Стивен Платт – лучшие книги

The definitive history of the Opium War--a vivid narrative of the earliest Western efforts to open China to trade and the resulting war that ensured the decline of imperial China. When Britain declared war on China in 1839, it sealed the fate of what had been, for centuries, the wealthiest and most powerful empire in the world. But local corruption, popular uprisings, and dwindling finances had left the country much weaker than was commonly understood and the war set in motion the fall of the Qing dynasty which, in turn, would lead to the rise of nationalism and communism in the twentieth century. Imperial Twilight is the dramatic, epic…

Winner of the 2012 Cundill Prize in History A gripping account of China’s nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion, one of the largest civil wars in history. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom brims with unforgettable characters and vivid re-creations of massive and often gruesome battles—a sweeping yet intimate portrait of the conflict that shaped the fate of modern China. The story begins in the early 1850s, the waning years of the Qing dynasty, when word spread of a major revolution brewing in the provinces, led by a failed civil servant who claimed to be the son of God and brother of Jesus. The Taiping rebels drew their power from the…