ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book explains how China was constructed in the period from 1851 to 1911 and sheds light on British cultural history and the uses of children's literature. Many critics have discussed the influence of reading in shaping children's sense of self and their perceptions of others. Some have argued that Victorian and Edwardian children read stories that fostered a negative image of the Chinese as racially inferior. By tracing the development of how knowledge of China was transmitted to Victorian and Edwardian children via different genres of children's fiction, the author have aimed to complicate the notion that this body of work predominantly presented the Chinese as opium-smoking, cowardly, xenophobic, and 'inscrutable' cheats. The book demonstrates the dynamics between China and Britain at the turn of the century had changed dramatically since Britain's victories in the Opium Wars.
