Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Gift message from author. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. No notes or highlighting. Repaired tear on back of dustcover. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> A Tale of Three Cities has borrowed a little more than an adaptation of Dickens’ title. He wrote a novel round the historical contrasts between London and Paris in the late 18th Century. This tale tells a more continuous factual story of the three cities of Canton Shanghai and Hong Kong which together have been the merchant centres of Chinese trade with the West over more than three centuries. This Exhibition offers with grateful thanks for the support of NatWest Markets and Sotheby’s Institute an historical summary of one of the great and at the time most unusual trade partnerships in the history of commerce and at the same time suggests a path forward in the more complex world of today. Not for the first time it is the decorative arts which provide the principal way of painting a panorama of the events of the past. That they comprised only between 5% and 10% of the whole trade with China throughout that time is less important than the fact that they remain to tell their story. It was spices and silks and gold and rice and particularly tea which interested the East India Companies of the West – but because of their quality and lasting beauty these decorative works have survived while the rest have been long consumed by the markets of the West; and in surviving they have left a trail of clues and information about how the trade was organised. (MP)