This book showcases the history of commodity production in the British Empire and its impact on the natural and human worlds. Focused on the tea plantation economy of east India, it highlights the ecological consequences, legal workings, and labor conditions of this early form of global capital and monopoly trade.

Arnab Dey examines the intersecting role of law, ecology, and agronomy in shaping the history of tea and its plantations in British east India. He suggests that looking afresh at the legal, environmental, and agro-economic aspects of tea production illuminate covert, expedient, and often illegal administrative and commercial dealings that had an immediate and long-term human an...(展开全部)

Despite the importance of books and the written word in Chinese society, the history of the book in China is a topic that has been little explored. This pioneering volume of essays, written by historians, art historians, and literary scholars, introduces the major issues in the social and cultural history of the book in late imperial China. Informed by many insights from the ri...(展开全部)

罗友枝（Evelyn S. Rawski），匹兹堡大学历史系教授，研究方向为近代东亚和中国近代史，着重于大众史、大众文化和社会礼俗史的研究，著有《中国南方的农业变化与农业经济》《清代中国的教育与大众文化》及《十八世纪的中国社会》(合著)等。 黎安友（Andrew J. Nathan），哥伦比亚大学政治学系教授、东亚研究所主任，研究方向为中国政治与外交政策、比较政治等，著有《中国的民主》《中国政治变迁之路》《长城与空城计：中国寻求安全的战略》等。 姜士彬（David G. Johnson），加州大学伯克利分校中国研究中心教授，早年专注中古中国士族研究，近年关注明清大众文化研究，著有《中古中国的寡头政治》《景观与祭祀：中国北方乡村生活的仪式基础》等。

Exploring the reasons for a flurry of geographical works in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, this study analyzes how cartographers, travellers, astrologers, historians and naval captains promoted their vision of the world and the centrality of the Ottoman Empire in it. It proposes a new case study for the interconnections among empires in the period, demonstrating h...(展开全部)

Asserting that litigation in late imperial China was a form of documentary warfare, this book offers a social analysis of the men who composed legal documents for commoners and elites alike. Litigation masters—a broad category of legal facilitators ranging from professional plaintmasters to simple but literate men to whom people turned for assistance—emerge in this study as cen...(展开全部)

Nestled in the Himalayan foothills of Northeast India, Darjeeling is synonymous with some of the finest and most expensive tea in the world. It is also home to a violent movement for regional autonomy that, like the tea industry, dates back to the days of colonial rule. In this nuanced ethnography, Sarah Besky narrates the lives of tea workers in Darjeeling. She explores how no...(展开全部)

Beginning in the late Qing era, Chinese writers and intellectuals looked to India in search of new literary possibilities and anticolonial solidarity. In their view, India and China shared both an illustrious past of cultural and religious exchange and a present experience of colonial aggression. These writers imagined India as an alternative to Western imperialism—a Pan-Asian ...(展开全部)

The spirit of adventure is at the heart of Jonathan Spence's widely acclaimed scholarship on the modern history of China. This vitality, fleshed out with deep research and attired in elegant style, has drawn countless readers to subjects otherwise approachable only by experts. Through eight books, from the story of the early eighteenth century Manchu bondservant Ts'ao Yin to hi...(展开全部)

In Promiscuous Media, Hikari Hori makes a compelling case that the visual culture of Showa-era Japan articulated urgent issues of modernity rather than serving as a simple expression of nationalism. Hori makes clear that the Japanese cinema of the time was in fact almost wholly built on a foundation of Russian and British film theory as well as American film genres and techniqu...(展开全部)