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

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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

Reviews

"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 Beijingthe last to the Imperial Chinese courthas everything: competing protagonists, trials and tribulations, and imperial pomp and circumstance. Andrades 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

Author Bio

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.