The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making

This book illuminates the cultural legacy of sovereign thinking that emerged from the violent meetings between the British Empire and the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). Liu demonstrates how the collision of imperial will and competing interests led to the invention of “China,” “the East,” “the West,” and the notion of “the world” in recent history.

Table of Contents:
Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 Appendix:

About the Author :
Lydia H. Liu is Helmut F. Stern Professor of Chinese Studies, University of Michigan.

Review :
Liu offers an innovative analysis of the relationship between language and empire. Drawing on 'the semiotic turn of international relations,' she demonstrates how discourses on the meaning of 'sovereignty' shaped relations between the British Empire and China throughout the 19th century...The study's ambitious and rewarding interdisciplinary approach breaks new ground and will be embraced by scholars from a variety of fields. -- D. P. Gorman Choice 20050301 [An] absorbing and resourceful book...[Liu] presents many points that scholars of the 19th and early 20th centuries will find at once persuasive and still reasonably fresh...The Clash of Empires deserves a place in the library of every scholar of modern China. -- Pamela Kyle Crossley Far Eastern Economic Review 20041201 [A] challenging book...[The Clash of Empires] demands attention. -- Rebecca Karl American Historical Review 20050601 The book meticulously explicates the ways in which traces of imperialism of the nineteenth century still define our international worldview. By putting China's cultural/linguistic encounter with the British empire at the center of her examination of the colonial legacy, [Liu] also makes a case for the relevance of postcolonial critique to China studies...By unpacking the psychological and moral entanglements and struggles between the imperialists and their victims, The Clash of Empires takes us to rethink the power structure that undergirds the norms of international politics in the postcolonial world...In identifying new issues and exploring new methodology, this book is remarkably ambitious and has pointed contemporary scholarship's reflection on the topic to a new direction. -- Ya-pei Kuo Chinese Historical Review 20050501 The author of this wide-ranging and imaginative work sets out to examine what she calls "the semiotic turn of international politics" in the nineteenth century, as this "turn" was exemplified in Qing China's interactions with Western imperialism...Liu is especially good at showing not just the contingencies of the notions that had to straddle different languages, but the frightening human fragilities of the translational practices upon which the fate of Sino-Western relations rested. This is a good, and at times brilliant, book...The breadth of the text-based world that Liu conjures up for us is stimulating. -- Alexander Woodside Pacific Affairs