Translated from the German. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
Machine generated contents note: I.Introduction: Looking to the East -- Asia's "Decline" -- Europe's Arrogance -- The Great Map of Mankind -- The Power of Discourse, the Burden of Learning -- Sensing and Constructing Difference -- Spaces -- Epochs -- PATHWAYS OF KNOWLEDGE -- II.Asia and Europe: Borders, Hierarchies, Equilibria -- Asia and Europe in the Tsarist Empire -- The Ottoman Empire: European Great Power or Barbarian at the Gates? -- Asia: The Preeminent Continent? -- Character and Encyclopedia -- European Primacy and Provincialism -- III.Changing Perspectives -- Cultural Transfer and Colonialism -- Theories of Ethnocentrism -- Competition and Comparison -- Discursive Justice -- Chinese Interviews, Indian Letters -- Niebuhr's Monkey -- IV.Traveling -- Sir John Malcolm's Dinner Party -- A Weeping Mandarin -- Sea and Land -- East Asia: Walled Empires -- South Asia and Southeast Asia: Porous Borders -- The Near East: A Pilgrimage to Antiquity -- Adventurers and Renegades Note continued: Scholars and Administrators -- V.Encounters -- Ordeals, Disappointments, Catastrophes -- The Mysterious Mister Manning -- Interpreters and Dialogues -- Language Barriers -- Mimesis and Deception -- A Sociology of Perception -- VI.Eyewitnesses -- Earwitnesses: Experiencing Asia -- Giants and Unicorns -- Prejudices and Preconceptions -- Autopsy -- Before the Tribunal of Philosophy -- Methods of the Inquisitive Class -- Hearing and Hearsay -- Local Knowledge: Asiatic Scholarship in European Texts -- VII.Reporting, Editing, Reading: From Lived Experience to Printed Text -- The Travel Account as a Tool of Inquiry -- Style and Truth -- Anthologies, Collages, Mega-Narratives -- The Task of the Translator -- Topicality and Canonicity -- Traces of Reading -- Arts of Reading -- Fractured Representation -- THE PRESENT AND THE PAST -- VIII.The Raw Forces of History: Apocalyptic Horsemen, Conquerors, Usurpers -- Tribal Asia: Attila and the Consequences Note continued: A Continent of Revolutions -- Timur: Statesman and Monster -- Nadir Shah: Comet of War and Patriot -- Haidar Ali: Tyrant and Enlightened Reformer -- The Modernization of Political Vulcanism -- IX.Savages and Barbarians -- Lost Savages -- Four Types of Barbarism -- The Roof of the World -- "Tartary" in Geography, the Philosophy of History, and Ethnography -- Knights and Strangers in the Crimea -- The Ethnology and Politics of Arabic Liberty -- Theories of Nomadism -- Triumph of the Settlers -- X.Real and Unreal Despots -- The Heirs of Nero and Solomon -- Montesquieu Reads Sir John Chardin -- Despotism and the Philosophy of History -- "Oriental Despotism" under Suspicion -- Anquetil-Duperron: The Despot's New Clothes -- India: Translatio Despotica -- Despotism with Chinese Characteristics -- The Ottoman Empire: Praetorian Guards and Paper Tigers -- Ex Occidente Lux -- XI.Societies -- Solidarity among the Civilized -- Cities Note continued: Batavia's Colonial Sociology -- Close-Up: Urban Life in Syrian Aleppo -- Slaves -- Scholars and Aesthetes in Power -- Castes: Religious Straitjacket or Social Utopia? -- Feudalism -- Masks and Emotions -- The Birth of Sociology from the Spirit of Cultural Difference -- On Hospitality -- XII.Women -- The Cardinal Difference -- In the Realm of the Senses -- Domesticity -- Polygamy -- Labor, Liberty, and Sacrifice -- Progress and Civilization -- XIII.Into a New Age: The Rise of Eurocentrism -- Balance and Exclusion -- From Aladdin's Cave to Developing Nation -- Decline, Degeneration, Stagnation -- From the Theory of Civilization to the Civilizing Mission.
Summary:
During the long eighteenth century, Europe's travelers, scholars, and intellectuals looked to Asia in a spirit of puzzlement, irony, and openness. In this panoramic and colorful book, Jurgen Osterhammel tells the story of the European Enlightenment's nuanced encounter with the great civilizations of the East, from the Ottoman Empire and India to China and Japan. Here is the acclaimed book that challenges the notion that Europe's formative engagement with the non-European world was invariably marred by an imperial gaze and presumptions of Western superiority. Osterhammel shows how major figures such as Leibniz, Voltaire, Gibbon, and Hegel took a keen interest in Asian culture and history, and introduces lesser-known scientific travelers, colonial administrators, Jesuit missionaries, and adventurers who returned home from Asia bearing manuscripts in many exotic languages, huge collections of ethnographic data, and stories that sometimes defied belief. Osterhammel brings the sights and sounds of this tumultuous age vividly to life, from the salons of Paris and the lecture halls of Edinburgh to the deserts of Arabia, the steppes of Siberia, and the sumptuous courts of Asian princes. He demonstrates how Europe discovered its own identity anew by measuring itself against its more senior continent, and how it was only toward the end of this period that cruder forms of Eurocentrism--and condescension toward Asia―prevailed.
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