The Emory News Center recently published a profile of Dr. Tonio Andrade and his newest work, The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Intervention, and the Rise of the West in World History. The piece, titled “Emory historian tackles China’s military history with ‘The Gunpowder Age,'” is available in full here. Check out an excerpt below.

Over the past year, China has built artificial islands — with their own airstrips and military facilities — as part of its claim to land in the international trade routes in the seas east and south of the country.

The territorial claims escalated this year when U.S. and Taiwan officials said China had put surface-to-air missiles on one of the disputed islands in the South China Sea.

Is this a new threat from a nation that historians have argued remained a military afterthought in part because of the codes of Confucianism?

Not according to Emory historian Tonio Andrade who shows in his new book, “The Gunpowder Age,” that the idea that China has historically been a peaceful nation, little interested in military matters, is not true.