| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

James L. Hevia. English Lessons: The Pedogogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2003. Pp. xviii, 387. Cloth $84.95, paper $23.95.

In this book, James L. Hevia reminds us that British imperialism in China was nasty, violent, and savage. It may seem strange that we require such an extended "lesson" on the subject, but to understand the importance of Hevia's book and its message requires a brief overview of the shape of Western Sinology. In these annals, what China experienced from the Opium Wars to the end of World War II was semicolonialism, a state usually envisioned as a somewhat watered-down version of its more insidious cousin, colonialism. China never entirely lost its sovereignty, and the imperial powers, never crazy or covetous enough to try to administer all of this vast empire, contented themselves with treaty-port outposts and legal concessions. Through the 1960s and 1970s, generations of scholars, following John K. Fairbank, detailed how Western statesmen, businessmen, and missionaries gently tutored the Chinese in the inevitable modern arts of diplomacy and industry. At the end of the twentieth century, a new generation of scholars highlighted the agency of the Chinese, who, in the absence of total colonial domination, learned their lessons quickly but assertively, forming creative hybrids while avoiding devastation. Hevia begs to differ. He argues, eloquently and successfully, that British lessons in modernity had violence and domination at their core. In doing so, he challenges historians of China and scholars of empire to rethink the line between semicolonialism and colonialism.

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