Breaking with the Past
Subtitle: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: Feb 11, 2014
Language: eng
Format: hardcover
Number of pages: 432
ISBN-13: 9780231137386
Description: 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 harbours, erected lighthouses, and surveyed the Chinese coast. 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.
Notes: Source title: Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China