The Invention of China in early modern England : Spelling the dragon 1st ed.

Author

• Lux, Jonathan E.

Additional Author(s)

-

Publisher

Cham, Switzerland : Springer International Publishing, 2021

Language

English

ISBN

9783030840327

Series

Early modern literature in history

Subject(s)

• COMMERCE
• PUBLIC OPINION, ENGLISH

Notes

. .

Abstract

The Invention of China in Early Modern England describes how several different English communities became aware of China. It begins by describing how early modern intellectuals used the utopian ideal of China to license all kinds of progressive innovation before chronicling how England’s growing commerce in southeast Asia radically changed China’s representation in the English discourse community. For the new community of English merchants proposing to trade in Chinese goods, China became the seminal example in the growing discourse community of English Orientalism. It was an absolute or arbitrary authoritarian state, associated with crooked business dealings, and cloaked in a rhetoric of secrecy and exclusion—a dangerous exception to the traditions, values, and identities of the emergent English speaking states. Finally, the book points out some of the ways that contemporary English language sources continue to represent this early modern English thought tradition, labelling the complexities of modern China with analytical vocabulary perhaps better suited to the pressing political anxieties of the seventeenth century.

Physical Dimension

Number of Page(s)

1 online resource (v, 224 p.)

Dimension

-

Other Desc.

-

Summary / Review / Table of Content

1. Introduction-The Invention of China in Early Modern England.-
2. Utopian Sinophilism in Early Modern England.-
3. "This Lov'd Golgotha": The China Trade in Early Modern England.-
4. Aftershocks: Changing China.-
5. Conclusions and Reflections.

Exemplar(s)

#	Accession No.	Call Number	Location	Status
1.	00688/22	303.4824205109032 Lux I	Online !	Available