PositiveThe Times Literary SupplementBrook...has an impressive grasp of the sources, and he is at his best when delivering intermittent side swipes at popular misconceptions of Chinese history and China’s recent foreign policy ... it basically skips the nineteenth century. This is a serious issue for a book about China and the world that suggests contemporary implications. A great deal of the country’s current attitude to the world is a result of its nineteenth- century history ... Perhaps Great State might be best read alongside the novelist Amitav Ghosh’s wonderfully researched Ibis trilogy...which tells the story of the opium trade from India to China and the war Britain fought to protect it.
