Restless Empire. China and the World Since 1750

In Restless Empire, award-winning historian Odd Arne Westad traces China's complex foreign affairs over the past 250 years, identifying the forces that will determine the country's path in the decades to come. Since the height of the Qing Empire in the eighteenth century, China's confrontations with foreign powers have caused its worldview to fluctuate wildly between feelings of dominance and subjugation, emulation and defiance.
From the invasion of Burma in the 17605 to the Boxer Rebellion in the early twentieth century and the 2001 standoff with the United States over a downed American spy plane, many of these encounters have left the Chinese with a lingering sense of humiliation and resentment, and have inflamed their notions of justice, hierarchy, and Chinese centrality in world affairs. Restless Empire is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the recent past and probable future of this dynamic and complex nation.