{"title":"Julia Lovell","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"the-great-wall-china-against-the-world-1000-bc-ad-2000-paperback","title":"The Great Wall: China Against the World, 1000 BC - AD 2000 - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eLegendarily 2,200 years old and 4,300 miles long, the Great Wall of China seems to make an overwhelmingly confident physical statement about the country it spans: about China's age-old sense of itself being an advanced civilization anxious to draw a clear line between itself and the \"barbarians\" at its borders. But behind the wall's intimidating exterior--and the myths that have built up around it--is a complex history that has both defined and undermined China. Author Julia Lovell has written a new and important history of the Great Wall that guides the reader through the conquests and cataclysms of the Chinese empire, from the second millennium BC to the present day.\u003cbr\u003eIn recent years, the Wall has become an ever more potent symbol of Chinese nationalism, of a determination to resist foreign domination. But how successful was the Wall in reality, and what was its real purpose? Was it a precursor, albeit on a huge scale, of the Berlin Wall--a barrier designed to keep its population in as much as undesirables out? Lovell looks behind the modern mythology of the Great Wall, uncovering a three-thousand-year history far more fragmented and less illustrious than its crowds of visitors imagine today. The story of the Wall winds through that of the Chinese state and the frontier policy that defined it, through the lives of the millions of individuals who supported, criticized, built, and attacked it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51366133137631,"sku":"9780802142979","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/yhasdpBwlP9780802142979.webp?v=1789084338"},{"product_id":"the-opium-war-drugs-dreams-and-the-making-of-modern-china-paperback","title":"The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"A crisp and readable account... A heartbreaking story of a war.\"\u003ci\u003e (Washington Post)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Opium War \u003c\/i\u003eis both the story of China's first conflict with the West and an analysis of the country's contemporary self-image. It explores how China's national myths mold its interactions with the outside world, how public memory is spun to serve the present; and how delusion and prejudice have bedeviled its relationship with the modern West. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e The conflict turned out to be rich in tragicomedy: in bureaucratic fumblings, military missteps, political opportunism and collaboration. Yet over the past 170 years, this strange tale of misunderstanding, incompetence and compromise has become the founding myth of modern Chinese nationalism: the start of China's heroic struggle against a Western conspiracy to destroy the country with opium and gunboat diplomacy. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Beginning with the dramas of the war itself, Julia Lovell explores its causes and consequences and, through this larger narrative, interweaves the curious stories of opium's promoters and attackers. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Shortlisted for the Guggenheim-Lehrman Military History Prize, \u003ci\u003eThe Opium War \u003c\/i\u003eis by Julia Lovel, professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, where her research has been focused principally on the relationship between culture (specifically, literature, architecture, historiography and sport) and modern Chinese nation-building.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51368264892639,"sku":"9781468311730","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/jgIRVdq7_m9781468311730.webp?v=1789125140"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/julia-lovell.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}