Oriental Networks

Culture, Commerce, and Communication in the Long Eighteenth Century

Edited by Bärbel Czennia and Greg Clingham

SERIES: Aperçus: Histories Texts Cultures

Bucknell University Press

Oriental Networks explores forms of interconnectedness between Western and Eastern hemispheres during the long eighteenth century, a period of improving transportation technology, expansion of intercultural contacts, and the emergence of a global economy. In eight case studies and a substantial introduction, the volume examines relationships between individuals and institutions, precursors to modern networks that engaged in forms of intercultural exchange. Addressing the exchange of cultural commodities (plants, animals, and artifacts), cultural practices and ideas, the roles of ambassadors and interlopers, and the literary and artistic representation of networks, networkers, and networking, contributors discuss the effects on people previously separated by vast geographical and cultural distance. Rather than idealizing networks as inherently superior to other forms of organization, Oriental Networks also considers Enlightenment expressions of resistance to networking that inform modern skepticism toward the concept of the global network and its politics. In doing so the volume contributes to the increasingly global understanding of culture and communication.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

The topic is clearly timely, as questions surrounding globalization and networks continue to be some of the most pressing of the twenty-first century. Such questions thus continue to demand historical investigation that is both substantial in its scholarship and innovative in its approach – a dual hurdle that Oriental Networks clears with ease, even panache. The editors are to be commended on their choice of contributions, which impressively encompass canonical and non-canonical writers, and contain an embarrassment of archival riches. The fact that the collection is lavishly, intelligently illustrated is a real bonus, too! Evan Gottlieb, author of Romantic Globalism: British Literature and Modern World Order, 1750-1830

'Oriental Networks provides ample evidence that the networked worlds of the twenty-first century descend, in crucial ways, from eighteenth-century European experiments in global interconnection, both material and conceptual, with a particular focus on the East. The ambivalence of eighteenth-century orientalisms lends itself to the complex and sometimes unpredictable dynamics of transculturation and exchange within emergent paradigms of empire. These case studies invite response from non-Eurocentric sites of knowledge and thus initiate an important conversation.' Eugenia Zuroski, author of A Taste for China: English Subjectivity and the Prehistory of Orientalism

BÄRBEL CZENNIA has served as associate professor of English at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and as tenured senior lecturer of English literature at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany, for more than 25 years. She is the author or editor of many essays and two books, including Celebrities: The Idiom of a Modern Era.

GREG CLINGHAM is emeritus professor of English at Bucknell University, a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and the author or editor of ten books, including Johnson, Writing, and Memory. From 1996 to 2018, he was director of the Bucknell University Press.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgment
Introduction: Oriental Networks in the Long Eighteenth Century
Bärbel Czennia
Chapter 1: Knowing and Growing Tea: China, Britain, and the Formation of a Modern Global Commodity
Richard Coulton
Chapter 2: China-Pugs: The Global Circulation of Chinoiseries, Porcelain, and Lapdogs, 1660–1800
Stephanie Howard-Smith
Chapter 3: Green Rubies from the Ganges: Eighteenth-Century Gardening as Intercultural Networking
Bärbel Czennia
Chapter 4: The Blood of Noble Martyrs: Penelope Aubin’s Global Economy of Virtue as Critique of Imperial Networks
Samara Anne Cahill
Chapter 5: Robert Morrison and the Dialogic Representation of Imperial China
Jennifer L. Hargrave
Chapter 6: At Home with Empire? Charles Lamb, the East India Company, and “The South Sea House”
James Watt
Chapter 7: Commerce and Cosmology on Lord George Macartney’s Embassy to China, 1792–94
Greg Clingham
Chapter 8: Extreme Networking: Maria Graham’s Mountaintop, Underground, Intercontinental, and Otherwise Multidimensional Connections
Kevin L. Cope
Bibliography
Index
About the Contributors

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