The world-renowned scholar and author of Vermeer’s Hat does for China what Mary Beard did for Rome in SPQR: Timothy Brook analyzes the last eight centuries of China’s relationship with the world in this magnificent history that brings together accounts from civil servants, horse traders, spiritual leaders, explorers, pirates, emperors, migrant workers, invaders, visionaries, and traitors—creating a multifaceted portrait of this highly misunderstood nation. China is one of the oldest states in the world. It achieved its approximate current borders with the Ascendancy of the Yuan dynasty in the thirteenth century, and despite the passing of one Imperial dynasty to the next, has maintained them for the eight centuries since. China remained China through the Ming, the Qing, the Republic, the Occupation, and Communism. But despite the desires of some of the most powerful people in the Great State through the ages, China has never been alone in the world. It has had to contend with invaders as well as foreign traders and imperialists. Its rulers for the majority of the last eight centuries have not been Chinese.
China became a mega-state not by conquering others, Timothy Brook contends, but rather by being conquered by others and then claiming right of succession to the empires of those Great States. What the Mongols and Manchu ruling families wrought, the Chinese ruling families of the Ming, the Republic, and the People’s Republic, have perpetuated. Yet a contemporary Chinese idea of a ‘fatherland’ that is, and always has been, completely and naturally Chinese persists. Brook argues that China, like everywhere, is the outcome of history, and like every state, rests on its capacities to conquer and suppress.
In The Great State, Brook examines China’s relationship with the world at large for the first time, from the Yuan through to the present, by following the stories of ordinary and extraordinary people navigating the spaces where China met, and continues to meet, the world. 
The Great State includes a 16-page color insert.

Great State: China and the World

Arts & Photography

BROOK, Timothy

History & Criticism

Harper

History

Asia

Harper Paperbacks

Now in paperback 
“A dizzying and exhilarating journey. . . . Understanding how China sees itself and how it justifies its actions is critical to understanding today’s world. Great State offers some compelling lessons for today, and for all our futures.”—New Statesman (UK) 
The world-renowned scholar and author of Vermeer’s Hat does for China what Mary Beard did for Rome in SPQR: Timothy Brook analyzes the last eight centuries of China’s relationship with the world in this magnificent history that brings together accounts from civil servants, horse traders, spiritual leaders, explorers, pirates, emperors, migrant workers, invaders, visionaries, and traitors—creating a multifaceted portrait of this highly misunderstood nation. 
China is one of the oldest states in the world. It achieved its approximate current borders with the Ascendancy of the Yuan dynasty in the thirteenth century, and despite the passing of one Imperial dynasty to the next, has maintained them for the eight centuries since. China remained China through the Ming, the Qing, the Republic, the Occupation, and Communism. But despite the desires of some of the most powerful people in the Great State through the ages, China has never been alone in the world. It has had to contend with invaders as well as foreign traders and imperialists. Its rulers for the majority of the last eight centuries have not been Chinese. 
China became a mega-state not by conquering others, Timothy Brook contends, but rather by being conquered by others and then claiming right of succession to the empires of those Great States. What the Mongols and Manchu ruling families wrought, the Chinese ruling families of the Ming, the Republic, and the People’s Republic, have perpetuated. Yet a contemporary Chinese idea of a ‘fatherland’ that is, and always has been, completely and naturally Chinese persists. Brook argues that China, like everywhere, is the outcome of history, and like every state, rests on its capacities to conquer and suppress. 
In The Great State, Brook examines China’s relationship with the world at large for the first time, from the Yuan through to the present, by following the stories of ordinary and extraordinary people navigating the spaces where China met, and continues to meet, the world. 
The Great State includes black-and-white photos throughout.

In one painting, a military officer in a Dutch sitting room flirts with a laughing girl. In another, a woman at a window weighs pieces of silver. Vermeer’s paintings haunt us with their beauty and mystery—what stories lay behind these stunningly rendered moments? As Timothy Brook shows us, these pictures, which seem so intimate, actually offer a remarkable view of a rapidly expanding world. The dashing officer’s hat is of beaver fur from Canada, while the pieces of silver, mined in Peru, might be used to purchase the Chinese porcelain seen in other Vermeer paintings. Moving outward from Vermeer’s studio, Brook traces the web of trade that was spreading across the globe in the seventeenth century. The wharves of Holland , wrote a French visitor, were “an inventory of the possible.” Vermeer’s Hat shows just how rich this inventory was, and how the urge to acquire such things was refashioning the world more powerfully than we have yet understood.

Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century And The Dawn Of The Global World

World

Penguin Canada

The Beijing Massacre was a watershed in the history of modern China. In the early hours of June 4, 1989, the People's Liberation Army forced its way into the center of Beijing. Its objective was to take control of Tiananmen Square, headquarters of the fledgling Democracy Movement, at all costs. Even the Chinese leaders may not have realized that the Army would carry out a massacre that would shred the legitimacy of the government in the eyes of its own people and of the world community. In Quelling the People, Timothy Brook offers the first detailed and objective reconstruction of the Army's actions during that night, as well as in the weeks leading up to the massacre. Brook goes behind the scenes, interviewing dozens of eyewitnesses, reviewing Chinese and foreign press reports, collecting unofficial hospital reports, and working from over a hundred student documents smuggled out of Beijing University. What he discovers is something very different from the official story. He demonstrates that the soldiers killed two to three thousand people as opposed to the reported hundreds. He finds that the soldiers, armed with combat weapons, were not trained to handle civilian opposition, and had little strategy except to open fire into crowds. In short, they should never have been used as riot troops. Given such poor resources, Brook asserts, the Chinese leaders should have sought a nonmilitary solution, for in deploying their incompetent troops, the government came close to provoking a civil war as the military units who had participated in the massacre squared off against each other. In addition, he looks into the Chinese government's extensive propaganda campaign--from videos edited to show that the Army was in the right, to books with the same storyline, to the celebration on National Day, an attempt to create the illusion of normalcy and unity. As Brook writes, "the Chinese government's sole hope is amnesia....It asks that we succumb to its logic....That what the soldiers did, they did in self-defense....That nothing really happened. That nothing has changed." Filled with vivid, personal accounts of both participants and observers, Quelling the People not only sets the record straight as to what happened at Tiananmen Square, but it also provides a provocative look into the Chinese mind. It tells the story of the people who stood up to fight for democratic change, the soldiers who were sent against them, and the disregard for human rights that resulted in the tragic deaths of thousands.

Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement

Oxford University Press

The Ming dynasty (1368-1644), a period of commercial expansion and cultural innovation, fashioned the relationship between state and society in Chinese history. This unique collection of reworked and heavily illustrated essays, by one of the leading scholars of Chinese history, re-examines this relationship. It argues that, contrary to previous scholarship, it was radical responses within society that led to a 'constitution', not periods of fluctuation within the dynasty itself. Brook's outstanding scholarship demonstrates that it was changes in commercial relations and social networks that were actually responsible for the development of a stable society. This imaginative reconsidering of existing scholarship on the history of China will be fascinating reading for scholars and students interested in China's development.

The Chinese State in Ming Society (Asia's Transformations/Critical Asian Scholarship)

Reference

Routledge

The Ming dynasty (1368-1644), a period of commercial expansion and cultural innovation, fashioned the relationship between state and society in Chinese history. This unique collection of reworked and heavily illustrated essays, by one of the leading scholars of Chinese history, re-examines this relationship. It argues that, contrary to previous scholarship, it was radical responses within society that led to a 'constitution', not periods of fluctuation within the dynasty itself. Brook's outstanding scholarship demonstrates that it was changes in commercial relations and social networks that were actually responsible for the development of a stable society. This imaginative reconsidering of existing scholarship on the history of China will be fascinating reading for scholars and students interested in China's development.

The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China

The Ming dynasty was the last great Chinese dynasty before the Manchu conquest in 1644. During that time, China, not Europe, was the center of the world: the European voyages of exploration were searching not just for new lands but also for new trade routes to the Far East. In this book, Timothy Brook eloquently narrates the changing landscape of life over the three centuries of the Ming (1368-1644), when China was transformed from a closely administered agrarian realm into a place of commercial profits and intense competition for status. The Confusions of Pleasure marks a significant departure from the conventional ways in which Chinese history has been written. Rather than recounting the Ming dynasty in a series of political events and philosophical achievements, it narrates this longue durée in terms of the habits and strains of everyday life. Peppered with stories of real people and their negotiations of a rapidly changing world, this book provides a new way of seeing the Ming dynasty that not only contributes to the scholarly understanding of the period but also provides an entertaining and accessible introduction to Chinese history for anyone.

University of California Press

Business & Money

Economics

Opium is more than just a drug extracted from poppies. Over the past two centuries it has been a palliative medicine, an addictive substance, a powerful mechanism for concentrating and transferring wealth and power between nations, and the anchor for a now vanished sociocultural world in and around China. Opium Regimes integrates the pioneering research of sixteen scholars to show that the opium trade was not purely a British operation but involved Chinese merchants, Chinese state agents, and Japanese imperialists as well. The book presents a coherent historical arc that moves from British imperialism in the nineteenth century, to Chinese capital formation and state making at the turn of the century, to Japanese imperialism through the 1930s and 1940s, and finally to the apparent resolution of China's opium problem in the early 1950s. Together these essays show that the complex interweaving of commodity trading, addiction, and state intervention in opium's history refigured the historical face of East Asia more profoundly than any other commodity.

Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952

Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi

International

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BROOK, Timothy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by BROOK, Timothy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by BROOK, Timothy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Great State: China and the World

Great State: China and the World

Great State: China and the World

Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century And The Dawn Of The Global World

Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement

The Chinese State in Ming Society (Asia's Transformations/Critical Asian Scholarship)

The Chinese State in Ming Society (Asia's Transformations/Critical Asian Scholarship)

The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China

The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China

Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952