The Invention of China in Early Modern England : Spelling the Dragon

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. Contents 1 Introduction: The Invention of China in Early Modern England 2 Utopian Sinophilism in Early Modern England Some Social Dimensions of Chinese Greatness The Madness of Meritocracy “Walles and Ways:” Great Public Works and the Compulsion to Order “Characters Reall”: Chinese Characters and Universal Language Theory The Great Wall: China’s Exclusion from the Known Order of Things Utopian Sinophilism: An Afterthought 3 “This Lov’d Golgotha”: The China Trade in Early Modern England Origin Stories: Early English Contact with Chinese People “The Company of Merchants of London Trading to China” Chinoiserie: The China Trade in Early Modern England The Meandering Birth of an English Orientalism Courten’s Association and the Origins of Anglo-Chinese Diplomatic Relations “This Lov’d Golgotha” 4 Aftershocks: Changing China Jesuit Accommodations and Their Discontents Cycles of Stasis: England’s Exclusion from the South China Sea Bellum Tartaricum: 1640–1660 ‘Meerly Tyranical’: The Mutating Monarchy of China The Conquest of China by the Tartars: John Wilmot, Elkanah Settle, and the Emperor of China (Charles II) Aftershocks 5 Conclusions and Reflections Afterword: China in the Recent English Imagination The Empire Anatomized: China as a Trans-Historical State China and the Practical Limits of State Authority A Final Plea References Index