REPRINT. Special Description Note- This is not a print on demand edition. Care has been taken to enhance and improve the original text whenever possible. Martino Publishing follows the standards of traditional printing and quality is a primary concern. We distinguish ourselves from Print on Demand by our quality controls, paper quality and binding quality. Octavo. Five volumes. 5 volumes. 1886 pages. fronts., plates, ports., fold. maps, 2 plans. Oxford, The Clarendon press, 1926-29. These admirably produced volumes form a large additional monument to the knowledge and industry of Dr. Morse, who has already done so much to illuminate the history of China. He has analyzed the records of the East India Company. The details of the trade are given usually in tabular form; and are followed year by year with brief narratives of the outstanding events, interspersed with quotations from the diaries and dispatches of the Company's servants in China.
On various special incidents Dr. Morse's documents contain much that is new. For instance, we find several new documents on the embassies to China, from that of Lieut.-Colonel Cathcart, who died before reaching China, down to that of Lord Amherst which was so complete a failure. These Dr. Morse regards, and rightly, as steps in a struggle between the Company and the local officials at Canton-a struggle in which the mandarins won.
He illustrates also with great fullness a number of incidents in which the question of the liability of Europeans to the Chinese Courts was involved. His extracts show how deeply the supercargoes mistrusted the Chinese system of administering justice, and how great reason they had for their mistrust. Indeed on both sides, economic and political, these volumes are full of precious material which lay buried in the records of the Canton factory, till Dr. Morse's skill, knowledge, and perseverance at last made them available.They will prove indispensable to every student of Anglo-Chinese relations and of the history of the East India Company. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
