China

As China reclaims its central role in the world, Robert Bickers appeals to Britons and others in the West to take account of the legacy left by the country’s difficult 19th century.

Frank Dikötter looks at how historians’ understanding of China has changed in recent years with the gradual opening of party archives that reveal the full horror of the Maoist era.

Though they originated in China, it was in the capitals of early modern Europe that fireworks flourished. They united art and science in awesome displays of poltical might, as Simon Werrett explains.

The traumatic but ultimately victorious march of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists ended on 22 October 1935.

The last of the Manchu emperors received a formal pardon on December 4th, 1959.

The year 2009 sees a remarkable coincidence of anniversaries that tell the history of modern China. Some will be celebrated by the authorities on a grand scale, others will be wilfully ignored, but all reveal important aspects of the country’s past, as Jonathan Fenby explains.

The Dowager Empress of China died on 15 November, 1908, after ruling the country for almost 50 years.

Asya Chorley describes the relationship between China, Britain and Tibet in the early twentieth century, and shares the unique experiences of the first European women to be invited to Lhasa by the XIII Dalai Lama.

The Mongolian past has been drawn by both sides into twentieth-century disputes between Russia and China, writes J.J. Saunders.

The treaties that ended the first part of the second Opium War were signed on 26 and 27 June 1858.