Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Historians studying modern Sino-Western relations and Western views of China
- Modern history students needing public-domain English sources for papers
- Cultural researchers interested in how nineteenth-century Europeans wrote about China
- Readers with some ability to read English sources who are willing to read critically
Not a good fit for
- Beginners seeking a general history of China at contemporary academic standards
- General readers who struggle with English and need Chinese translation and notes
- Those expecting an objective, neutral popular work free of period bias
Reading tips
- First learn the author's era and identity, then read the main text, noting the period stance behind his judgments.
- Compare key passages with contemporaneous Chinese sources or other historical works, marking points of divergence.
- Read by theme rather than straight through, sorting political institutions, foreign relations, and social customs separately.
- When encountering sweeping claims, ask about the source material and distinguish factual description from the author's evaluation.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
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About the author
Demetrius Charles Boulger (1853–1928) was a British writer known for biographies of figures in Far Eastern and Central Asian history and for works on Chinese affairs. Public information about him is limited, and details of his life are largely unknown, but the four works held in this collection show where his interests lay: the two-volume Life of Gordon treats the British general Charles Gordon, while The Life of Yakoob Beg Athalik Ghazi is a biography of the ruler of Kashgar, and he also wrote a book on China. Boulger's writing draws mainly on political and military figures, with a narrative that emphasizes factual exposition and the recounting of events, in a practical style reflecting a late nineteenth-century British perspective on Asian affairs. His works are still consulted as material for understanding the Central Asian politics of the period and British narratives about China, and retain some value as historical sources.
