Merchants of War and Peace: British Knowledge of China in the Making of the Opium War

by Song-Chuan Chen

Merchants of War and Peace challenges conventional arguments that the major driving forces of the First Opium War were the infamous opium smuggling trade, the defence of British national honour, and cultural conflicts between 'progressive' Britain and 'backward' China. Instead, it argues that the war was started by a group of British merchants in the Chinese port of Canton in the 1830s, known as the 'Warlike party'. Living in a period when British...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9888390562
• ISBN13: 9789888390564
• Release Date: May 2017
• Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 9.1"