Volume 41, Number 3 · February 3, 1994
Where the East Begins
By Jonathan D. Spence
Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. III: A Century of Advance Book 1: Trade, Missions, Literature; Book 2: South Asia; Book 3: South-east Asia; Book 4: East Asia
by Donald F. Lach, by Edwin J. Van Kley
University of Chicago Press, 2,077 four volumes pp., $300.00 the set
Between 1965 and 1977, Donald Lach published the first two volumes of his Asia in the Making of Europe, an illuminating and erudite survey of the various ways that Asia has affected scholarship, literature, and the visual arts in the West. Beginning with a survey of the first glimmers of knowledge of Asia that filtered into the Roman Empire and medieval Europe, Mr. Lach devoted most of his discussion to what he termed the 'century of wonder,' the sixteenth century, when the savants of Europe began a more systematic exploration and analysis of these bewildering cultures, with their apparently endless possibilities for trade and Christian conversion.
Review, 3858 words
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