The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes

by Arthur Waley

Book Overview

A Stanford University Press classic.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0804706115
• ISBN13: 9780804706117
• Release Date: June 1958
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Opium War pain

It is a valuable book from Chinese historical viewpoint by an authority. Chinese Empire was powerful in world trade and economic. The British wanted tea, fine chinaware and ran out of silver. They pushed opium to dope Chinese for the balance of trade. The American big five families also took part in the smuggling. British won two Opium Wars resulting in unequal treaties imposed on Chinese people and Anglo-French jointed forces in burning the Yuan Ming Yuan (Imperial Garden) in this war crimes! Chinese people suffered this century of humiliation and tried hard to restore former glory and status. The British got Hong Kong as Crown Jewel colony and a safe turn over in 1997 but still meddle in the Hong Kong affairs as the British power in Hong Kong ended in July 1 1997. Under British rule, Hong Kong did not have democracy and stirred up the demonstrations in different forms and years after 1997. The trouble makers escaped to London and complained the refugee treatment they received, a hard lesson to learn as only used as a remote control puppet! Chinese had a saying. foreign religion poisons the mind, foreign dope poisons the body! China is rising, can American politicians with Trump & company can stop the momentum and will of the whole Chinese population in AI Hi Tech and economy? This book gives a good background understanding from history for the current geopolitics. Will American followed their cousins to wage war on in trade deficit in 19th Century? Will history repeat itself?

history repeats itself

Are we going to win in Afghanistan? NO. Why? Read about the real reason. History repeats it self all the way back to the 17th Century.

a balanced view

This book deserves five stars. Not because it is an exhaustive account of the first war but because it restores the balance. We have many English language texts on this subject but Arthur Waley, the distinguished sinologist, has become, with this slim volume, an extremely good historian. Using Chinese sources, occasionally adding clarifications from elsewhere, he has achieved a delightful, wistful, plaintive, penetrative and endlessly readable slim volume that finally enables the non-Chinese language reader to enter into what really motivated officials and simple, if middle class, Chinese people in the opium war - the seemingly unbridgable gulf that to this day divides East and West is washed away in this collection of notes from Commissioner Lin's diary and elsewhere, recording what it was like to be there at the time, the perplexity of the citizen and revealing the Chinese, through their thoughtful comments and opinions, their hopes and fears, as precisely like you and I. Read it.