This book presents a range of new research on British-Chinese relations in the period from Britain's first imperial intervention in China up to the 1960s. Topics covered include economic issues such as finance, investment and Chinese labour in British territories, questions of perceptions on both sides, such as British worries about, and exaggeration of, the 'China threat', including to India, and British aggression towards, and eventual withdrawal from, China.

Robert Bickers is Professor of History at the University of Bristol, UK.

Jonathan J. Howlett is a Lecturer in Modern Asian History at the University of York, UK.

Introduction 1. 'The Usual Intercourse of Nations': The British in Pre-Opium War Canton 2. British Intervention in the Taiping Rebellion 3. Britain and China, and India, 1830s-1947 4. The Interest of Our Colonies Seems to Have Been Largely Overlooked: Colonial Australia and Anglo-Chinese Relations 5. 'Coolies' or 'Huagong'? Conflicting British and Chinese attitudes towards Chinese contract workers in World War One France 6. Sino-British Relations in Railway Construction: State, Imperialism and Local Elites, 1905-1911 7. Foreign investment in modern China: an analysis with a focus on British interests 8. Curative Finance: Francis Aglen, Bond Markets, and the Early Republic, 1911-1928 9. Expansion and Defence in the International Settlement at Shanghai 10. Nationalistic Enthusiasm versus Imperialist Sophistication: Britain from Chiang Kai-shek's Perspective 11. 'Decolonisation' in China, 1949-1959