This book shows the ways in which English, French, and German eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century encyclopaedias dealt with things Chinese, offering an analysis of the broad variety of sources and an overview of the main strands of discourse on China.

This book shows how knowledge about China became part of European general knowledge. It examines English, French, and German encyclopaedias published between 1700 and 1850 and explores the use and presentation of information on China in works of general knowledge. The first chapters explore the origins of early European perceptions of China until 1850, the development of European encyclopaedias, and the sources used for entries on China. The second major part of the book examines the ways in which encyclopaedias presented information on things Chinese (geography, government, economy, history, language and literature, arts and sciences) and how this information was shaped, expanded, perpetuated, revised, and updated.

Why were Chinese and Indian ways of thinking excluded from European philosophy in early modern times? This is a study of what happened to the European understanding of China and India between the late 16th century and the first half of the 18th century. Investigating the description of these two Asian civilizations during a century and a half of histories of philosophy, this book accounts for the change of historiographical paradigms, from Neoplatonic philosophia perennis and Spinozistic atheism to German Eclecticism. Uncovering the reasons for inserting or excluding Chinese and Indian ways of thinking within the field of Philosophy in early modern times, it reveals the origin of the Eurocentric understanding of Philosophy as a Greek-European prerogative. By highlighting how this narrowing and exclusion of non-Western ways of thought was a result of conviction of superiority and religious prejudice, this book provides a new way of thinking about the place of Asian traditions among World philosophies.

Lisa Hellman offers the first study of European everyday life in Canton and Macao. How foreigners could live, communicate, move around – even whom they could interaction with – were all things strictly regulated by the Chinese authorities. The Europeans sometimes adapted to, and sometimes subverted, these rules. Focusing on this conditional domesticity shows the importance of gender relations, especially the construction of masculinity. Using the Swedish East India Company, a minor European actor in an expanding Asian empire, as a point of entry highlights the multiplicity of actors taking part in local negotiations of power. The European attempts at making a home in China contributes to a global turn in everyday history, but also to an everyday turn in global history.

State, Economy and the Great Divergence provides a new analysis of what has become the central debate in global economic history: the 'great divergence' between European and Asian growth. Focusing on early modern China and Western Europe, in particular Great Britain, this book offers a new level of detail on comparative state formation that has wide-reaching implications for European, Eurasian and global history. Beginning with an overview of the historiography, Peer Vries goes on to extend and develop the debate, critically engaging with the huge volume of literature published on the topic to date. Incorporating recent insights, he offers a compelling alternative to the claims to East-West equivalence, or Asian superiority, which have come to dominate discourse surrounding this issue. This is a vital update to a key issue in global economic history and, as such, is essential reading for students and scholars interested in keeping up to speed with the on-going debates.

During a relatively short period, from around 1765 to 1780, the Dutch lawyer Jean Theodore Royer (1737-1807) was intensely engaged in the study of Chinese culture. Befriended VOC officials and their Chinese relations in Canton collected Chinese objects for him and helped him with his greatest ambition: the composition of a Chinese dictionary. The objects were given a home in his museum on the Herengracht in The Hague. Better than travel journals, they gave a picture of life in China in Royer’s time. Because the selection was largely made by modest Chinese traders, the collection does not so much give a picture of the material culture of the Chinese elite, but rather that of the ambitious, upwardly-mobile world of small traders and craftsmen. These are mostly ephemeral objects that have rarely been preserved, but they came to The Hague, thanks to Royer and his Chinese contacts. A bequest from his widow then ensured that the collection ended up in two Dutch museums: Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where the objects are still present today.

In The First British Trade Expedition to China, Nicholas D. Jackson explores the pioneering British trade expedition to China launched in the late Ming period by Charles I and the Courteen Association. While utilizing the vivid and unique perspective of its commander, Captain John Weddell, this study concentrates on the fleet’s adventures in south China between Portuguese Macao and the provincial capital, Guangzhou (Canton). Tracing the obscure origins of Sino-British diplomatic and commercial relations back to the late Ming era, Jackson examines the first episodes of Sino-British interaction, exchange, and collision in the seventeenth century. His definitive narrative and original analysis constitute a groundbreaking study of early modern British initiatives and enterprise in the coastal areas of south China. The book begins by sketching the Tudor-Stuart historical background of British trade expansion in Asia before precisely reconstructing the voyages of East India Company and then Courteen ships to Guangdong province. The core of the narrative illuminates the communications, intrigues, and confrontations between Ming officials and the British commanders and merchants. The monograph concludes with an analysis outlining the major lessons learned by all the personalities and parties involved in those unprecedented encounters and clashes. Among other theses, Jackson argues that this expedition demonstrates that as early as the seventeenth century, a significant difference in naval-military strength and sophistication obtained between Great Britain and China. “This book presents vivid and arresting details highlighting the differences between the early modern and modern eras. It features quasi-piratical actions by men with the audacity to venture into unknown lands, who were on the one hand defrauded by ‘interpreters’ of dubious origin and ‘officials’ of unverified credentials, but nonetheless emerged from the fray with laden ships and the incremental knowledge that contributed to the subsequent economic dominance of Europe.” —Evelyn S. Rawski, University of Pittsburgh “In this lively account of Sino-British exchanges, Nicholas D. Jackson provides us with the first book-length narrative of the much-neglected Weddell voyage to China in 1637. Scholars of the British Empire and East-West interactions will find much relevance in this masterfully delivered dialogue between two contending world powers.” —Paul A. Van Dyke, author of The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845