A01=Robert Morton
Author_Robert Morton
Category=JPS
civil service
colonial administration
diplomacy
east asia
East Asia relations
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
imperial history
Meiji era transformation
nineteenth century British foreign policy
Sino-British conflict
Victorian diplomacy
Product details
- ISBN 9781041175018
- Weight: 640g
- Dimensions: 138 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 01 Dec 2025
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Harry Parkes was at the heart of Britain’s relations with the Far East from the start of his working life at fourteen, to his death at fifty-seven. Orphaned at the age of five, he went to China on his own as a child and worked his way to the top. God-fearing and fearless, he believed his mission was to bring trade and ‘civilisation’ to East Asia. In his day, he was seen as both a hero and a monster and is still bitterly resented in China for his part in the country’s humiliations at Western hands, but largely esteemed in Japan for helping it to industrialise. Morton’s new biography, the first in over thirty years, and benefiting in part from access to the Parkes’ family and archives, offers a more intimate and informed profile of the personal and professional life of a Victorian titan and one of Britain’s most undiplomatic diplomats in the history of the British Civil Service.
Dr Robert Morton is a professor at Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan. He is the author of the prize-winning A.B. Mitford and the Birth of Japan as a Modern State and A Life of Sir Harry Parkes.
