Between its founding in 1854 and its collapse in 1952, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service delivered one-third to one-half of all revenue collected by China's central authorities. Much more than a tax collector, the institution managed China's harbors, erected lighthouses, and surveyed the Chinese coast. It funded and oversaw the Translator's College, which trained Chinese diplomats while its staff translated Chinese classics, novels, and poetry and wrote important studies on the Chinese economy, its financial system, its trade, its history, and its government. It organized contributions to international exhibitions, developed its own shadow diplomacy, pioneered China's modern postal system, and even maintained its own armed force. After the 1911 Revolution, the agency became deeply involved in the management of China's international loans and domestic bond issues.
In other words, the Customs Service was pivotal to China's post-Taiping integration into the world of modern nation-states and twentieth-century trade and finance. If the Customs Service introduced the modern governance of trade to China, it also made Chinese legible to foreign audiences. Following the activities of the Inspectors General, who were virtual autocrats within the service and communicated regularly with senior Chinese officials and foreign diplomats, this history tracks the Customs Service as it transformed China and its relationship to the world. The Customs Service often kept China together when little else did. This book reveals the role of the agency in influencing the outcomes of the Sino-French War, the Boxer Rebellion, and the 1911 Revolution, as well as the rise of the Nationalists in the 1920s, and concludes with the Customs Service purges of the early 1950s, when the relentless logic of revolution dismantled the agency for good.

Ten engaging personal histories introduce readers to what it was like to live in and with the most powerful political machine ever created: the Chinese Communist Party. Detailing the life of ten people who led or engaged with the Chinese Communist Party, one each for one of its ten decades of its existence, these essays reflect on the Party's relentless pursuit of power and extraordinary adaptability through the transformative decades since 1921. Demonstrating that the history of the Chinese Communist Party is not one story but many stories, readers learn about paths not taken, the role of chance, ideas and persons silenced, hopes both lost and fulfilled. This vivid mosaic of lives and voices draws together one hundred years of modern Chinese history - and illuminates possible paths for China's future.

In 1937, the Nationalists under Chiang Kaishek were leading the Chinese war effort against Japan and were lauded in the West for their efforts to transform China into an independent and modern nation; yet this image was quickly tarnished. The Nationalists were soon denounced as militarily incompetent, corrupt, and antidemocratic and Chiang Kaishek, the same.
In this book, van de Ven investigates the myths and truths of Nationalist resistance including issues such as: the role of the US in East Asia during the Second World War the achievements of Chiang Kaishek as Nationalist leader the respective contributions of the Nationalists and the Communists to the defeat of Japan the consequences of the Europe First strategy for Asia.
offers a major new interpretation of the Chinese Nationalists, placing their war of resistance against Japan in the context of their prolonged efforts to establish control over their own country and providing a critical reassessment of Allied Warfare in the region. This groundbreaking volume will interest students and researchers of Chinese History and Warfare.

這關鍵15年，成就了你我熟知的現代中國！
也許，沒有誰的國家是真的。
在建國神話的夢幻中，真相與謊言，都成了現實。
這是課本中最混亂、難以卒睹、令人放棄理解的一段歷史，
是一個政府走向潰敗、國家邁向分裂、人民必須受難，真相難辨的傷痛故事。
和平被有關民族間平等、擁有自決權利、民主和人權等偉大原則割裂。它無法產生希望，也無法形成和解，卻能夠滋養核戰和末日的恐懼。──方德萬
今日的中國，何以會是如此？到底是誰打贏了關鍵的戰爭？
隔海高唱的歷史，哪個才是真的？
第二次世界大戰是型塑現代世界的關鍵，中國在其中的角色尤其難解。這段近代中國進程，由連串的錯誤、分裂、敗亡、注定受難的傷痛寫就。
《戰火中國》以全新視角，重新梳理這段令人慨歎，凝縮重要轉捩點與變化的歷史，且在大脈絡下特別穿插陳克文與齊邦媛的個人史，補足了大歷史角度忽略的老百姓生命軌跡。
過去西方學者認為中國在二戰無足輕重，但《戰火中國》作者方德萬指出，當眾人目光集中在歐洲戰場時，1937年至1952年中國正在打一場複雜的全面戰爭，不但要面對同時並存、相互拉扯的多股的外敵，還有同樣分裂並進的內憂。
新中國，就在這麼飄搖動蕩的土地上誕生。
要探究新中國真正的本質，必須盡力拋開抵抗外侮的英雄式主觀論述色彩，同時並論各派系在抗戰時期的作為、決策、成功與失敗，以及日本、蘇聯、美國、英國等勢力的政治考量與行動。《戰火中國》全書分為四部份：第一部「立國大業」論析蔣介石掌權至1937年中日開戰期間，圍繞其與國民黨的連串事件；第二部「歷史轉捩點」講述對日抗戰的時代精神轉變，分論日本、國民黨如何試圖取勝，以及中國共產黨的擴張；第三部「試煉」和第四部「新中國」，則檢視成為世界大戰一部分的抗日戰爭、日本戰敗後的中國內戰，以及在韓戰中逐漸浮現的冷戰面貌。

Ten engaging personal histories introduce readers to what it was like to live in and with the most powerful political machine ever created: the Chinese Communist Party. Detailing the life of ten people who led or engaged with the Chinese Communist Party, one each for one of its ten decades of its existence, these essays reflect on the Party's relentless pursuit of power and extraordinary adaptability through the transformative decades since 1921. Demonstrating that the history of the Chinese Communist Party is not one story but many stories, readers learn about paths not taken, the role of chance, ideas and persons silenced, hopes both lost and fulfilled. This vivid mosaic of lives and voices draws together one hundred years of modern Chinese history - and illuminates possible paths for China's future.