When America First Met China

Company

Library of Congress

Price

$16.95

Source

Official Store

Brilliantly illuminating one of the least-understood areas of American history, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin now traces our fraught relationship with China back to its roots: the unforgiving nineteenth-century seas that separated a brash, rising naval power from a battered ancient empire. It is a prescient fable for our time, one that surprisingly continues to shed light on our modern relationship with China. Indeed, the furious trade in furs, opium, and beche-de-mer―a rare sea cucumber delicacy―might have catalyzed America’s emerging economy, but it also sparked an ecological and human…