Men in the Middle: Shaping Great Power-China Relationships, 1842-1949

There is no time period or theme that promotes more engagement, by both Chinese historians and historians of China, than what the Peoples Republic of China describes as "the century of humiliation," the period of the "unequal treaties," in which first Qing and then Republican China found themselves penetrated systematically by external Great Powers – which then integrated China, on terms largely not of its own choosing, into a now global political economic order. This created the modern "Ch...