A journey through the 5000 years of history documented by one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations. For all the episodes for free, as well as additional content, please subscribe and/or visit http://thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com.
371 episodes transcribedTheKangxi Emperor’s Obsessive Pursuit ofGaldan Khanto the Endsof the EarthPresented: 02/28/2026audio-only cut (this is from my mic pick-up, so the hos...
The war is over. The treaty is signed, sealed, & delivered. Yet though the smoke has cleared, the haze of uncertainty over what - exactly - just happe...
The new envoy from London arrives at Qing's doorstep in August 1842 with a simple mandate: stop allowing Britain to be "humbugged" & finish the war El...
The Ransom of Canton.The lame-duck Superintendent watches helplessly as a triumvirate of Qing officials arrives to reverse every compromise his predec...
Britain carries the Opium War to Beijing's unready doorstep with steam and iron, moving the crisis from the border frontiers to the heart of the imper...
It's been 12 years since this initially was 'casted out - which means that the Year of the Horse is back, baby! Now it's the Fire Horse, but Happy Hap...
Britain and China both saw the opium crisis clearly enough to know it would end in disaster. Each believed it understood the situation, and the other,...
Lin Zexu believed moral clarity and the largest drug bust in history could end the opium crisis and avert war. Yet, as his solution drained into Humen...
Letter to the queen of England, from the high Imperial Commissioner Lin, and his colleagues. From the Canton press. Learn more about your ad choi...
In 1834, Britain sent a man to China almost perfectly unsuited to the job... only to forbid him from actually doing it. William John Napier, naval off...
In this empire business, you gotta make the opium first. Then when you get the opium, you get the silver. Then when you get the silver, then you get t...
Great Qing begins to buckle under early 19th c. internal pressures. Unrest first erupts not at the imperial core but along its social and geographic m...
The Qing Empire did not collapse because it stopped working. It collapsed because it kept working — just barely — under pressures that compounded fast...
From the koan chants of monasteries tucked between Himalayan peaks, to wending caravan paths stretching endlessly across the arid expanses of the Takl...
The world is coming to Qing's doorstep, but it has a whole other set of problems along its own frontiers... Less chronologically tied-down than mos...
The 19th Century is going to be exceedingly rough on Qing China. So, before we venture down into the chasm that is the "Chinese Century of Humuliation...
Back with pt. 2 of autumnal fictions of the spine-tingling variety. This time largely from (where else) Pu Songling, as well as several shorter entrie...
00:02:09 - "The Scholar & the Headless Ghost" True music fans come in all types. 00:05:37 - "Magical Arts" Let the buyer beware... but sometimes...
The Pirate Queen’s Red Flag Fleet reigns supreme, but a three-way battle at Tiger’s Mouth tests even her grip on the seas. Time Period Covered: 18...
Richard Glasspoole thought he was going to have enough of an adventure sailing to the South Pacific. He didn't expect quite so much excitement as spen...
