Of Devils and Barbarians: China’s Historic Relations with the West
Speaker: Michael Pembroke in conversation with Ooi Kee Beng
Date: Monday, 26 January 2026
Time: 8:00–9:30PM
Venue: Penang Institute, 10 Jalan Brown, 10350 George Town, Pulau Pinang
The Talk:
In his latest book, Silk Silver Opium, Michael Pembroke explores the intricate history of China’s trading relationship with the West. This talk draws on the book to reveal how the exchange of goods like silk, silver, tea, porcelain and opium shaped the course of empires. From the arrival of European sailing ships to the British introduction of opium, the talk explores the conflicts, victories and humiliations that marked China’s interactions with the outside world.
About the Author:
Michael Pembroke was born in Sydney and educated at the universities of Sydney and Cambridge. He is the author of five major books. His first is Trees of History and Romance (2009); his second, Arthur Phillip: Sailor, Mercenary, Governor, Spy (2013), was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards; his third, Korea: Where the American Century Began (2018), was shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards and the NSW Premier’s History Awards; Play by the Rules (2020) is a polemic about American leadership and decline from Hiroshima to Covid-19. His most recent book, Silk Silver Opium: The Trade with China that Changed History, was published in 2025.
About the Moderator:
Dato’ Dr Ooi Kee Beng is the Executive Director of Penang Institute, and was previously the deputy director of ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, where he remains a senior visiting fellow. While his major research interests have been in language philosophy and ancient Chinese political and strategic thinking, he has made his name as a foremost political biographer, with works including the award-winning The Reluctant Politician: Tun Dr Ismail and His Time (2007), In Lieu of Ideology: An Intellectual Biography of Goh Keng Swee (2010), Yusof Ishak: A Man of Many Firsts (2017) and As Empires Fell: The Life and Times of H.S. Lee, the First Finance Minister of Malaya (2020). He is a prolific essayist and his most recent collection is Signals in the Noise: Notes on Penang, Malaysia and the World (2023).
Co-organised with Gerakbudaya Bookshop.
Event Summary
Why has China long occupied a central place in the Western imagination, and why have encounters with China so often produced fascination, anxiety, and conflict? These questions framed author Michael Pembroke’s public talk on 26 January 2026, based on his book Silk, Silver, Opium: The Trade with China that Changed History. Pembroke approached the China–West relationship through the history of trade, arguing that Western perceptions of China were shaped less by abstract ideas and more by sustained encounters with Chinese goods.
He explained how commodities such as silk, porcelain, and tea captivated Western societies while simultaneously generating unease. From silk’s arrival in Roman Europe to porcelain’s popularity in early modern Europe and tea’s transformation of everyday life in Britain, these goods were admired for their beauty and utility, yet they also disrupted economic balances and cultural norms. This mixture of desire and anxiety, Pembroke noted, became a recurring pattern in Western engagements with China.
The talk then turned to silver and opium, which marked a more destructive phase of interaction. The massive inflow of silver into China and Britain’s subsequent use of opium to reverse the trade imbalance led to conflict, war, and long-term consequences for China. Pembroke concluded that the history of China–West relations cannot be understood through simple narratives of progress or decline, but rather as a complex story shaped by trade, power, and dependency, with material exchanges playing a decisive role in global history.