Great State: China and the World

by Timothy Brook, TBD (Read by)

Overview

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 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781094115665
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/17/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.70(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Timothy Brook is a professor and writer on Chinese and world history at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. A native of Toronto and graduate of the University of Toronto, Brook moved from Toronto to become principal of St. John’s College at UBC in 2004, where he was named to the Republic of China Chair. Brook previously held positions at the University of Alberta, Stanford University, and the University of Oxford, where he was Shaw Professor of Chinese from 2007 to 2009. He is the author of several books, including Vermeer's Hat and Confusions of Pleasure.

Table of Contents

List of Maps xi

List of Illustrations xviii

Preface xx

Introduction: Ten Thousand Countries 1

Vancouver, 2019

The Yuan Great State

1 The Great Khan and His Portraitist: Xanadu, 1280 17

2 The Blue Princess and the Il-khan: Tabriz, 1295 36

3 The Plague: Caffa, 1346 53

The Ming Great State

4 The Eunuch and His Hostage: Ceylon, 1411 79

5 The Castaway and the Horse Trader: Zhejiang/Beijing, 1488 109

6 The Pirate and the Bureaucrat: Canton, 1517 139

7 The Englishman and the Goldsmith: Bantam, 1604 171

8 The Missionary and His Convert: Nanjing, 1616 201

The Qing Great State

9 The Occupied: The Yangzi Delta, 1645 235

10 The Lama and the Prince: Kokonor, 1719 265

11 The Merchant and His Man: Ostend/Canton, 1793 287

12 The Photographer and His Coolie: Johannesburg, 1905 318

The Republic

13 The Collaborator and His Lawyer: Shanghai, 1946 347

Epilogue: One Hundred and Ninety-Three Countries 372

New York, 1971/Quito, 2010

Notes 394

Index 427

Editorial Reviews

"An ingenious look at an often misunderstood country." — Kirkus Reviews

“Historical resonance sounds in every country and culture largely because humans are preordained by their natures to react in certain ways to similar circumstances. But in China, argues Timothy Brook in his excellent new book Great State, there is a crucial extra dimension. The power of this book lies partly in the fact that Brook does not overstate his case. While he does not seek to claim that China’s current actions are prefigured by the past, an attentive reader cannot fail to notice extraordinary parallels.” — Financial Times

“A dizzying and exhilarating journey. . . . Understanding how China sees itself and how it justifies its actions is critical to understanding today’s world. Great State offers some compelling lessons for today, and for all our futures.” —New Statesman — New Statesman

From the Publisher

A dizzying and exhilarating journey. . . . Understanding how China sees itself and how it justifies its actions is critical to understanding today’s world. Great State offers some compelling lessons for today, and for all our futures.” —New Statesman

New Statesman

Historical resonance sounds in every country and culture largely because humans are preordained by their natures to react in certain ways to similar circumstances. But in China, argues Timothy Brook in his excellent new book Great State, there is a crucial extra dimension. The power of this book lies partly in the fact that Brook does not overstate his case. While he does not seek to claim that China’s current actions are prefigured by the past, an attentive reader cannot fail to notice extraordinary parallels.

Financial Times

Historical resonance sounds in every country and culture largely because humans are preordained by their natures to react in certain ways to similar circumstances. But in China, argues Timothy Brook in his excellent new book Great State, there is a crucial extra dimension. The power of this book lies partly in the fact that Brook does not overstate his case. While he does not seek to claim that China’s current actions are prefigured by the past, an attentive reader cannot fail to notice extraordinary parallels.

Financial Times

From the epicenter of Delft, Brook takes his readers on a journey that encompasses Chinese porcelain and beaver pelts, global temperatures and firearms, shipwrecked sailors and their companions, silver mines and Manila galleons. It is a book full of surprising pleasures.

Jonathan Spence

Praise for Vermeer’s Hat: “Thanks to Brook’s roving and insatiably curious gaze, Vermeer’s small scenes widen onto the broad panorama of world history . . . The result is like one of Vermeer’s trademark reflective pearls that magically reveals a world beyond itself. A more entertaining guide to world history - and to Vermeer - is difficult to imagine.

Ross King

Elegant and quietly important . . . Brook does more than merely sketch the beginnings of globalization and highlight the forces that brought our modern world into being; rather, he offers a timely reminder of humanity’s interdependence.

Seattle Times on Vermeer’s Hat

Brook utilizes the props in Vermeer’s tableaux as starting points to journey into the cultural and economic world of the time: A teacup pours forth the history of the porcelain trade with China, while a felt hat is traced to beaver trapping in North America. It’s a fascinating approach to cultural history, providing new ways of thinking about the origins of commonplace objects.

Entertainment Weekly on Vermeer’s Hat

03/01/2020

Brook (history, Univ. of British Columbia; Sacred Mandates) convincingly argues that the Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368) was a critical moment in Chinese history, which had profound impacts that reverberate to this day. This dynasty, established by Mongol descendents of Genghis Khan, incorporated new areas into the borders of China and introduced the concept of the Great State, which the author defines as "the right to extend authority…out across the entire world." To make his case, the author tells the stories of 13 fascinating events from the 13th to the early 20th centuries. These stories of Chinese explorers, Portuguese merchants, Japanese occupiers, and more challenge the myth that China was historically a closed country. The book concludes with a discussion of China's current internal and international situation. Readers will come away with a better understanding of China's past and present. VERDICT This enjoyable read is essential for all students of Chinese history, and accessible to anyone with a general interest in the topic. A solid companion to Odd Arne Westad's Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750.—Joshua Wallace, Tarleton State Univ. Lib. Stephenville, TX

Library Journal

2020-01-12
A Canadian scholar of Chinese history offers a fresh look at China's engagement with the outside world over centuries in the form of 13 illustrative stories.

In this academic yet mostly accessible work, Brook makes two significant revisionist arguments about China and its history. First, he moves up China's sense of being a unified state from the third century B.C.E., when it developed "dispersed kingdoms," to the 13th century, when its occupation by the Mongol armies imbued it with a sense of military domination exercised through conquest. This was the self-important "Mongol Great State," and every ruler since then has declared his regime to be a "Great State," according to Brook. Second, the author argues that, contrary to the myth of Chinese isolation from the world, the nation was very much aware of the "10,000 countries" that lay outside it, as the author relays through fascinating stories of contact. These involve a wide variety of protagonists that may be unfamiliar to many readers, including the "Persian Blue Princess" whom Khubilai Khan recruited for the Mongol throne; Korean emissaries who blew off course and landed in China; the Italian Jesuit missionaries who spread Renaissance ideas; and the droves of European traders descending on ports such as Canton. Indeed, Brook reminds us, China has frequently endured waves of conquest and occupation by "foreign" armies, from the marauding Mongol hordes led by Khan, who established the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), to the subsequent rise of the Ming Dynasty until 1644, when the Manchus swept through and established the Qing Great State, which collapsed in 1911. Brook then takes us all the way up to the early 21st century, noting how "China's relationship with the world will continue to change." The author also turns up intriguing new DNA evidence that the plague had likely emerged from Central Asia and devastated Chinese cities far earlier than it arrived in Europe.

With useful maps and stories within stories, this is an ingenious look at an often misunderstood country.

Kirkus Reviews