Upcoming Episodes!
Episode 203 (coming January 21!): As the Manchu dynasty weakens during the 19th century, U.S. missionaries arrive. Christian evangelization leads to the outbreak of the long, bloody, brutal, and genocidal Taiping Rebellion, whose leader claims to be the younger brother of Jesus, and — not for the last time — an American official gets fired for assessing accurately what it all means. Americans fear the “Yellow Peril” as Chinese immigration to the United States rises with the California Gold Rush and the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, and in China the Boxer Rebellion breaks out with a goal of killing all foreigners. Meanwhile, the U.S. missionary influence on the revolutionaries Charlie Soong and Sun Yat-sen fosters the rise of a new Chinese elite which will impose upon the United States a view of China and East Asia that has a lot more to do with American wishful thinking than with reality.
Ishaan Tharoor's Washington Post column on Sparta and Athens
