The Last Embassy: The Dutch Mission of 1795 and the Forgotten History of Western Encounters with China

Description

From the acclaimed author of The Gunpowder Age, a book that casts new light on the history of China and the West at the turn of the nineteenth century George Macartney's disastrous 1793 mission to China plays a central role in the prevailing narrative of modern Sino-European relations. Summarily dismissed by the Qing court, Macartney failed in n

Tonio Andrade is professor of Chinese and global history at Emory University. His books include The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History (Princeton), Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China's First Great Victory over the West (Princeton), and How Taiwan Became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish, and Han Colonization in the Seventeenth Century. He lives in Decatur, Georgia.

"A Fortune Best Book of the Year" "The Last Embassy is rare in the field of academic history, in that it works just as well as a story as it does as a work of significant historical investigation. The story of the Dutch embassy to Beijing-the last to the Imperial Chinese court-has everything: competing protagonists, trials and tribulations, and imperial pomp and circumstance. Andrade's work is a wonderfully written work about a neglected event in diplomatic history."---Nicholas Gordon, Fortune "One of the best academic studies in terms of both scholarship and writing-style I have read in ten years or more. . . . [A]n accessible, exciting, and illuminating book, written with consummate verve and enthusiasm."---John Butler, Asian Review of Books "An animated account."---Peter Neville-Hadley, South China Morning Post Magazine