What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Chinese Opium Wars
Jack Beeching · 376 pages
An enlightening account of a notorious period in nineteenth-century imperialism, when an effort by the Chinese government to stamp out the country's profitable opium trade resulted in a series of conflicts known as the Opium Wars. Index; illustrations and map.
The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China
Julia Lovell · 458 pages
This title tells a story of drugs, distrust, greed and rebellion. 'On the outside, [the foreigners] seem intractable, but inside they are cowardly...Although there have been a few ups-and-downs, the situation as a whole is under control.' In October 1839, a few months after the Chinese Imperial Commissioner, Lin Zexu, dispatched these confident words to his emperor, a Cabinet meeting in Windsor vo
The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900
Diana Preston · 436 pages
"The Boxer Rebellion is a panoramic chronicle of the uprising and ensuing two-month siege of the eleven foreign ministries in Peking (now Beijing), and of the foreign community in Tientsin (now Tianjin), during the summer of 1900 - the repercussions of which have echoed throughout the intervening century. It left tens of thousands of Chinese dead, precipitated the end of dynastic rule in China, an
Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War
Stephen R. Platt · 385 pages
The Chinese Opium Question in British Opinion and Action
Wenzao Wu · 196 pages
1421: The Year China Discovered America
Gavin Menzies · 649 pages
This volume presents the author's assertion that the fleets of Chinese Admiral Zheng visited the Americas prior to European explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492, and that this same Chinese fleet circumnavigated the globe a century before the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan. The author presents a series of vignettes describing his travels around the globe, examining what he claims is evidence for
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
1587: A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline
Ray Huang, Huang Ren Yu · 280 pages
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
Charles C. Mann · 631 pages
From the author of 1491 -- the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas -- a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher C
The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence
Martin Meredith · 752 pages
Presents a narrative of the last fifty years of African history, analyzing the factors which account for the political chaos, financial troubles, and civil wars which prevail in many African countries today.
The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia
Peter Hopkirk · 570 pages
An account of the encounter last century between the British in India and Tsarist Russia in Central Asia which became known as the "Great Game". When the encounter began the frontiers of Russia and British India lay some 2000 apart. By the end, the gap had shrunk in places to 20 miles.
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
C.L.R. James · 426 pages
En 1789, les deux tiers du commerce extérieur de la France se faisaient avec sa colonie antillaise de Saint-Domingue, laquelle représentait le plus grand marché de la traite européenne des esclaves. La plus grosse colonie du monde, fierté de la France et objet de convoitise de toutes les autres nations impérialistes, faisait partie intégrante de la vie économique d'alors. Tout cet ensemble reposai
Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766
Fred Anderson · 880 pages
In this engrossing narrative of the great military conflagration of the mid-eighteenth century, Fred Anderson transports us into the maelstrom of international rivalries. With the Seven Years' War, Great Britain decisively eliminated French power north of the Caribbean -- and in the process destroyed an American diplomatic system in which Native Americans had long played a central, balancing role
Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
Mike Davis · 467 pages
A Commonwealth of Thieves: The Improbable Birth of Australia
Thomas Keneally · 454 pages
It was 1786 when Arthur Phillip, an ambitious captain in the Royal Navy, was assigned the formidable task of organizing an expedition to Australia in order to establish a penal colony. The squalid and turbulent prisons of London were overflowing, and crime was on the rise. Even the hulks sifting at anchor in the Thames were packed with malcontent criminals and petty thieves. So the English governm
The Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise of the Zulu Nation Under Shaka and Its Fall in the Zulu War of 1879
Donald R. Morris · 655 pages
It's brilliant book and one of only a few surrounding the rise & fall of Shaka Zulu
Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire
Andrea Stuart · 353 pages
The author of "The Rose of Martinique" presents a history of the interdependence of sugar, slavery and colonial settlement in the New World through the story of the author's ancestors, exploring the myriad connections between sugar cultivation and her family's identity, genealogy and financial stability.
Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the British
Jeremy Paxman · 356 pages
The influence of the British Empire is everywhere, from the very existence of the United Kingdom to the ethnic composition of our cities. It affects everything, from Prime Ministers' decisions to send troops to war to the adventurers we admire. From the sports we think we're good at to the architecture of our buildings; the way we travel to the way we trade; the hopeless losers we will on, and the
In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines
Stanley Karnow · 494 pages
This book is an account of America's imperial experience in the Philippines from 1898 to 1946. Stanley Karnow, author of Vietnam: A History, has now written an enthralling account of an almost forgotten subject: America's imperial experience in the Philippines. Panoramic in scope, profound in its perceptions and compassionate in its human portraits, In Our Image is an exciting, heroic, tragic, col
1788: The Brutal Truth of the First Fleet
David Hill · 392 pages