Published in 2004, it is clear from the preface and Chapter 1 that the author is an Anglophile, despite his protestations that his intent is to write an objective history.
His chapter on the Opium War blames the war on the Ching dynasty.
Nowhere does he say the opium trade was evil. Instead, he justifies the war as the flag protecting the trade! [p 13]
Any reader of the Opium War would know the author’s narrative is unsupportable. An excellent book that shows this is Imperial Twilight: The Opium War and the End of China’s Last Golden Age by Stephen Platt.
