Voyages Migration And The Maritime World

This is a multi-author volume resulted from an international conference focusing on topics related to our understanding of the role of China in the global history. Apart from introductory chapters exploring methodological issues and providing big pictures of framing China in the world in particular time zones, this volume also covers rich discussions on the following themes from the ancient period to the twentieth century: organized water transport, cultural interactions, navigators, port cities, smuggling activities, customs service, foreign relations, migration, and diasporas. Written by scholars of different generations who are based in diverse regions including Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, the UK and the US, the chapters in this volume either address old questions from new perspectives, or table new topics that were largely ignored in previous scholarship. Some go further to brainstorm possible research directions in the future. This thought-provoking volume will be beneficial to readers who are interested in rethinking China's position in the global historical stage against the backdrop of Post-Orientalism.

This is a multi-author volume resulted from an international conference focusing on topics related to our understanding of the role of China in the global history. Apart from introductory chapters exploring methodological issues and providing big pictures of framing China in the world in particular time zones, this volume also covers rich discussions on the following themes from the ancient period to the twentieth century: organized water transport, cultural interactions, navigators, port cities, smuggling activities, customs service, foreign relations, migration, and diasporas. Written by scholars of different generations who are based in diverse regions including Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, the UK and the US, the chapters in this volume either address old questions from new perspectives, or table new topics that were largely ignored in previous scholarship. Some go further to brainstorm possible research directions in the future. This thought-provoking volume will be beneficial to readers who are interested in rethinking China's position in the global historical stage against the backdrop of Post-Orientalism.

Zheng He’s Maritime Voyages (1405-1433) and China’s Relations with the Indian Ocean lists selected sources in thirteen languages and reflects global scholarship of Zheng He’s seven maritime expeditions and the early-modern communication network linking China and the Indian Ocean World.

From the mid-fifteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, the driving force behind world exploration was Europe's growing passion for the luxuries of life and for discovering the uncharted territories that provided these luxuries. We know the shape of the world today because ships, driven by wind and human muscle, were navigated into every last bay and estuary on Earth, searching for this wealth. The ships that made these voyages were the products of a long evolution, and their navigators were the beneficiaries of centuries of accumulated experience. Voyages recounts the extraordinary feats of more than twenty daring maritime explorers, including Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Jacques Cartier, Martin Frobisher, and James Cook. In narrating these explorers' tales, Gordon Miller touches on the great themes of maritime history, including the development of new maritime technologies, the rise and fall of the maritime empires, and the discovery of new continents. Exquisitely illustrated with almost 100 of the author's paintings and many detailed maps and drawings of sailing ships, Voyages recounts the history of Europe's early navigators as they ventured into the unknown, braving uncharted territory. In carrying out their voyages, these ships and sailors defined the true dimensions of the oceans and coastlines of the world.

The book investigates China’s relations to the outside world between ca. 100 BCE and 1800 CE. In contrast to most histories of the Silk Roads, the focus of this book clearly lies on the maritime Silk Road and on the period between Tang and high Qing, selecting aspects that have so far been neglected in research on the history of China’s relations with the outside world. The author examines, for example, issue of 'imperialism' in imperial China, the specific role of fanbing 蕃兵 (frontier tribal troops) during Song times, the interrelationship between maritime commerce, military expansion, and environmental factors during the Yuan, the question of whether or not early Ming China can be considered a (proto-)colonialist country, the role force and violence played during the Zheng He expeditions, and the significance the Asia-Pacific world possessed for late Ming and early Qing rulers.

The past twenty-five years have brought a dramatic expansion of scholarship in maritime history, including new research on piracy, long-distance trade, and seafaring cultures. Yet maritime history still inhabits an isolated corner of world history, according to editors Lauren Benton and Nathan Perl-Rosenthal. Benton and Perl-Rosenthal urge historians to place the relationship between maritime and terrestrial processes at the center of the field and to analyze the links between global maritime practices and major transformations in world history. A World at Sea consists of nine original essays that sharpen and expand our understanding of practices and processes across the land-sea divide and the way they influenced global change. The first section highlights the regulatory order of the seas as shaped by strategies of land-based polities and their agents and by conflicts at sea. The second section studies documentary practices that aggregated and conveyed information about sea voyages and encounters, and it traces the wide-ranging impact of the explosion of new information about the maritime world. Probing the political symbolism of the land-sea divide as a threshold of power, the last section features essays that examine the relationship between littoral geographies and sociolegal practices spanning land and sea. Maritime history, the contributors show, matters because the oceans were key sites of experimentation, innovation, and disruption that reflected and sparked wide-ranging global change. Contributors: Lauren Benton, Adam Clulow, Xing Hang, David Igler, Jeppe Mulich, Lisa Norling, Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, Carla Rahn Phillips, Catherine Phipps, Matthew Raffety, Margaret Schotte.

This rich and enjoyable book by the acclaimed author of Japan Story explores the many ways in which Asia has influenced Europe and North America over centuries of tangled, dynamic encounters From the time of the ancient Greeks onwards the West's relationship with Asia consisted for the most part of outrageous tales of strange beasts and monsters, of silk and spices shipped over vast distances and an uneasy sense of unknowable empires fantastically far away. By the twentieth century much of Asia might have come under Western rule after centuries of warfare, but its intellectual, artistic and spiritual influence was fighting back. The Light of Asia is a wonderfully varied and entertaining history of the many ways in which Asia has shaped European and North American culture over centuries of tangled, dynamic encounters, and the central importance of this vexed, often confused relationship. From Marco Polo onwards Asia has been both a source of genuine fascination and equally genuine failures of comprehension. China, India and Japan were all acknowledged to be both great civilizations and in crude ways seen as superseded by the West. From Chicago to Calcutta, and from antiquity to the new millennium, this is a rich, involving story of misunderstandings and sincere connection, of inspiration and falsehood, of geniuses, adventurers and con-men. Christopher Harding's captivating gallery of people and places celebrates Asia's impact on the West in all its variety.

Bringing Forth the New provides a headlong introduction into the world of Chinese contemporary visual art, opening from the art world onto the political, technological and economic vectors of recent Chinese history. Each chapter reads an important facet of recent Chinese history through the work of a significant artist. From examining trade war and intellectual property through the work of political pop painters such as Yu Youhan, to the development of gendered constructs in China through the work of Cui Xuiwen.