The Opium War Through Chinese Eyes 1st Edition by Arthur Waley (PDF)

Description

Originally published in 1958 by Allen & Unwin.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review It has been no ordinary pleasure for historians of modern China to see Arthur Waley turn his attention to history. In his new volume, mr. Waley has skillfully offered a lively account of the Opium War full of human interest in the most concrete, real, and vivid terms. . . . What he has done, and done admirably, is to account the thoughts and activities of the Chinese as men, not as mandarins and generals. He has stressed what others had neglected, that is, the feelings and sufferings of the common men as affected by the war. The Journal of Asian StudiesDr. Waley’s genius for translating from the Chinese will delight all readers of this book.” The Times Literary SupplementSeveral Englishmen who took part in this unequal struggle wrote about their experiences long ago, but this splendid book provides the first view of the same events, from the opposite side. Mr. Waley has selected . . . a number of eye-witness accounts of hostilities and translated them with a commentary in his inimitable prose. New Statesman

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This was a great read for my advanced history class!

⭐Bit of a Dry Read

⭐This is a scholarly read yet very poorly written..awkward phrasing and strange word usage.

⭐The book never engaged me as I tried to read it. I lost interest after struggling through eighty pages or so.

⭐Are we going to win in Afghanistan? NO. Why? Read about the real reason. History repeats it self all the way back to the 17th Century.

⭐I was going through a used bookstore a while ago and ran across this book. My curiosity led me to purchase it, and I consider this to be one of the best purchases that I have ever made. Being from the United States it is rare that one gets a truly non-Westen point of view when it comes to history. This book is great because it is clear and concise, and very revealing. I have another book just as important called “The Crusades Through Arab Eyes” which is just as good. Again, I suggest them both for the sake of objectivity. TRUE OBJECTIVITY!!!

⭐This book deserves five stars. Not because it is an exhaustive account of the first war but because it restores the balance. We have many English language texts on this subject but Arthur Waley, the distinguished sinologist, has become, with this slim volume, an extremely good historian. Using Chinese sources, occasionally adding clarifications from elsewhere, he has achieved a delightful, wistful, plaintive, penetrative and endlessly readable slim volume that finally enables the non-Chinese language reader to enter into what really motivated officials and simple, if middle class, Chinese people in the opium war – the seemingly unbridgable gulf that to this day divides East and West is washed away in this collection of notes from Commissioner Lin’s diary and elsewhere, recording what it was like to be there at the time, the perplexity of the citizen and revealing the Chinese, through their thoughtful comments and opinions, their hopes and fears, as precisely like you and I. Read it.

⭐A very interesting read which ‘does exactly what is says on then tin’. The scope is fairly limited, however. Waley writes in an agreeable style. The account is not impartial, but as the author says, it is a Chinese view. It is fascinating to read how the Chinese were affected by the conflict, how they lived and their beliefs. The normal is combined with the bizarre. A shortage of maps and timeline is a disadvantage- the reader would need a broader account to make sense of the book- but an encyclopedia article would do this. At places in the book I found it confusing as to where the author was commenting on the original work- maybe a different font would have aided clarity.

⭐I was first introduced to Waley’s work with his brilliant translation of the old Japanese classic The Tale of Genji. Then I fell in love with his style enough to do my graduation thesis on his partial translation of Monkey (Journey to the West). So when I needed to know more about the Opium Wars, I naturally gravitated to this book. This work, together with more modern works that include information from declassified documents, make a great way to research the roots of the current worldwide drug abuse problem.

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