The Gates of the Sea
£15.71
Mercenary Mandarin
£13.99
Skip to product information
Mercenary Mandarin
How a British Adventurer Became a General in Qing-Dynasty China
£13.99
In stock
Jersey-born William Mesny ran off to sea as a boy and jumped ship at Shanghai in 1860 when he was just 18. Amid the chaos of foreign intrigue and civil war in 19th-century China, he became a smuggler, a prisoner of the Taiping rebels, a gun-runner and finally enlisted in the Chinese military. After five years of fierce campaigning against the Miao in remote Guizhou province, Mesny rose to the rank of general and used this privileged position to travel around China to the borders with Burma, Tibet and Vietnam writing opinionated newspaper articles, collecting plants and advising government officials on the development of railways, telegraphs and other modern reforms. Mesny eventually settled in Shanghai with a 16-year-old concubine and published Mesnys Chinese Miscellany, a weekly magazine about his experiences. But his story was not to end well. After his implication in an illicit arms deal, his fortunes never recovered, and when he died in 1919 he was working as a desk clerk. David Leffman has spent over 15 years footstepping Mesnys travels across China, interviewing locals and piecing together his life story from contemporary journals, private letters and newspaper articles.
David Leffman was born and raised in the UK, took a degree in photography, spent 20 years in Australia and then relocated back to Britain in 2009. He first visited China in 1985 and has since authored travel guidebooks to China, Hong Kong, Australia, Indonesia and Iceland for publishers such as DK and Rough Guides; helped compile a Chinese cookbook; and written articles on subjects ranging from crime to horse racing. The Mercenary Mandarin is the result of 15 years spent in archives and on the road, following Mesny's trail around China's backblocks. For hundreds of photographs, research notes and extracts from early versions of the book, like The Mercenary Mandarin on Facebook or visit the author's website at www.davidleffman.com.
- ISBN-13
- 9789881376541
- Publisher
- Blacksmith Books
- Imprint
- Blacksmith Books (HK)
- Publication date
- 14 March 2016
- Format
- Paperback
- Pages
- 372
- Dimensions
- 215 x 140 mm
- Language
- English
