Distant Shores: Colonial Encounters on China's , Macauley^+

Princeton University Press

Distant ShoresColonial Encounters on China's Maritime Frontier\nAuthor(s): Melissa Macauley\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Princeton University Press, United States\nImprint: Princeton University Press\nISBN-13: 9780691214887, 978-0691214887\nSynopsis\nA pioneering history that transforms our understanding of the colonial era and China's place in it\n\nChina has conventionally been considered a land empire whose lack of maritime and colonial reach contributed to its economic decline after the mid-eighteenth century. Distant Shores challenges this view, showing that the economic expansion of southeastern Chinese rivaled the colonial ambitions of Europeans overseas.\n\nIn a story that dawns with the Industrial Revolution and culminates in the Great Depression, Melissa Macauley explains how sojourners from an ungovernable corner of China emerged among the commercial masters of the South China Sea. She focuses on Chaozhou, a region in the great maritime province of Guangdong, whose peopl.