The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History

A surprising survey of a cosmopolitan China, a civilization actively engaged with other cultures and societies. It is time to shed the long-held myth that Chinese civilization is monolithic, unchanging, and perennially cut off from the rest of the world. This persistent stereotype has long obscured China's diverse and dynamic history. Drawing on the latest research in the field, Joanna Waley-Cohen gives us an accessible account of China's fertile relations with other Asian cultures and indeed the West from the days of the Silk Road to the present. Around 200 B.C. the Han empire was establishing its capital at Chang'an and Rome was becoming a political force. Between them traders shipped silk and gold west, and spices, woolens, and horses east. It was over this Silk Road that Buddhism spread from India to China, where the foreign religion soon made permanent inroads. Later, Catholic missionaries would interpret the Chinese resistance to their religion as evidence of an arrogant complacency, just as Western emissaries would interpret China's objections to trade on Western terms. But whether in trade, religion, ideology, or technology, China has shown a pattern of engagement with the rest of the world, so long as the rules of engagement are not externally imposed.

Joanna Waley-Cohen is professor of history at New York University