Leonard H. D. Gordon, Confrontation over Taiwan: Nineteenth-Century China and the Powers, Lexington books, Lanham, 2007, xv + 305pp. ISBN: 978-0-7391-1868-9; 978-0-7391-1868-4 (hbk).

This solid work of diplomatic history explores the rivalry among the American, British, Chinese, French, Japanese, Prussian and Russian empires over the control of Taiwan between 1840 and 1895. Following the opening of treaty ports in China by the first Opium War in 1842, imperial ambitions toward China grew steadily, shown by aggression over Taiwan that culminated in the Japanese seizure of the island as a result of the first Sino-Japanese War in 1895. The author contends that an analysis of the attitudes of these empires toward Taiwan can provide a comprehensive outlook of the cooperative policy, an elaborate diplomatic technique formulated by British and US colonial officials