Mao the scholar
Most people are under the impression that Mao is a coarse and illiterate leader, perhaps because of his round and big Hunan facial features. That…
Embassies to the Qing court—Part 3
Most people wrongly assume the Macartney Embassy of 1792-94 gave the Western world its first glimpse of the secretive Middle Kingdom. In fact, there were…
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Embassies to the Qing court—Part 2
Most people wrongly assume the Macartney Embassy of 1792-94 gave the Western world its first glimpse of the secretive Middle Kingdom. Why? Such an erroneous…
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Embassies to the Qing court—Part 1
Most people are familiar with the Macartney Embassy of 1792-94 for two reasons. First, the response by Emperor Qianlong to the British request to open…
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Understanding Europe’s Cultural Rebirth
Why did the Age of Renaissance begin in Italy? Why did it begin in that time period? European history can be roughly classified into the…
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Russia Engages the World
Russia Engages the World, by Cynthia Whittaker, was published in 2003 to accompany an exhibition at the New York Public Library that same year. Rereading…
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Sikhs and the Partition of India, the Raw Deal—Part 2
Two books shed some light on the questions I posed in Part 1. I had asked why the British failed to accommodate the Sikhs by…
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Britain’s War Story Revisited
Alan Allport’s two-volume history of the Second World War from the perspective of Britain—Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938–1941…
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Invented in China
Francis Bacon said the three greatest inventions are paper and printing, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass. All three were invented in China by the Chinese.…
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The Jesuit in the Ming Court—Part 3
The Jesuits from 1579 to 1724 mounted a sustained mission to spread Christianity to China during the reign of the Ming Wanli emperor (1563-1620) to…
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The Jesuit in the Ming Court—Part 2
Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia is an expert on Catholicism history. He is best known for his 2010 biography A Jesuit in the Forbidden City, Matteo Ricci.…
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