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showing 652 library results for 'china'

Britain, Canada and the North Pacific : maritime enterprise and dominion, 1778-1914 /Barry M. Gough. "From the time of Cook, the British and their Canadian successors were drawn to the Northwest coast of North America by possibilities of trade in sea otter and the wish to find a 'northwest passage'. The studies collected here trace how the British came to dominate the area, with expeditions sent from London, Bombay and Macau, and the Canadian quest from overland, and how commercial enterprise, the Royal Navy and British statecraft fended off American opposition and Russian and Spanish resistance to British aspirations. Elsewhere in the Americas, the British promoted trans-Pacific trade with China, conveyed specie from western Mexico, and established the South America naval station. The flag followed trade and vice versa; empire was both formal (at Vancouver Island) and informal (as in California or Mexico). This book features individuals such as James Cook, William Bolts, Peter Pond, and Sir Alexander Mackenzie. It is also an account of the pressure that corporations placed on the British state in shaping the emerging world of trade and colonization in that distant ocean and its shores, and of the importance of sea-power in the creation of modern Canada."--Provided by the publisher. c2004. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 656.61(218)"1778/1914"
Imperial legacies : the British Empire around the world /Jeremy Black. "Britain yesterday; America today. The reality of being top dog is that everybody hates you. In this provocative book, noted historian and commentator Jeremy Black shows how criticisms of the legacy of the British Empire are in part criticisms of the reality of American power today. He emphasizes the prominence of imperial rule in history and in the world today, and the selective way in which certain countries are castigated. Imperial Legacies is a wide-ranging and vigorous assault on political correctness, its language, misuse of the past, and grasping of both present and future"--Provided by publisher. 2019. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 909/.0971241
Under a yellow sky : a tale of the sea and coming of age /Simon J. Hall. Autobiography by Simon Hall recounting his experiences as a junior officer in the British Merchant Navy in the early 1970s. The book provides candid descriptions of life and work as a Deck Cadet in the early 1970s, from the earliest days of training, to naval college, to serving on board numerous voyages across the Pacific and South China Sea. Includes black and white photos throughout. [2013]. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 92HALL S
Leaves from memory's log-book and jottings from old journals Recollections of Rear Admiral Frederick Byng Montresor (1811-1887) covering his naval career, firstly as a midshipman on board the Cambridge, Ramilies, Gloucester, Ocean, Isis, Southampton and HMS Zebra and then as a lieutenant, his duties in the West Indies on the President, Wasp, Magnificent, Forte, Melville, Champion and Winchester. Later chapters cover his command of HMS Pickle, Wanderer, Cygnet, Calypso and Severn. His voyages included passages to the West Indies, South America, Africa, Pacific Islands, Australia and New Zealand, India, Japan, China and Hong Kong. His encounters with the people he met and his observations on trading patterns are also described. Reflecting on visits in 1832 to New Zealand, Tahiti and Tonga, the author, for example, recollects meeting missionaries such as Henry Williams, Maori, the Tahitian Queen and Royal Family, and the King of Tonga. His many anecdotes include the story of Jack Rio, a former slave turned sailor from Brazil, who after a career of seven years with the Navy was revealed as a woman. Also included is a description of the author's visit to the Pitcairn Islands in the 1860s where he met descendants of the Bounty mutineers. 1887 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.124(42)"18"
Encyclopedia of the history of astronomy and astrophysics / David Leverington. This comprehensive book covers the full history of astronomy from its ancient origins in Africa, South America, the Middle East and China to the latest developments in astrophysics and space-based research. The initial articles, which are largely organised chronologically, are followed by numerous thematic historical articles on the constituents of the Solar System, types of stars, stellar evolution, active galaxies, cosmology and much more. These are followed by articles on tools and techniques, from the history of spectroscopy to adaptive optics. The last part of the Encyclopedia is devoted to the history of ground- and space-based telescopes and observatories, covering the full spectral range from gamma-rays through the optical waveband to radio waves. Informative and accessibly written, each article is followed by an extensive bibliography to facilitate further research, whilst consistent coverage from ancient times to the present makes this an ideal resource for scholars, students and amateur astronomers alike. 2013. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 52
Tarnished gold : Ghana and the Netherlands from 1593 /Gijs van der Ham. "Gijs van der Ham's book Tarnished Gold tells the story of the Dutch presence in Ghana with reference to a fascinating series of artefacts, maps, drawings, engravings and paintings, most of them part of the Rijksmuseum collection in Amsterdam. This painful and yet fascinating story is one of inhumanity and curiosity, competition and exploitation, power and subjugation, the encounter between two very different cultures, and human lives that were dramatically and irrevocably changed - above all, and most tragically, by the slave trade. Gijs van der Ham (b. 1955) is senior curator of history at the Rijksmuseum. In 2013 he published The history of the Netherlands in 100 objects, a book likewise based on the Rijksmuseum collection. Tarnished Gold is part of the Country Series published by the Rijksmuseum's History Department. By researching objects from the Rijksmuseum Collection, the series describes the shared history of the Netherlands with Indonesia, Japan, China, India, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Ghana, Suriname and Brazil."--Provided by the publisher. 2016. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 326.1(492:667)
Bloody Foreigners : the story of immigration to Britain "The story of the way Britain has been settled and influenced by foreign people and ideas is as old as the land itself. In the first book to treat the subject as a continuous narrative, Robert Winder tells of the remarkable migrations that have founded and defined a nation. It is a moving and inspiring history, which begins with hunter-gatherers following the melting ice and moves through a thousand years of invasions from 55BC to the Battle of Hastings. Winder describes how the Jewish community, originally sponsored by William the Conqueror, was persecuted and expelled by Edward I; how a Dutch elite crossed the Channel with William II, among them clockmakers, goldsmiths and artists; and the daring escape of the Huguenots, who fled religious persecution on the continent and helped lay the foundations of an industrial and commercial revolution. Victorian Britian hummed with human traffic from all over Europe, from scientists to sailors, dissidents to engineers. Robert Winder chronicles the impact of the Irish and the other great influxes of that century: from Italy, Germany, Jewish Russia and Poland. As the curtain falls on the British Empire, he follows the tumultuous arrival of the hopeful travellers from India, Africa, China and the Caribbean."--Provided by the publisher. 2004 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 325.14(42)
Richard Hakluyt and travel writing in early modern Europe / edited by Daniel Carey and Claire Jowitt. "This is an interdisciplinary collection of 24 essays which brings together leading international scholarship on Hakluyt and his work. Best known as editor of "The Principal Navigations" (1589; expanded 1598-1600), Hakluyt was a key figure in promoting English colonial and commercial expansion in the early modern period. He also translated major European travel texts, championed English settlement in North America, and promoted global trade and exploration via a Northeast and Northwest Passage. His work spanned every area of English activity and aspiration, from Muscovy to America, from Africa to the Near East, and India to China and Japan, providing up-to-date information and establishing an ideological framework for English rivalries with Spain, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands. This volume resituates Hakluyt in the political, economic, and intellectual context of his time."--Back cover. 2012. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 061.22HAKLUYT
Battleship Musashi : the making and sinking of the world's biggest battleship "Admiral lsoroku Yamamoto, the man who planned the attack on Pearl Harbour, said that the three great follies of the world were the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids, and the battleship Musashi. Yamamoto understood that sheer size and firepower would not be decisive factors in the battle for naval supremacy in the Pacific. The Musashi was massive - upright it would have approached the size of the Chrysler Building. Outfitted with eighteen-inch armor plating and nine eighteen-inch guns, the largest ever mounted on a warship, the Musashi was considered by its creators to be invincible and unsinkable. Yet during its two years of active duty with the Combined Fleet, it never fired a single shot against another ship. It was sunk, as Yamamoto had predicted, by torpedoes and bombs. Akira Yoshimura's dramatic reconstruction of the birth of the Musashi portrays a nation preparing for total war. Under these extreme conditions, courage, genius, and integrity coexisted with brutality, folly, and paranoia. During the more than four years it took to build and outfit it, shipyard engineers and their Navy mentors were faced with seemingly insurmountable technical problems and plagued by natural calamities and the constant fear of espionage. The solutions they found to each successive crisis were sometimes brilliant, sometimes absurd. Battleship Musashi is a tribute to the men who achieved this engineering marvel and a testament to the excesses of bureaucratic militarism."--Provided by the publisher. 1999 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 623.821.2(52)
Observations on the zodiacal light : from April 2, 1853, to April 22, 1855, made chiefly on board the United States steam-frigate Mississippi, during her late cruise in eastern seas, and her voyage homeward : with conclusions from the data thus obtained /by George Jones Jones, George, 1856. • RARE-FOLIO • 1 copy available. 910.4(520:73):094
The sea and the sky : the history of the Royal Mathematical School of Christ's Hospital /Clifford Jones "The Royal Mathematical School of Christ's Hospital was set up in 1673 to teach the principles of navigation to selected boys in preparation for a career at sea. Using mainly the original records dating back 400 years, this is a major groundbreaking history, nearly 350 packed pages of never before published accounts of the Foundation of the Mathematical School, of the teachers and the pupils from the beginning right through to the present day. Fully illustrated in colour throughout, it dispels the myth that Samuel Pepys started the school and provides new insights into his role during the first thirty years. Full details are provided of the extensive contributions made by Robert Hooke, John Flamsteed, Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Isaac Newton, among many others. Some 2000 boys left Christ's Hospital to travel the world, including Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, the West Indies and North America, on voyages of commerce and exploration, leaving many amazing stories to tell."--Provided by publisher. 2015. • FOLIO • 1 copy available.
Lords of the East : the East India Company and its ships (1600-1874) /Jean Sutton. Sutton, Jean, 2000. • BOOK • 3 copies available. 382/.06/041
The British Navy in eastern waters : the Indian and Pacific oceans /John D. Grainger. "This book outlines the early voyages of the English East India Company, its building of its own naval forces and its conflicts with Indian states. It examines the opening up of the Pacific Ocean, the wars with the French in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the activities of the British navy in the later nineteenth century, both off the coasts of China and Japan, and also in the many other places to which the navy's very great power extended. It goes on to consider the wars of the twentieth century, Britain's withdrawal from east of Suez, and Britain's continuing relative decline. Throughout, the book provides accounts of battles and other actions, and relates the activities of the British navy to the wider political situation and to the activities of other European and Asian navies."--Provided by the publisher. 2022. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 359.00941
Scotia (1845) and Caledonia (1856) : two little-known paddle steamers /Fraser G. MacHaffie "This new book tells the extraordinary tale of two 19th century Clyde paddlers, Scotia (1845) and Caledonia (1856), that crossed the Atlantic to serve as blockade-runners in the American Civil War and later enjoyed peacetime careers on the eastern seaboard of North America. The author, Fraser G MacHaffie, is a distinguished steamer historian and a member of the CRSC for many years. Fraser played a major part in the development of the CRSC before moving to work and live in the USA. The Club have been honoured to have Fraser as a speaker over the past three winter seasons, during his visits home to friends and family. His immaculately researched narrative illuminates a long-neglected period of Clyde steamer history."--Provided by the publisher. 2013. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 629.123.21(414.1)
Treasures from the map room : A journey through the Bodleian collections /Debbie Hall. "This book explores the stories behind seventy-five extraordinary maps. It includes unique treasures such as the fourteenth-century Gough Map of Great Britain, exquisite portolan charts made in the fifteenth century, the Selden Map of China - the earliest example of Chinese merchant cartography - and an early world map from the medieval Islamic Book of Curiosities, together with more recent examples of fictional places drawn in the twentieth century, such as C.S. Lewis's own map of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien's map of Middle Earth. As well as the works of famous mapmakers Mercator, Ortelius, Blaeu, Saxton and Speed, the book also includes lesser known but historically significant works: early maps of the Moon, of the transit of Venus, hand-drawn estate plans and early European maps of the New World. There are also some surprising examples: escape maps printed on silk and carried by pilots in the Second World War in case of capture on enemy territory; the first geological survey of the British Isles showing what lies beneath our feet; a sixteenth-century woven tapestry map of Worcestershire; a map plotting outbreaks of cholera and a jigsaw map of India from the 1850s. Behind each of these lies a story, of intrepid surveyors, ambitious navigators, chance finds or military victories. Drawing on the unique collection in the Bodleian Library, these stunning maps range from single cities to the solar system, span the thirteenth to the twenty-first century and cover most of the world."--Provided by the publisher. 2016 • BOOK • 1 copy available. 528.9
Coal, steam and ships : engineering, enterprise and empire on the nineteenth-century seas /Crosbie Smith. "Crosbie Smith explores the trials and tribulations of first-generation Victorian mail steamship lines, their passengers, proprietors and the public. Eyewitness accounts show in rich detail how these enterprises engineered their ships, constructed empire-wide systems of steam navigation and won or lost public confidence in the process. Controlling recalcitrant elements within and around steamship systems, however, presented constant challenges to company managers as they attempted to build trust and confidence. Managers thus wrestled to control shipbuilding and marine engine-making, coal consumption, quality and supply, shipboard discipline, religious readings, relations with the Admiralty and government, anxious proprietors, and the media - especially following a disaster or accident. Emphasizing interconnections between maritime history, the history of engineering and Victorian thought, Smith's innovative history of early ocean steamships reveals the fraught uncertainties of Victorian life on the seas."--Provided by the publisher. 2018. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 629.123.2
Admiral of the Fleet Earl Beatty, the last naval hero : an intimate biography /Stephen Roskill Roskill, Stephen 1980 • BOOK • 2 copies available. 92BEATTY
Aquatint worlds : travel, print, and empire, 1770-1820 /Douglas Fordham. "In the late 18th century, British artists embraced the medium of aquatint for its ability to produce prints with rich and varied tones that became even more stunning with the addition of color. At the same time, the expanding purview of the British empire created a market for images of far-away places. Book publishers quickly seized on these two trends and began producing travel books illustrated with aquatint prints of Indian cave temples, Chinese waterways, African villages, and more. Offering a close analysis of three exceptional publications--Thomas and William Daniell's Oriental Scenery (1795-1808), William Alexander's Costume of China (1797-1805), and Samuel Daniell's African Scenery and Animals (1804-5)--this volume examines how aquatint became a preferred medium for the visual representation of cultural difference, and how it subtly shaped the direction of Western modernism."--Provided by the publisher. 2019. • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 769.922
The birth of an icon : Scott Linton and the building of the Cutty Sark : the true story/Alan Platt & Robert T. Sexton "The Cutty Sark is the world's most famous surviving merchant sailing ship and stands proudly amongst the top few maritime survivors of any kind. She is an icon, a brand, and her memorably intriguing name joins Auld Lang Syne as the most widely known words from the Scots of Robert Burns. That she was built at Dumbarton in Scotland in 1869-70 for Scottish owners is well known, but that much of the money which it took to build her was unwittingly provided by Scottish creditors is explained here for the first time. London, however, was her home port when she was under the Red Duster gaining her reputation amongst the glorious clippers which brought tea to the Thames from China and from her phenomenal voyages in the Australian wool trade."--Provided by the publisher. 2021. • BOOK • 2 copies available.
Naval power and expeditionary warfare : peripheral campaigns and new theatres of naval warfare /edited by Bruce A. Elleman and S.C.M. Paine. 2011. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.462
Seapower states : Maritime culture, continental empires and the conflict that made the modern world /Andrew Lambert "Andrew Lambert, author of The Challenge: Britain Against America in the Naval War of 1812--winner of the prestigious Anderson Medal--turns his attention to Athens, Carthage, Venice, the Dutch Republic, and Britain, examining how their identities as "seapowers" informed their actions and enabled them to achieve success disproportionate to their size. Lambert demonstrates how creating maritime identities made these states more dynamic, open, and inclusive than their lumbering continental rivals. Only when they forgot this aspect of their identity did these nations begin to decline. Recognizing that the United States and China are modern naval powers--rather than seapowers--is essential to understanding current affairs, as well as the long-term trends in world history. This volume is a highly original "big think" analysis of five states whose success--and eventual failure--is a subject of enduring interest, by a scholar at the top of his game."--Provided by the publisher. 2018. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 355.02
Licentious worlds : sex and exploitation in global empires /Julie Peakman. "Licentious Worlds is a history of sexual attitudes and behaviour through five hundred years of empire-building around the world. In a graphic and sometimes unsettling account, Julie Peakman examines colonization and the imperial experience puttting women back in the picture, showing their role in the building of empires, but also how marginalized men and women were almost invariably exploited. Women acted as negotiators, brothel-keepers, traders and peacekeepers, but they were also oppressed, forced into marriages and raped. The book describes daily life in Turkish harems, Mughal zenanas and Japanese geisha houses, as well as in royal palaces, private households and on board ships. The stories are drawn from many sources -- from captains' logs, missionary reports and cannibals' memoirs to travellers' letters, traders' accounts and reports on prostitution. From debauched clerics and hog-sodomizing Pilgrims to sexually fluid cannibals and homosexual samurai, Licentious Worlds takes history where it has never been before"-- 2019. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 306.709
Turn of the sea : Art from the Eastern Trade Routes /edited by Luâisa Vinhais and Jorge Welsh. "This catalogue includes works of art from Africa, India, Sri Lanka, China, and Japan, which travelled to the West via maritime trade routes opened and operated by Europeans, and focuses on the quintessential examples of their time. Totalling 69 entries, this selection ranges from brass works from the Kingdom of Benin to Indian silver filigree, Sinhalese ivory furniture, Chinese porcelain, and Japanese lacquer, among other pieces. By encompassing new symbols, decorative patterns, shapes, functions, materials, and techniques, these works of art were originally intended to fulfil different needs throughout the world and help to document the social transformations that arose from the opening of direct channels of trade. At the same time, all of these works of art embody the theme of intercultural exchange, which led to the creation of new traditions and forms of art that resonate in our ever-more international cultures of today."--Provided by the publisher. 2017 • FOLIO • 1 copy available. 7(5/6)
Strange company : Chinese settlers, Mestizo women, and the Dutch in VOC Batavia /Leonard Blussâe. "The walled city of Batavia, today's downtown Jakarta, is chiefly remembered as a tropical deathpit, where the Dutch defiantly struggled to preserve a life style of brick houses and canals transplanted from the home country. This misleading stereotype masks the fascinating world of colonial settlement, whose citizens of different ethnic origins coexisted in the shadow of the almighty Dutch East India Company. The heroes of this study, the Chinese settlers and the mestizo wives of the Hollanders, stand out within this plural society: they played indispensable roles in the upkeep of Batavia, and yet both were objects of mockery and ridicule to contemporary western observers. How their lot came to be tied up to the interests of the VOC is shown in this collection of essays, in which new light is thrown on such wide ranging topics as the introduction of Chinese currency to the Archipelago, the origins of the Chinese massacre of 1740, the junk trade to China, and the central place of mestizo women in the early history of the town. The tragic biographies of a Chinese towkay and a Batavian widow reveal how profoundly the VOC affected the individual lives of its Batavian subjects."--Provided by the publisher. 1986. • BOOK • 1 copy available. 959.8/2