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The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500D1800 (Critical Issues in World and International History) ReviewDavid E. Mungello is a historian known for his research on the Jesuits missionaries in China in 16-17th centuries, some of which he summarized 20 years ago in his more scholarly book, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology. That one is a great book, if you are interested in the subject and have enough patience to read it, but reading that book alone gives you a feeling of incompleteness: it focuses on the period from 1582 (Ricci's arrival to China) to 1700 (condemnation of Figurists by Sorbonne), and tries not to go out of scope, discussing things that happened before or after. Of course, if you are interested in the subject, it makes you go look for other books - which are provided in the ample bibliography.
In "The Great Encounter", Professor Mungello tried to cover a period twice as long in a space half as much. That was made possible by writing the book in a different format: not a monograph loaded with inline references and provided with a Chinese-character glossary at the end, and targeting readers such as history grad students, but a book written in a more popular style, perhaps with a bright high school student or a college freshman as a reader in mind. This is something that can well serve as a first book on the topic for someone who'd never heard the name of Matteo Ricci or the Kangxi Emperor before. (And yes, in the intro he gives a lovely explanation why one should say "the Kangxi Emperor" and not "Emperor Kangxi"). About half of the material in this think book seems to have been based from "Curious Land" (with the material greatly condensed and made much more accessible), and the rest is new (partly based on the author's other scholarly works as well), and gives the reader "the rest of the story" - from the first landing of the Portuguese in south China in 1514 to the Macartney Embassy in 1792-94. And many of the things added in this book are quite fascinating too, from Yu the Great being presented as a model to Paul I of Russia (p. 97) to the sad story of Matteo Ripa's Chinese seminarians in Naples. The new illustrations, extracted primarily from all kinds of Chinese works of the period, are also quite interesting.
With all that, the book's style as a popular account would make it somewhat "deficient" for a reader who looks for more details: e.g., instead of inline references, there is just a general "list of works consulted" at the end of each chapter; and there are no Chinese characters given for Chinese name, even in those cases when the person or place mentioned would be very obscure in European-language sources. And, as it is necessarily the case with a book this small, any reader with a particular special interest that *could* be thought as related to the book's topic (e.g.: China vs. Russia in the Amur/Heilongjiang Basin in 1650-1690; French Jesuit cartographers in China ca. 1700; the "Southern Ming" Yongli Emperor's court asking for Pope's help; early contacts between Europe and Tibet) may be surprised that his pet topic is not even mentioned here. Oh well, this is no doubt meant as a first book for a reader who is interested - or may become interested - in the history of Sino-European interaction, and it is written well enough to, hopefully, make quite a few readers interested, and get them to look for other books.
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