1st Edition

Early Encounters between East Asia and Europe Telling Failures

Edited By Ralf Hertel, Michael Keevak Copyright 2017
    192 Pages
    by Routledge

    192 Pages
    by Routledge

    While inquiries into early encounters between East Asia and the West have traditionally focused on successful interactions, this collection inquires into the many forms of failure, experienced on all sides, in the period before 1850. Countering a tendency in scholarship to overlook unsuccessful encounters, it starts from the assumption that failures can prove highly illuminating and provide valuable insights into both the specific shapes and limitations of East Asian and Western imaginations of the Other, as well as of the nature of East-West interaction. Interdisciplinary in outlook, this collection brings together the perspectives of sinology, Japanese and Korean studies, historical studies, literary studies, art history, religious studies, and performance studies. The subjects discussed are manifold and range from missionary accounts, travel reports, letters and trade documents to fictional texts as well as material objects (such as tea, chinaware, or nautical instruments) exchanged between East and West. In order to avoid a Eurocentric perspective, the collection balances approaches from the fields of English literature, Spanish studies, Neo-Latin studies, and art history with those of sinology, Japanese studies, and Korean studies. It includes an introduction mapping out the field of failures in early modern encounters between East Asia and Europe, as well as a theoretically minded essay on the lessons of failure and the ethics of cross-cultural understanding.

    CONTENTS



    Preface



    Notes on Contributors







    1. Introduction: Telling Failures—Early Encounters between East Asia and Europe




    2. Ralf Hertel and Michael Keevak



      Part 1: Trade





    3. A Failure far from Heroic: Early European Encounters with ‘Far Eastern’ Slavery




    4. Rotem Kowner





    5. Faking It: The Invention of East Asia in Early Modern England




    Ralf Hertel



    Part 2: Embassies



    4 The Travel Report of the Castilian Embassy to the Court of Tamerlane at Samarkand (1403–1406): The Failed Response from Tamerlane to King Henry III of Castile and León



    Inke Gunia



    5 The ‘catastrophe of this new Chinese mission’: The Amherst Embassy to China of 1816



    Peter J. Kitson



    Part 3: Religion



    6 Failed Missions in Early Korean Encounters with ‛Western Learning’



    Marion Eggert



    7 The Christian Manchu Missions during the Qing Period (1644–1911): Perceptions and Political Implications



    Lars Laamann



    Part 4: Knowledge



    8 Persian Apples, Chinese Leaves, Arab Beans: Encounters with the East in Neo-Latin Didactic Poetry



    Claudia Schindler



    9 Failure, Empire, and the First Portuguese Embassy to China, 1517–1522



    Michael Keevak



    10 Lessons of Failure: Towards an Ethics of Cross-Cultural Understanding



    QS Tong





    Index





     



     

    Biography

    Ralf Hertel is Professor of English Literature at the University of Trier, Germany. Michael Keevak is Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages at National Taiwan University, Taiwan.