In this evocative essay on the cultural and social history of a unique and fragile city, Jonathan Porter examines Macau as an enduring but ever-changing threshold between two worlds, the West and China. Founded by the Portuguese in 1557, Macau emerged as a vibrant commercial and cultural hub in the early seventeenth century. The city then gradually evolved, flourishing first as a Eurasian community in the eighteenth century and then as an increasingly Chinese city in the nineteenth century. Poised on the periphery of two worlds, an isolated but global crossroads, Macau's unique cultural and...

This clear and engaging book provides a concise overview of the Ming-Qing epoch (1368-1912), China's last imperial age. Beginning with the end of the Mongol domination of China in 1368, this five-century period was remarkable for its continuity and stability until its downfall in the Revolution of 1911. Viewing the Ming and Qing dynasties as a coherent era characterized by the fruition of diverse developments from earliest times, Jonathan Porter traces the growth of imperial autocracy, the role of the educated Confucian elite as custodians of cultural authority, the significance of ritual as...