Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China's First Great Victory Over the West (Hardcover) by Tonio Andrade

from

One of the best books I read in 2011, hugely entertaining, but also serious history. Lost Colony reads like a novel, full of colorful people and exotic places, clashes of East and West in battles at sea and on land over castles, with swords and gunpowder, metal armor and muskets, pirates and rebe...

from jcbrunner

The Lost Colony suffers from a singularly bad title. It is the tale of the Chinese conquest of Formosa/Taiwan which, as a poor underdeveloped island, had up to then not featured much in Chinese perception. With the collapse of the Ming dynasty and the establishment of the Manchu Qing dynasty, the...

from pbjwelch

Others have described the historical point in China's and the Dutch East India's histories that the book focuses on, so let me focus on the question of style. The scholarship is very good; the author has done a huge amount of research and the notes and sources are excellent for follow-up, clarifi...

from antiquary

Andrade gives a full account of the Chinese Ming loyalist and pirate Koxinga's conquest of Taiwan from the Dutch, beginning with Koxinga's father who had attained great success as a pirate by alliance with the Dutch. Andrade was originally interested I the war as a test case for the long-running ...

from

One of the best books I read in 2011, hugely entertaining, but also serious history. Lost Colony reads like a novel, full of colorful people and exotic places, clashes of East and West in battles at sea and on land over castles, with swords and gunpowder, metal armor and muskets, pirates and rebe...