We are in need of more reading on the period from 1790 to 1840, and this is an engaging addition. The author is not necessarily out to tell us things we did not already know about the period (even though we do not know enough yet), but to offer an analytical approach that will allow us to see the period in a new way.
At the heart of the book are chapters based on original documents as well as broad secondary reading. First they put the White Lotus origins and roughly coterminous piracy assaults of the Guangdong and Fujian coasts into the contexts of environmental deterioration, popular ideological trends, and the breakdown of central control over not only parts of China but also important bordering arenas—particularly Vietnam, with pirate activity and failed efforts to suppress it put against the background of the Tay Son defeat of the Qing invasion and...
