has been, completely and naturally Chinese persists. Brook argues that China, like everywhere, is the outcome of history, and like every state, rests on its capacities to conquer and suppress. In The Great State, Brook examines China's relationship with the world at large for the first time, from the Yuan through to the present, by following the stories of ordinary and extraordinary people navigating the spaces where China met, and continues to meet, the world. show lessTags
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ThingScore 75
Brook is intent on dismantling the popular idea, still promoted by Chinese authorities, of a vast, culturally unified, self-sufficient nation occupying much the same geographical position for more than 2,000 years, with other states merely barbarian moths drawn to its cultural flame.
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Brook provides 13 engrossing accounts of interactions between foreign individuals and the Chinese or show more their rulers. These include a Manchu official reacting to the arrival of what might be a Portuguese pirate, a lone British East India Company employee struggling to compete with Chinese traders in Java, and the Chinese marketplace mishaps of an itinerant Korean horse-trader, even though he only exists in a Chinese-language primer for Koreans.
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China spent several centuries under foreign control after the Mongol invasion, but the Chinese also interacted in other ways with both their immediate neighbours and with more far-flung countries. Brook presents lively accounts of the detective work necessary to make sense of the documents that illustrate his individual examples, some of which are deliberately misleading. show less
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Brook provides 13 engrossing accounts of interactions between foreign individuals and the Chinese or show more their rulers. These include a Manchu official reacting to the arrival of what might be a Portuguese pirate, a lone British East India Company employee struggling to compete with Chinese traders in Java, and the Chinese marketplace mishaps of an itinerant Korean horse-trader, even though he only exists in a Chinese-language primer for Koreans.
...
China spent several centuries under foreign control after the Mongol invasion, but the Chinese also interacted in other ways with both their immediate neighbours and with more far-flung countries. Brook presents lively accounts of the detective work necessary to make sense of the documents that illustrate his individual examples, some of which are deliberately misleading. show less
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China / Hong Kong / Taiwan
25 works; 1 member
Author Information
24+ Works 1,527 Members
Timothy Brook is principal of St. John's College at the University of British Columbia, and holds the Shaw Chair in Chinese Studies at Oxford University.
Awards and Honors
Common Knowledge
- Original title
- Great State: China and the world
- Original publication date
- 2019
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- Members
- 127
- Popularity
- 252,397
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.40)
- Languages
- English, French, Italian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 14
- ASINs
- 3
