The Far East and the English Imagination, 16001730

Book Description

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries China, Japan and the Spice Islands dazzled the English imagination as insatiable markets for European goods, and as vast, inexhaustible storehouses of spices and luxury wares. Robert Markley explores the significance of attitudes to the wealth and power of East Asia in rethinking conceptions of national and personal identity in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English literature. Alongside works by canonical English authors, this study examines the writings of Jesuit missionaries, Dutch merchants, and English and continental geographers, who directly contended with the challenges that China and Japan posed to visions of western cultural and technological superiority. Questioning conventional Eurocentric histories, Markley examines the ways in which the writings of Milton, Dryden, Defoe and Swift deal with the complexities of a world in which England was marginalized and which, until 1800, was dominated - economically at least - by the empires of the Far East.

The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800 (Critical Issues in History)

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The Tao of China rising !
Must for whoever that are interested in Chinese studies
Not too shabby
Good introductory book

The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800 (Critical Issues in History)
D. E. Mungello
Manufacturer: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Fail Safe

ASIN: 0847694402

Book Description

For too long, the history of contact between China and the West has been portrayed as a one-sided encounter: Europeans were said to have discovered China, while Chinese responses to the West went largely unnoticed. In this book, D. E. Mungello dispels the myth that China was a silent partner in the dialogue between Eastern and Western civilizations. Although they did not reciprocate in sending ships, cultural emissaries or religious missionaries westward, neither did the Chinese passively accept Europe's enthusiastic embrace of their culture, arts, and manufactures. Aspects of Western art, science, and religion made significant inroads into Chinese culture, which are only recently coming to the attention of Western historians. And at a time when the West is once again setting its sights on strengthening ties with China, Mungello's work offers crucial historical perspective. It reminds us that the political and economic dominance of the West is actually characteristic of only the past two centuries, prior to which it was China that led the world in terms of economic and political development, and in the sophistication of its high culture and technological achievement. This concise and well-written text will make a wonderful addition to reading lists in East Asian or Chinese History classes, as well as courses on World History. Visit our website for sample chapters.

Customer Reviews:

The Tao of China rising !.......2007-08-24

Prof. Mungello wrote this comprehensive book on the intercourse of China and West in culture and religion in a highly readable text.
Between 1500-1800, China was a powerful country. Catholics dreamed of converting China into a Christian country. However, it was Chinese influence to Europe to bring about Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. He showed that missionaries sent back Tao Te Ching, I Ching and Confucius teaching to the European educated to help bring about the Enlightenment Movement.
What would happen when China is Christianized and the West goes Taoist Way?
By 1800, China was still in its glorious satisfaction while European Powers underwent industrialization. Britain unable to balance the trade deficit pushed opium and war on China. The 1997 Hong Kong Hand-over concluded the last British Imperial chapter in history. China was at its nadir at 1900 Boxer Movement with eight foreign countries invaded Peking.
Napoleon said, "When China wakes, it will shock the world". History affirms the Tao in East and West, strong and weak, grandeur and decline, war and peace. Prof. Mungello presents the readers the historical background to understand the modern China. A number of Westerners see Deng's reform with market economy lead to China rising as a world threat. Reading this book will help open up their horizon.

Will US wage war on China in the billions of dollar trade deficit as their British cousins did in 19th Century?

Must for whoever that are interested in Chinese studies.......2003-01-28

Dr. Mungello has done a great job in presenting how the (Far) West met with Chinese culture over the period of 1500-1800. This book was written in easy and non-technical language. As a Chinese that has learnt Chinese history all through my school years, I am intrigued to read simialar materials presented from a Western perspective in simple English.

Dr. Mungello noted that the Chinese in Song Dynasty mistook the picture of Virgin Mary as Guanyin (Chinese Goddess of the sea). A three-story high statue given by Portuguese to Macau, China shortly before 1999 was meant to be Guanyin but it certainly looks like Virgin Mary. What went around has come around:) Thanks for writing such a good book and I enjoyed it very much.

Not too shabby.......2002-11-06

I think Mungello has done a wonderful job in reconstructing the meeting between China and the Western world.

Good introductory book.......2000-04-14

University Profs take note: Although I had to read this book because I was in the author's class at Baylor, it really is a good introductory book. Dr. Mungello is one of the world's top Sinologists and did his graduate work at the U. of California at Berkeley and I am privelaged to be one of his students.

Customer Reviews:

Inventive look at global/local dynamics in imperial HongKong.......1999-05-21

An inventive look at localist twists and practices in cinema, literature, urban space, within contexts of transnational porousness and neo-nationalism. A poetics of distraction and late capitalist bemusement, useful and the mall and in the movies and poesy too.

The World of Islam: Faith, People, Culture (The Great Civilizations)

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Islam Culture

The World of Islam: Faith, People, Culture (The Great Civilizations)

Manufacturer: Thames & Hudson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0500276242

Customer Reviews:

Islam Culture.......2005-07-10

Same book with several different titles: "The World of Islam" published in Great Britian by Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 1976; then "Islam and the Arab World published in NYC by Alfred Knopf Inc., 1976; and perhaps a third issue w/ISBN#0394407113; and then 1984 or so a paperback issue. Big large-size book with many photographs and articles. Edited by Bernard Lewis; Chapter texts by: Bernard Lewis, Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar, Fritz Meier, Charles Pellat, A. Shiloah, Edmund Bosworth, Emilio Garcia Gomez, Roger M. Savory, Norman Itzkowitz, S. A. A. Rizvi, & Elie Kedourie. Chapter topics:The Faith and the Faithful: the lands and peoples of Islam; (The five pillars of Islam, belief, opinion, and toleration, the rule of law, etc.); the Man-Made Setting: Islamic art and architecture Arabic script, rejection of sculpture, The Mosque: origins & Meaning, etc.); Cities and Citizens: The Growth and culture of urban Islam; The Mystic Path: The Sufi tradition; Jewellers with words: The Heritage of Islamic literature; The Dimensions of Sound: Islamic music, philosophy, theory and practice; The Scientific Enterprise, Islamic contributions to the development of science; Armies of the Prophet, Strategy, tactics and weapons in Islamic warfare; Moorish Spain: The golden age of Cordoba and Granada; Land of the Lion and the Sun: The Flowering of Iranian civilization; the Ottoman Empire: The rise and fall of Turkish domination; Muslim India: From the coming of Islam to Independence; Islam Today: Problems and prospects of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization)

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Interesting Argument Well Presented

Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization)
Tarif Khalidi
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, No. 14)
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ASIN: 052158938X

Book Description

In a work that surveys an entire tradition of historical thought and writing across a span of eight-hundred years, Tarif Khalidi examines how Arabic-Islamic culture of the premodern period viewed the past, how it recorded it, and how it sought to answer the many complex questions associated with the discipline of history.

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Interesting Argument Well Presented.......2000-09-09

Khalidi's thesis is that 4 approaches dominated classical Arabic historiography. In chronological order, they are hadith, adab, hikma and siyasa. The hadith approach focused on judging the authenticity of historical reports by examining the chain of transmission. Adab is often translated as "belles-lettres". This approach focused on the moral and intellectual lessons taught by history. Hikma refers to the secular sciences which inspired a more all encompassing historiographic approach. Finally, siyasa, the science of good government, led to comprehensive histories often designed for bureaucrats.

Book Description

"China" and "the West," "us" and "them," the "subject" and the "non-subject"--these and other dualisms furnish China watchers, both inside and outside China, with a pervasive, ready-made set of definitions immune to empirical disproof. But what does this language of essential difference accomplish? The essays in this book are an attempt to cut short the recitation of differences and to answer this question.

In six interpretive studies of China, the author examines the ways in which the networks of assumption and consensus that make communication possible within a discipline affect collective thinking about the object of study. Among other subjects, these essays offer a historical and historiographical introduction to the problem of comparison and deal with translation, religious proselytization, semiotics, linguistics, cultural bilingualism, writing systems, the career of postmodernism in China, and the role of China as an imaginary model for postmodernity in the West. Against the reigning simplifications, these essays seek to restore the interpretation of China to the complexity and impurity of the historical situations in which it is always caught.

Book Description

About thirty thousand years ago, people arrived in the land known today as Egypt. A mixed society comprised largely of Africans, ancient Egyptians were influenced by nature, philosophy, education, and neighboring societies. These people developed one of the first and most complex societies ever to have existed in the world.

The Great Pyramid: The story of the farmers, the god-king and the most astonding structure ever built (Wonders of the World Book)

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The Great Pyramid: The story of the farmers, the god-king and the most astonding structure ever built (Wonders of the World Book)
Elizabeth Mann
Manufacturer: Mikaya Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1931414114

Book Description

Here's the story of the Great Pyramid and the people who built it. In the author's telling, the Old Kingdom comes alive: a nation of farmers living on the green edge of a harsh desert with a king who was a god in life and in death. Tens of thousands of farmers left home each year to chisel hard stone without iron tools and move 10-ton blocks up steep grades without the use of a wheel, all to the glory of the Pharaoh.

Wonders of the World series

The winner of numerous awards, this series is renowned for Elizabeth Mann's ability to convey adventure and excitement while revealing technical information in engaging and easily understood language. The illustrations are lavishly realistic and accurate in detail but do not ignore the human element. Outstanding in the genre, these books are sure to bring even the most indifferent young reader into the worlds of history, geography, and architecture.

"One of the ten best non-fiction series for young readers."
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Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions: Ahsan Al-Taqasim Fi Marifat Al-Aqalim (Great Books of Islamic Civilization)

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Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions: Ahsan Al-Taqasim Fi Marifat Al-Aqalim (Great Books of Islamic Civilization)
Al-Muqaddasi
Manufacturer: Ithaca
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1859641369

Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery

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Fascinating way to spend some of your well earned time
Outstanding research effort and beautifully written.

Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery
Nabil Matar
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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In the Lands of the Christians: Arabic Travel Writing in the 17th Century
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ASIN: 0231110146

Book Description

During the early modern period, hundreds of Turks and Moors traded in English and Welsh ports, dazzled English society with exotic cuisine and Arabian horses, and worked small jobs in London, while the "Barbary Corsairs" raided coastal towns and, if captured, lingered in Plymouth jails or stood trial in Southampton courtrooms. In turn, Britons fought in Muslim armies, traded and settled in Moroccan or Tunisian harbor towns, joined the international community of pirates in Mediterranean and Atlantic outposts, served in Algerian households and ships, and endured captivity from Salee to Alexandria and from Fez to Mocha.

In Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, Nabil Matar vividly presents new data about Anglo-Islamic social and historical interactions. Rather than looking exclusively at literary works, which tended to present unidimensional stereotypes of Muslims -- Shakespeare's "superstitious Moor" or Goffe's "raging Turke," to name only two -- Matar delves into hitherto unexamined English prison depositions, captives' memoirs, government documents, and Arabic chronicles and histories. The result is a significant alternative to the prevailing discourse on Islam, which nearly always centers around ethnocentrism and attempts at dominance over the non-Western world, and an astonishing revelation about the realities of exchange and familiarity between England and Muslim society in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods.

Concurrent with England's engagement and "discovery" of the Muslims was the "discovery" of the American Indians. In an original analysis, Matar shows how Hakluyt and Purchas taught their readers not only about America but about the Muslim dominions, too; how there were more reasons for Britons to venture eastward than westward; and how, in the period under study, more Englishmen lived in North Africa than in North America. Although Matar notes the sharp political and colonial differences between the English encounter with the Muslims and their encounter with the Indians, he shows how Elizabethan and Stuart writers articulated Muslim in terms of Indian, and Indian in terms of Muslim. By superimposing the sexual constructions of the Indians onto the Muslims, and by applying to them the ideology of holy war which had legitimated the destruction of the Indians, English writers prepared the groundwork for orientalism and for the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century conquest of Mediterranean Islam.

Matar's detailed research provides a new direction in the study of England's geographic imagination. It also illuminates the subtleties and interchangeability of stereotype, racism, and demonization that must be taken into account in any responsible depiction of English history.

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating way to spend some of your well earned time.......2005-10-16

This effort reads more like a novel than history. It is wonderful when a history writer knows how to illuminate a period of life and make your imagination come to life. This is what happened in this book. The author takes a long and convuluted period with a wide range of subjects and cultures and give you something you will never forget. This book will stand the test of time and should be read by anyone who wants to understand the influence of the Turks on European culture. Absolutely wonderful effort.
I love history and don't encounter many books that even a layman would enjoy. That is not meant to sound condescending but it should be required reading in any college course.

Outstanding research effort and beautifully written........2000-03-10

Nabil Matar's work is a breakthrough in our understanding of just how wide spread the Ottoman and Muslim influence was in the Age of Discovery. Not only do we have strong cultural links to the Turks and Moors of the period, but it is clear that our American shores were far more ethnically diverse than previous scholars would have us believe. This book is a triumph of both research and honesty. It should be required reading for all public school history teachers, to say nothing of university level students and instructors.

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