Volume 23, Number 10 · June 10, 1976
An Imperialist's Progress
By Hugh Trevor-Roper
The Correspondence of G. E. Morrison, Volume I, 1895-1912
edited by Lo Hui-min
Cambridge University Press, 832 pp., $62.50
The half century after 1895 was the catastrophic period of Chinese history. In those years the last imperial dynasty foundered through internal rottenness and external pressure; the country was dismembered and no means was found to stay the process of dissolution. It was the peculiar misfortune of China that this decay of its government and governing class coincided with the high point of Western imperialism. The scramble for the benighted continent of Africa had its parallel in the even more indecent scramble for the vast and ancient empire which, a century before, had been held up to 'philosophical' Europe as the model of enlightenment.
Review, 5182 words
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