In Companions in Geography Mario Cams revisits the early 18th century mapping of Qing China, without doubt one of the largest cartographic endeavours of the early modern world. Commonly seen as a Jesuit initiative, the project appears here as the result of a convergence of interests among the French Academy of Sciences, the Jesuit order, and the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661-1722). These connections inspired the gradual integration of European and East Asian scientific practices and led to a period of intense land surveying, executed by large teams of Qing officials and European missionaries. The...

In World Trade Systems of the East and West, Geoffrey C. Gunn profiles Nagasaki's historic role in mediating the Japanese bullion trade, especially silver exchanged against Chinese and Vietnamese silk. Founded in 1571 as the terminal port of the Portuguese Macau ships, Nagasaki served as Japan's window to the world over long time and with the East-West trade carried on by the Dutch and, with even more vigor, by the Chinese junk trade. While the final expulsion of the Portuguese in 1646 characteristically defines the “closed” period of early modern Japanese history, the real trade...

Wolf Totem and the Post-Mao Utopian by Li Xiaojiang explores the controversial best-selling novel by the political economist Jiang Rong as an allegory of utopia through discussion of an encyclopaedic range of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that offer thinking on topics introduced in the novel. In promoting the significance of utopian thought, Li stresses that the term for her study, “post-utopian criticism,” is not the same as anti-utopian criticism, but an analytical approach to criticism in order to addresses the shortcomings of postmodern and postcolonial theories...

In Fusion of East and West, Limin Bai presents a major work in the English language that focuses on Chinese textbooks and the education of children for a new China in a critical transitional period, 1902–1915. This study examines the life and work of Wang Hengtong (1868–1928), a Chinese Christian educator, and other Christian and secular writings through a historical and comparative lens and against the backdrop of the socio-political, ideological, and intellectual frameworks of the time. By doing so, it offers a fresh perspective on the significant connection between Christian education,...

What was the cultural impact of early meetings between Chinese and Europeans? This book explores visual, literary, and scholarly representations of the Celestial Empire and Western countries against the backdrop of actual encounters. Based on rare Chinese and, correspondingly, European (especially Dutch) sources and archival documents, the volume covers a range of cultural expressions from the applied arts to philosophy. Special attention goes to the ideals and realities of trade and diplomacy of the Dutch East India Company in China. Foreign Devils and Philosophers approaches global history...

The Neo-Buddhist Writings of Lafcadio Hearn: Light from the East by Antony Goedhals offers radical rereadings of a misunderstood and undervalued Victorian writer. It reveals that at the metaphysical core of Lafcadio Hearn’s writings is a Buddhist vision as yet unappreciated by his critics and biographers. Beginning with the American writings and ending with the essay- and story-meditations of the Japanese period, the book demonstrates Hearn’s deeply personal and transcendently beautiful evocations of a Buddhist universe, and shows how these deconstruct and dissolve the categories of...

Crossing Cultural Boundaries in East Asia and Beyond explores the personal complexities and ambiguities, and the successes and failures, of crossing borders and boundaries. While the focus is on East Asia, it universalizes cultural anxieties with comparative cases in Russia and the United States. The authors primarily engage the individual experiences of border-crossing, rather than more typically those of political or social groups located at territorial boundaries. Drawing on those individual experiences, this volume presents an array of attempts to negotiate the discomforts of crossing...

Der vorliegende Band enthält die Selbstdarstellung seines philosophischen und seines Lebensweges eines der großen Philosophen der Gegenwart, Ram Mall.Sein Lebensweg zwischen den Kulturen spiegelt seinen philosophischen Weg zwischen Europa und Indien.Diese Darstellung ist somit besonders geeignet, die Verbindung von Philosophie und Leben zu illustrieren und Philosophie in ihrem ursprünglichen Sinne als eine Lebenskunst zurückzugewinnen.Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. Ram Adhar Mall, ein indisch-deutscher Philosoph, studierte Philosophie, Psychologie, Sanskrit und Anglistik an den Universitäten...

This volume contains two major papers by Ram Adhar Mall on religion, philosophy and interculturality.
There is also an answer by Hans-Christian Günther; added are three very actual minor contributions by Ali Ashgar Mosleh and Hans-Christian Günther on similar topics.
Ram Adhar Mall, Prof. Dr., has been professor for philosopy and religion in Trier, Wuppertal, Bremen, Heidelberg and the LMU Munich. His wide reaching work has been of groud-breaking importance for the understanding of Indian philosophy,
he is the founding father of intercultural philosophy in Germany and the founder of the...