‘Twas on the China Station

The ‘Twas on the China Station series follows George Mayhew as he leaves naval life and builds a merchant house in Shanghai during the violent transformation of mid-nineteenth-century China. Beginning in 1850, the novels place commercial ambition beside the Taiping Rebellion, Qing political weakness and the expanding power of Britain, France and the United States in the treaty ports. Shipping, steam, property development and the opium trade provide the means by which Mayhew can create a fortune, but they also bind his success to unequal treaties and imperial coercion. The series combines a maritime and commercial saga with family inheritance, marriage and political calculation, using Shanghai’s rapid growth to examine how a modern international city was constructed from Chinese labour, foreign capital and the instability of a collapsing imperial order.