Andrande's 'Gunpowder Age' is also worth reading.
You can also read his 'How Taiwan Became Chinese' for free online: http://www.gutenberg-e.org/andrade/
> In 1600, Taiwan was a wild land, inhabited by headhunters and visited mainly by pirates and fishermen. A hundred years later it was a prefecture of the Chinese Empire, home to a hundred thousand Chinese colonists. What accounted for this transition? How did Taiwan become Chinese?
In fairness, the extent was largely unknown to Chinese of the time (the project began in the 1950s, it remains in process).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_Ch...