IMPERIAL TWILIGHT
THE OPIUM WAR AND THE END OF CHINA’S LAST GOLDEN AGE
STEPHEN R PLATT Atlantic Books, 560pp, £25, Oldie price £16.98 inc p&p
In 1823 opium surpassed cotton as the largest British export to China. ‘The British don’t come out well,’ wrote Gerard Degroot in the Times. ‘For a few decades they were drug pushers extraordinaire.’ He explained that ‘ Imperial Twilight has a misleading title. It’s not really about the Opium War of 1839–42, which is dealt with in a few pages at the very end. The book is more about how the British caused the crisis than about how it affected the Chinese… It’s longer than it needs to be, but Platt clearly adores his topic.’ For Ian Morris in the New York Times this is a book in which ‘good men do bad things, roads to hell are paved with good intentions and golden opportunities are missed. In short,
Imperial Twilight is a ripping yarn… Some of Platt’s villains, like the Scottish drug lords William Jardine and James Matheson, are worthy of soap opera… The war was “not part of some long-term British imperial plan… Neither did it result from some inevitable clash of civilisations.” Rather, Imperial Twilight is overflowing with individuals precisely because it is the individuals who drove everything.’ The
Guardian’s reviewer, Julia Lovell, felt the book ‘has a powerful message for the present day. We need to understand how and why China remembers the conflict; we forget sensitivities about these events at our peril… Platt writes beautifully, with a novelist’s eye for detail. He skilfully weaves through the book a cast of eccentric characters who mediated between China, Britain and the US.’