In this, the 100th year of Mark Twain’s (Samuel Clemens) death, we’re fortunate that a newspaper article by Twain about US/China relations, written in 1868, has suddenly become available. LibriVox volunteer John Greenman has recorded the article, and been given permission to use the following introduction from Twain Scholar, Shelley Fisher Fishkin.
“A good candidate for ‘the most under-appreciated work by Mark Twain’ would be ‘The Treaty With China,’ which he published in the New York Tribune in 1868. This piece, which is an early statement of Twain’s opposition to imperialism and which conveys his vision of how the U.S. ought to behave on the global stage, has not been reprinted since its original publication until now.” (the online, open-access “Journal of Transnational American Studies” published it in the spring, 2010). (Introduction by Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Twain scholar and Director of American Studies at Stanford University, used by permission)
(Transcription by Martin Zehr for the Journal of Transnational American Studies, American Cultures and Global Contexts Center, UC Santa Barbara)
Twain’s article, “The Treaty With China” is available for free in audio, read by the fabulous John Greenman, at:
http://librivox.org/the-treaty-with-china-by-mark-twain/
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