Odd Arne Westad. (2012). Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750. Basic Books.

Odd Arne Westad. 2012. Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750. Basic Books.

Odd Arne Westad, Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750. Basic Books, 2012.

Odd Arne Westad. Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750. Basic Books, 2012.

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     Odd Arne Westad is one of the world's foremost experts on both the Cold War and contemporary East Asian history. A Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), he is also co-director of LSE INEAS, a center for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy, and author of the acclaimed The Global Cold War, among many other books. He has held visiting fellowships at Cambridge University, Hong Kong University, and New York University, and has been the recipient of major grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the British Arts and Humanities Research Council. He has served as the international coordinator of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Advisory Group on Declassification and Archival Access and has been awarded the Bernath Lecture Prize from the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations. Professor Westad lectures widely on China's foreign affairs, on Western interventions in Africa and Asia, and on foreign policy strategy.

   • name: Odd Arne Westad

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2012-08-28T00:00:00-04:00

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Restless Empire

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As the twenty-first century dawns, China stands at a crossroads. The largest and most populous country on earth and currently the world's second biggest economy, China has recently reclaimed its historic place at the center of global affairs after decades of internal chaos and disastrous foreign relations. But even as China tentatively reengages with the outside world, the contradictions of its development risks pushing it back into an era of insularity and instability — a regression that, as China's recent history shows, would have serious implications for all other nations.
In Restless Empire, award-winning historian Odd Arne Westad traces China's complex foreign affairs over the past 250 years, identifying the forces that will determine the country's path in the decades to come. Since the height of the Qing Empire in the eighteenth century, China's interactions — and confrontations — with foreign powers have caused its worldview to fluctuate wildly between extremes of dominance and subjugation, emulation and defiance. From the invasion of Burma in the 1760s to the Boxer Rebellion in the early 20th century to the 2001 standoff over a downed U.S. spy plane, many of these encounters have left Chinese with a lingering sense of humiliation and resentment, and inflamed their notions of justice, hierarchy, and Chinese centrality in world affairs. Recently, China's rising influence on the world stage has shown what the country stands to gain from international cooperation and openness. But as Westad shows, the nation's success will ultimately hinge on its ability to engage with potential international partners while simultaneously safeguarding its own strength and stability.
An in-depth study by one of our most respected authorities on international relations and contemporary East Asian history, Restless Empire is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the recent past and probable future of this dynamic and complex nation.

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     June 4, 2012
     Trauma, antagonism, and stimulating development are the fruit of China’s deeply formative engagement with the world, according to this savvy history. Bancroft Prize–winning historian Westad (The Global Cold War), of the London School of Economics, surveys China’s foreign relations from the 18th-century Qing dynasty’s war in Burma to present-day wrangles over U.S. spy planes, mineral rights in the South China Sea, and the latter-day economic boom that has made nominally Communist China the “champion of free market capitalism.” Much of this period is one of military subjection to rapacious foreign powers, but Westad emphasizes the importance of those experiences in making China modern: Western imperialism, he argues, brought economic development and new ideas about democracy and nationalism; Communist China’s emulation of the Soviet Union boosted the power and activism of the state; China’s post–cold war economic boom is predicated on international trade and investment, and business practices imported from abroad. Against the conventional image of an arrogantly aloof and immovable civilization, the author tells a story—apart from the disastrous xenophobic detour of Maoism—of China’s progressive attunement and adaptation to foreign influences. Westad manages to compress a vast and complex history into a well-paced narrative that helps readers understand China’s growing centrality in international affairs. 6 maps. Agent: Peter Robinson, Robinson Literary Agency.

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     September 15, 2012
     

     During the past 250 years China has moved from the center of the world stage to abject isolation and back again, largely due to foreign pressures and influences. Westad (international history, London Sch. of Economics & Political Science; The Global Cold War) provides a nuanced interpretation of the history of China's foreign relations. Readers will find a thorough examination of how foreign encounters affected various segments of Chinese society and a description of intergovernmental exchanges. The book concludes with predictions of how China's foreign relations will unfold in the near future. VERDICT This is essential reading for students of modern Chinese history and for those interested in China's growing role in world affairs. Westad's ability to lucidly explain a complex subject makes this an excellent introduction. For a more comprehensive analysis of Chinese history covering roughly the same era, see Jonathan D. Spence's The Search for Modern China.--Joshua Wallace, South Texas Coll. Lib., McAllen

     Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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     August 1, 2012
     An astute, succinct study of modern China emphasizing overarching themes like hybrid identity and foreign influence rather than nationalism and centrality. In presenting this complex portrait of a fast-changing, multiethnic empire as it collided head-on with modern currents, Westad (International History/London School of Economics; The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, 2005, etc.) takes a thematic approach, following a dozen currents including the effects of imperialism and the relationship with Japan. The orientation of China's empire for millennia was toward the Yellow River and the east, with fluid borders, numerous tributary states and a sense of centrality dictated by Confucian ideals. Since 1636, the Qing, a conquering outsider tribe, consolidated rule by expanding outward, even by genocidal means. Qing rule would steadily be chipped away during the 19th century, due to subsequent ineffectual leadership and disastrous interventions in Burma and Vietnam, uneven growth while Europe began undergoing technological expansion, and a shifting trade with Russia and England. The aggressive arrogance demonstrated by Britain during the Opium War and the concessions wrung by the treaty underscored Qing impotence, emphasized Westerners' contempt for Chinese traditions, and sowed internal dissent. Westad employs this theme of foreign intervention all the way through Mao Zedong's stringent shutting off of China to the outside world. The author also examines the significance of the global Chinese emigre community, which has played a key role in China's capitalist transformation since 1978. China's relationship with Japan grew mutually suspicious and fearful as Russia and the West moved in, and Japan's aggressive war with China, 1937-1945, wrought unimaginable destruction, as well as renewal and modernization. A fresh look at a confounding nation the West has not yet figured out.

     COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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     Starred review from August 1, 2012
     With the largest national population and soon the largest national economy. China appears to most internal and external observers to stand on the precipice of world dominance. But as Bancroft Award winner Westad makes abundantly clear, China's eventual hegemony in the global marketplace may rely more on overcoming internal obstacles and on cooperating with its close neighbors thanany challenges presented by an American-led West. Building a superb story of China's historically schizophrenic relationship with the outside world, Westad reaches back to the long twilight of the Qing dynasty, canvassing the nation's conflicts with Western imperialists, expansionist neighbors, and internal minorities and revealing a country in which the past threatens to overwhelm the present. However, it is the Chinese foreign-policy developments of the twentieth century, including the republic under Chiang Kai-shek, triumph of Mao's Communists, and economic transformation under Deng Xiaoping, that form the bulk of this compelling, expansive account.Westad has provided readers with both a remarkable and timely glimpsebehind the curtain that is required reading for anyone interested in Chinese political history and economic development and the future of China's position in the international community.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

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As the twenty-first century dawns, China stands at a crossroads. The largest and most populous country on earth and currently the world's second biggest economy, China has recently reclaimed its historic place at the center of global affairs after decades of internal chaos and disastrous foreign relations. But even as China tentatively reengages with the outside world, the contradictions of its development risks pushing it back into an era of insularity and instability — a regression that, as China's recent history shows, would have serious implications for all other nations.
In Restless Empire, award-winning historian Odd Arne Westad traces China's complex foreign affairs over the past 250 years, identifying the forces that will determine the country's path in the decades to come. Since the height of the Qing Empire in the eighteenth century, China's interactions — and confrontations — with foreign powers have caused its worldview to fluctuate wildly between extremes...

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