Eric Jay Dolin traces America`s fraught relationship with China back to the unforgiving nineteenth-century seas that separated a brash, rising naval power from a battered ancient empire. It is a prescient fable for our time, one that continues to shed light on America`s modern relationship with China. Indeed, the trade in furs, opium and beche-de-mer - a rare sea cucumber delicacy - might have catalysed America`s emerging economy but it also sparked an ecological and human rights catastrophe of such proportions that the reverberations can still be felt today. Peopled with fascinating characters - from the ”Financier of the Revolution” Robert Morris to the Qianlong Emperor - this is a page-turning saga of pirates and politicians, coolies and concubines.