18世纪末，为打开对华贸易大门，英王乔治三世以为乾隆皇帝祝寿之名，派出以马戛尔尼勋爵为首的庞大访华团。为在中国获得更大的商业利益，使团出发前做了精心的准备，却不幸空手而归。清代外交史上这一重大事件，多年来一直是国内外学者关注的题目，学者们从中英政治经济及礼仪文化诸方面给予了大量研究，使人们对这一事件有了深入的认识。笔者曾在英国国家图书馆查阅到当年随团画家威廉·亚历山大(William Alexander)来华时所绘大部分图画（以下简称亚图），发现马戛尔尼访华的相关著述，除了政治史经济史上的意义，还可以有社会学视角方面的解读。特别是亚历山大随团访问时画的一批水彩画，因其内容涉及中国政治、经济、社会生活诸方面，它们不但成为18世纪西方了解中国的最早的形象资料，还成为此后西方人关于东方景象的一个重要创作源。如1843年伦敦出版了以亚历山大绘画为原型的铜版画集《中国：那个古代帝国的风景、建筑和社会习俗》(China,The Scenery,Architecture, and Social Habits of That Ancient Empire)。这足以体现亚历山大图画在西方人心目中的价值。而亚历山大在中国所绘的一些中国行业图，更是成为19世纪后在西方多次出现的“中国行业画”之滥觞。本书仅以这批图画为主要依据，通过对亚图产生的背景及内容的考查，对18世纪末英国人眼里的中国社会，作社会学视角的粗略解读。

Richard Maurice Tinkler was an ordinary man in an extraordinary time and place. This riveting "biography of a nobody" offers a rare glimpse of imperialism and the making of modern China seen from the perspective of a working-class Englishman enforcing the order of everyday life on the streets of Shanghai. Culled from Tinkler's many personal letters, Empire Made Me meticulously documents his astonishingly revealing life in the service of the British Empire between 1919 and 1939, one of hundreds of young men who joined the Shanghai Municipal Police. Responsible for maintaining order in Shanghai's International Settlement, the SMP expanded and enforced British dominion in China's most important political, commercial, and cultural center. Tinkler would have remained just another anonymous and forgotten colonial policeman were it not for his unexpected death, at the hands of Japanese marines and an incompetent local doctor, in June 1939. His suspicious death created a noisy diplomatic incident that was picked up by journalists and splashed across the front pages of Britain's newspapers. Many of Tinkler's personal letters survived, and they describe his personal life in unusually vivid detail, including his relationships, his knowing masculinity, his travels, and his bitter meditations on his lowly position in a powerful but waning empire. Robert Bickers absorbing biography uses Tinkler's letters as well as extensive archival research to tell the story of this man's everyday life and violent decline in a colonial world -- a story that offers an uncommonly candid history of twentieth-century imperialism.

This is a study of Britain's presence in China both at its peak, and during its inter-war dissolution in the face of assertive Chinese nationalism and declining British diplomatic support. Using archival materials from China and records in Britain and the United States, the author paints a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging our understanding of British imperialism there. Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design, but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into conflict not only with the Chinese population, but with the British imperial government. The book also analyzes the formation and maintenance of settler identities, and then investigates how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British.

An illuminating account of global commerce in the eighteenth-century Indian Ocean world as seen through the lives of three Scottish traders
This book delves into the lives of three Scottish private traders-George Smith of Bombay, George Smith of Canton, and George Smith of Madras-and uses them as lenses through which to explore the inner workings of Britain's imperial expansion and global network of trade, revealing how an unstable credit system and a financial crisis ultimately led to greater British intervention in India and China.

書以1929年至37年間，英國和中國的外交關係為主軸，旨在論述其間的轉折與變化，除了探討國民政府在民族主義、日本侵略和財經危機的交互激盪下，如何調整與英國的互動關係，並論析英國所採取的對應政策，同時兼論遠東地區的均勢，在失衡傾斜的情況下，英國姑息主義、美國孤立主義、日本東方門羅主義以及國聯的和平主義在東方的合縱連橫，除原始其動機並評析其影響。

兩百多年前，大英帝國以向大清乾隆皇帝祝壽為名，派出馬戛爾尼勛爵率領的龐大使節團出使中國，但實際上意圖與清政府談判以加強兩國的貿易往來。然而由於文化背景與政治觀念的不同，大清帝國認為英國是仰慕中華文明才遣使臣遠渡重洋為乾隆皇帝祝壽，於是這場「聾子對話」尚未開始就已注定失敗。
作者從世界史的角度切入，將這次長達兩年的出使行動，視為東、西方文化的首次撞擊，意即「天下唯一文明國家」遇上「世界最強盛國家」產生的衝突，不僅打破了西方世界對中國的迷戀誤解，也成為日後世界霸權版圖劇變的轉捩點。
本書以詳實的史實、有趣的細節、精彩的筆觸，揭示中西文明巨大的差異和衝突。透過考察大量未曾公開的筆記、日記、檔案、文獻，還原了那次名聞遐邇的出訪，並澄清了一些鮮為人知或被故意隱瞞的事實，且由此展開探討：為什麼幾乎所有領域都領先其他文明一大截的中國，後來會變成「停滯的帝國」？而其他國家的發展又是如何？時至今日，當年中國的命運會不會成為現在西方國家的命運？
藉由回首東西方文明相遇的關鍵時刻，以宏觀的角度看「西方人眼中的中國」，重新思考全球化時代的國家未來。

The British opium trade along China's seacoast has come to symbolize China's century-long descent into political and social chaos. In the standard historical narrative, opium is the primary medium through which China encountered the economic, social, and political institutions of the West. Opium, however, was not a Sino-British problem confined to southeastern China. It was, rather, an empire-wide crisis, and its spread among an ethnically diverse populace created regionally and culturally distinct problems of control for the Qing state. This book examines the crisis from the perspective of Qing prohibition efforts. The author argues that opium prohibition, and not the opium wars, was genuinely imperial in scale and is hence much more representative of the actual drug problem faced by Qing administrators. The study of prohibition also permits a more comprehensive and accurate observation of the economics and criminology of opium. The Qing drug traffic involved the domestic production, distribution, and consumption of opium. A balanced examination of the opium market and state anti-drug policy in terms of prohibition reveals the importance of the empire's landlocked western frontier regions, which were the domestic production centers, in what has previously been considered an essentially coastal problem.

《怀柔远人》的主题是清代礼宾与1793年马嘎尔尼英国使团，书中分别考察了清朝与英国对遣使事件的叙述，以便强调双方不同的实际操作模式与观念框架。在批判性地评介了其他有关清代外交关系的观点之后，第2章提供了一个对清帝国及其统治状况的全景式的考察，第5章也谈到这个问题，并特别关注宾礼。第3章讨论18世纪大英帝国国内文化背景，展示在知识贵族中普遍流行的“外交、贸易及对中国的了解”。第4章重新检讨马嘎尔尼勋爵对觐见过程前前后后的叙述。第6章和第7章透过清朝的礼仪和统治观念来审视清朝有关这次觐见的记载。第8章把双方的叙述列在一起，合而观之。第9章，在对这次清英相遇做出一些总结之后，回顾了中西关系史中对马嘎尔尼使团的研讨。

长篇历史小说《鸦片战争》是一部基于中英史料再现艰难时世背后的斑斓世相与政治生态的浩瀚大作。这部扬溢着阳刚之气的历史小说，用泼墨重彩的笔法，勾画出一幅鸦片战争的全景图：大清禁烟，英军远征，突袭舟山，关闸之战，广州之战，厦门之战，浙江之战，长江之战，《南京条约》等，一环扣一环地展现在读者眼前。书中人物众多，场面宏大，中英两国的帝王将相，军官士兵，宏商巨贾，流民海盗等，全都粉墨登场。不仅真实再现战争的残酷悲壮，还讲述了鸦片战争背后道光与疆臣的博弈，官场的隐晦，商人的纠结，民众的困惑，和中英两国为这场战争引发的内部冲突，在王晓秦生动的描写中，鸦片战争的真实与谎言渐渐浮出水面。
《鸦片战争》所采用的史实和相关数字全部基于史料。王晓秦在写作期间踏勘了鸦片战争的所有战争遗址，通读了清史料、英政府文件、英兵参战日记和回忆录；并从东莞林则徐纪念馆、舟山鸦片战争纪念馆、英国国家海事博物馆和陆军博物馆、美国皮伯迪·埃赛克斯博物馆等国内外博物馆和图书馆拍摄和收集了1800多幅照片和图片，精选出100余幅附于书中，它们大部分出自19世纪的中外画家和参战官兵之手，不少图片首次出现，它们准确地记录了那个时代的人物风情和战争场面，具有非常高的史料价值。
王晓秦的视角相当独特，使得本书不仅是一个荡气回肠的历史故事，还有对历史的深刻洞见，校正了传统的历史观念。本书新颖的角度和深厚的文学描写功力，让作品具有高度的史料价值、文学价值和可读性。

Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston (1874-1938) was a colonial administrator and scholar with a lifelong fascination with China who was appointed tutor to the young Puyi (1906-1967), who became emperor at the age of two. Johnston was highly favoured by the emperor, receiving several imperial titles and residing in the Forbidden City. His account of his time as Puyi's tutor, Twilight in the Forbidden City, also reissued in this series, was dramatised in the film The Last Emperor. Previously, Johnston had served in a variety of colonial service positions, including three years as commissioner of the British-held territory of Weihaiwai. This book, first published in 1910, is Johnston's examination of Weihaiwei, which he considered to be a microcosm of Chinese life. Writing with obvious affection, Johnston outlines the history, culture, festivals and local folklore of Weihaiwei and explores what the future could hold for the city.

世界史学家越来越强调跨社会比较的价值和必要性。对某个案例的简单一瞥和对不同案例的多视角研究，后者比前者更能引起人们的兴趣，其解释也更具说服力。作为经济史学者，本书作者一直对英国工业革命的原因和没落的清王朝时代的中国饱有兴趣，作者试图通过本书的书写帮读者解决这样的问题：通过对这两个帝国的历史比较，解释为什么工业革命发生在十八九世纪的英国，而不是在中国？并希望类似的比较能帮助读者发现隐藏在工业化进程中的潜在机制。

茶叶引发的战争，改变了世界历史，改变了全球经济格局
以茶读史，走进晚清历史现场，读懂全球茶叶贸易百年风云
·独特视角，展示茶运与国运的深刻纠葛
·精彩叙述，呈现茶与国际贸易的风云际会
·严谨考据，详尽考证上百种相关文献资料
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17—19世纪，茶与中国、英国、美国、印度四个大国的命运都有着千丝万缕的联系。因茶而引发的战争，包括中英鸦片战争、第一次英国侵藏战争、美国独立战争在内，改变了世界历史，也影响了全球经济格局的塑造。
“为何英国、美国以茶而富强，而晚清却因茶走向衰亡？”知名茶文化研究者周重林、太俊林从这一问题出发，梳理参考上百种文献资料，以翔实的史料、客观的记录、通俗的文笔，还原真实历史，层层揭示其背后的深刻原因。不仅聚焦中英贸易战、中美关系、茶叶话语权、茶文化边疆等议题，同时全景展现世界政治经济格局的变化，将茶叶置于宏观的历史语境中，解读晚清的政治、经济与社会，深入洞察茶运与国运的纠葛。
《茶叶战争》初版于2012年，广受读者推崇，10年间热销40万册，此次精装纪念版经过全面修订，新增内容数万字。