First Globalization: The Eurasian Exchange, 1500-1800

A sweeping conceptualization of the grand cultural-civilizational encounter between Asia and Europe. Now largely taken for granted, the exchange resonates in multiple ways. Offering a metageography of the vast Eurasian zone, the book shows how between 1500 and 1800, a lively two-way flow in ideas, philosophies and cultural products brought competing civilizations into serious dialogue and mostly peaceful exchange. In Europe, the interaction was reflected in missionary reporting, cartographic representations, literary productions and intellectual fashions, alongside the business of commerce and plunder (when it reached America and the peripheries). In Asia - notably China, India and particularly Japan - European ideas and their bearers received a remarkably positive hearing when they did not challenge reigning orthodoxies. Ranging from discussions of the natural world, livelihoods, and religious and intellectual encounters to language play, crime and punishment, gender and governance, this book replays the themes of enduring hybridity and creolization of cultures dating from the first great encounter between Europe and Asia.