Early Encounters between East Asia and Europe

Countering a tendency in scholarship to overlook unsuccessful encounters, it starts from the assumption that failures can prove highly illuminating and provide valuable insights into both the specific shapes and limitations of East Asian and Western imaginations of the Other, as well as of the nature of East-West interaction. Interdisciplinary in outlook, this collection brings together the perspectives of sinology, Japanese and Korean studies, historical studies, literary studies, art history, religious studies, and performance studies. The subjects discussed are manifold and range from missionary accounts, travel reports, letters and trade documents to fictional texts as well as material objects (such as tea, chinaware, or nautical instruments) exchanged between East and West. In order to avoid a Eurocentric perspective, the collection balances approaches from the fields of English literature, Spanish studies, Neo-Latin studies, and art history with those of sinology, Japanese studies, and Korean studies.

CONTENTS

1. Introduction: Telling Failures-Early Encounters between East Asia and Europe

Ralf Hertel and Michael Keevak

Part 1: Trade

2. A Failure far from Heroic: Early European Encounters with 'Far Eastern' Slavery

Rotem Kowner

3. Faking It: The Invention of East Asia in Early Modern England

4 The Travel Report of the Castilian Embassy to the Court of Tamerlane at Samarkand (1403-1406): The Failed Response from Tamerlane to King Henry III of Castile and León

5 The 'catastrophe of this new Chinese mission': The Amherst Embassy to China of 1816

6 Failed Missions in Early Korean Encounters with Western Learning'

7 The Christian Manchu Missions during the Qing Period (1644-1911): Perceptions and Political Implications

8 Persian Apples, Chinese Leaves, Arab Beans: Encounters with the East in Neo-Latin Didactic Poetry

9 Failure, Empire, and the First Portuguese Embassy to China, 1517-1522

10 Lessons of Failure: Towards an Ethics of Cross-Cultural Understanding