Early Encounters between East Asia and Europe Telling Failures

CONTENTS

Preface

Notes on Contributors

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

Ralf Hertel

Part 2: Embassies

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

Inke Gunia

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

Peter J. Kitson

Part 3: Religion

6 Failed Missions in Early Korean Encounters with 'Western Learning'

Marion Eggert

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

Lars Laamann

Part 4: Knowledge

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

Claudia Schindler

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

Michael Keevak

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

QS Tong

Index