Volume 4, Number 6 · April 22, 1965
East is East
By Geoffrey Barraclough
Asia in the Making of Europe (Volumes I & II)
by Donald F. Lach
Chicago, 965 pp., $20.00
A great deal has been heard in recent years of the revolutionary impact of the West on Asia and Africa, far less of the impact of Asia on the West. The object of these two impressive volumes is to restore the balance. Here we have an attempt to bring together, in a consistent narrative, everything that a European could know of India, Southeast Asia, China, and Japan, from printed books, missionary reports, traders' accounts and maps, during the sixteenth century. One can only admire the immense industry and knowledge, and the skill in marshaling the evidence, which Professor Lach has put into his work. Two further volumes will deal on the same major scale with the seventeenth century; two more will carry the story to 1800, when the beginnings of European industrialization changed the whole context of the relations of Orient and Occident. But already one can say that nothing of this scope and magnitude has been performed before, and nothing is likely to be performed again.
Review, 1742 words
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