232
but at page 349, read,
BOOK REVIEWS
"Indeed, the Chinese garrison troops fled their strongholds en masse, before the assault forces reached the shore."
"... the Chinese defenses simply folded up...."
- and later, page 350,
"Once they (Chinese) had recovered their astonishment of seeing ships moving against wind and tide, they ranged along the banks, some performing kowtows as the gunboats passed."
And see also numerous instances in Chapter II.
But the lapses do not greatly detract from the sound scholarship which this study represents. It is well documented and well articulated; it is written in a most elegant style; and this reader was greatly absorbed in the moving narrative. In more than one place one seems to hear strong echoes of Somerset Maugham relating the piques and barbs and jealousies and smoldering antipathies among colonial officials and merchants in the field. Certainly Napier and Pottinger were not universally loved; and Elgin and Admiral Seymour must have disliked each other intensely.
The book must be one of the most readable scholarly works on the period, and it makes excellent use of many specialist studies of some narrower issues and individual episodes, such as Peter W. Fay's The Opium War, 1840-42 (University of North Carolina Press, 1975), and Jack Gerson's excellent Horatio Nelson Lay and Sino-British Relations, 1854-60 (Cambridge, 1972), as well as all the now standard works on the nineteenth century opening of China.
University of Hong Kong, May 1980.
LEIGH WRIGHT
THE IMPACT OF CHINESE SECRET SOCIETIES IN MALAYA--A HISTORICAL STUDY. Wilfred Blythe, pp. XIV, 566, maps, ill, app. Oxford University Press, 1969.
As befits the complicated, extensive and important nature of the subject, this is a long book (566 pages). It carries an introduction by the Right Hon. Malcolm Macdonald who, rightly in my
|
232
but at page 349, read,
BOOK REVIEWS
"Indeed, the Chinese garrison troops fled their strongholds en masse, before the assault forces reached the shore."
"... the Chinese defenses simply folded up...."
-
and later, page 350,
"Once they (Chinese) had recovered their astonishment of seeing ships moving against wind and tide, they ranged along the banks, some performing kowtows as the gunboats passed."
And see also numerous instances in Chapter II.
But the lapses do not greatly detract from the sound scholarship which this study represents. It is well documented and well articu- lated; it is written in a most elegant style; and this reader was greatly absorbed in the moving narrative. In more than one place one seems to hear strong echoes of Somerset Maugham relating the piques and barbs and jealousies and smoldering antipathies among colonial officials and merchants in the field. Certainly Napier and Pottinger were not universally loved; and Elgin and Admiral Sey- mour must have disliked each other intensely.
The book must be one of the most readable scholarly works on the period, and it makes excellent use of many specialist studies of some narrower issues and individual episodes, such as Peter W. Fay's The Opium War, 1840-42 (University of North Carolina Press, 1975), and Jack Gerson's excellent Horatio Nelson Lay and Sino. British Relations, 1854-60 (Cambridge, 1972), as well as all the now standard works on the nineteenth century opening of China. University of Hong Kong, May 1980.
LEIGH WRIGHT
THE IMPACT OF CHINESE SECRET SOCIETIES IN MALAYA--A HISTORICAL STUDY. Wilfred Blythe, pp. XIV, 566, maps, ill, app. Oxford University Press, 1969.
As befits the complicated, extensive and important nature of the subject, this is a long book (566 pages). It carries an introduc- tion by the Right Hon. Malcolm Macdonald who, rightly in my
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