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The first documented encounter between an English scholar and a Chinese scholar took place in the Summer of 1687 in Oxford, England, when Thomas Hyde, Bodley's Librarian and the foremost oriental scholar of his day, met Shen Fuzong, a native of Nanjing and the child of Christian converts, who was visiting Europe in the company of the Jesuits. This book presents the first fruits of that encounter, Hyde's short Latin Epistola de mensuris et ponderibus Serum seu Sinensium ('Letter on the Measures and Weights of the Seres or Chinese'), printed in Oxford in 1688. Hyde's original text is here edited with a full facing translation into English, an introduction, commentary, and over twenty colour illustrations. Hyde's short Epistola has some claim to be the first proper text in English Sinology, insofar as it is based on informed access to genuine Chinese sources, and is not simply a rehash of material taken at second hand from the missionary or mercantile accounts of other nations. Hyde was arguably the first English person to gain some real insight into the Chinese language, and his letter is also enlivened by discussions of the Great Wall, of tea, of Chinese New Year, and by some interesting comparisons with Islamic materials. But it has two features of lasting significance for the historian of intercultural encounters. The first is that Hyde, a Protestant scholar, considered that his access not only to Shen's native testimony, but also to some indigenous Chinese maps recently acquired by the Bodleian, rendered his judgement superior to that even of the Jesuit missionaries, with all their field experience, because he could assess and balance a range of sources. Secondly, Hyde treated Chinese weights and measures, for all their cultural specificity, as still assimilable to the Western paradigms of scholarship with which Hyde felt comfortable. This edition and study of Hyde's Epistola de mensuris et ponderibus Serum seu Sinensium is a celebration of this complex early encounter between Western and Chinese cultural, intellectual, and religious ideas, one which in its balancing of affinity and difference, is of particularly resonance today.
A vivid history of the relationship between Britain and China, from 1600 to the present The relationship between Britain and China has shaped the modern world. Chinese art, philosophy and science have had a profound effect upon British culture, while the long history of British exploitation is still bitterly remembered in China today. But how has their interaction changed over time? From the early days of the East India Company through the violence of the Opium Wars to present-day disputes over Hong Kong, Kerry Brown charts this turbulent and intriguing relationship in full. Britain has always sought to dominate China economically and politically, while China's ideas and exports--from tea and Chinoiserie to porcelain and silk--have continued to fascinate in the west. But by the later twentieth century, the balance of power began to shift in China's favour, with global consequences. Brown shows how these interactions changed the world order--and argues that an understanding of Britain's relationship with China is now more vital than ever.
Reconstructs the life of Peter Goldman and presents a full edition and translation of his surviving poems and letters. The Dundonian physician Peter Goldman, one of an immigrant family of merchants, was the first Scot to take a medical degree from Leiden; he then undertook research in Oxford, London, and Paris, before resettling in Dundee. An important figure in contemporary Scottish literary culture, he maintained a wide correspondence with significant intellectual figures and influenced two landmark Scottish publishing projects: the Delitiae poetarum Scotorum (1637) and the Blaeu Atlas of Scotland (1654). However, his major literary achievement was his Latin poetry, which establishes him as a unique voice of his time. His longest and most prominent work is an elegy on the deaths of four of his brothers, strikingly narrated in the voice of their lamenting mother. This book reconstructs and provides a study of Goldman's life, career and writing. It also offers a full edition and translation of his surviving poems and letters, with accompanying commentary. Appendices provide an edited list of his remarkable library and a transcript of his testament.
Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was one of the most influential scientific and theological thinkers of his time. This is the first edition of his correspondence, transcribed from the original manuscripts. It is fully annotated, with an introduction and general index. Volume 6 covers the period of 1684–91.
Anglo-Chinese Encounters Before the Opium War: A Tale of Two Empires Over Two Centuries studies the fascinating encounters between the two historic empires from Queen Elizabeth I’s first letter to the Ming Emperor Wanli in 1583, to Lord Palmerston’s letter to the Minister of China in 1840. Starting with Queen Elizabeth I’s letter to the Chinese Emperor and ending with the letter from Lord Palmerston to the Minister of China just before the Opium War, this book explores the long journey in between from cultural diplomacy to gunboat diplomacy. It interweaves the most known diplomatic efforts at the official level with the much unknown intellectual interactions at the people-to-people level, from missionaries to scholars, from merchants to travelers and from artists to scientists. This book adopts a novel "mirror" approach by pairing and comparing people, texts, commodities, artworks, architecture, ideologies, operating systems and world views of the two empires. Using letters, gifts and traded goods as fulcrums, and by adopting these unique lenses, it puts China into the world history narratives to contextualise Anglo-Chinese relations, thus providing a fresh analysis of the surviving evidence. Xin Liu casts a new light on understanding the Sino-centric and Anglo-centric world views in driving the complex relations between the two empires, and the reversals of power shifts that are still unfolding today. The book is not intended for specialists in history, but a general audience wishing to learn more about China’s historical engagement with the world.
The story of the 9th-century caliphal mission from Baghdad to discover the legendary barrier against the apocalyptic nations of Gog and Magog mentioned in the Quran, has been either dismissed as superstition or treated as historical fact. By exploring the intellectual and literary history surrounding the production and early reception of this adventure, Travis Zadeh traces the conceptualization of frontiers within early 'Abbasid society and re-evaluates the modern treatment of marvels and monsters inhabiting medieval Islamic descriptions of the world. Examining the roles of translation, descriptive geography, and salvation history in the projection of early 'Abbasid imperial power, this book is essential for all those interested in Islamic studies, the 'Abbasid dynasty and its politics, geography, religion, Arabic and Persian literature and European Orientalism.