ARTICLES
Changing Cosmology, Changing Perspectives on History and Politics: Christianity and Yang Tingyun’s 楊廷筠 (1562–1627) Reflections on China
Yu-Yin Cheng, 499
Yang Tingyun, one of the “three pillars of the early Catholic Church” in the late Ming period, has often been studied by scholars seeking to understand why he converted to Christianity and what Christian philosophy he embraced. This article shifts the focus to Yang’s secular concerns after his conversion. The article delves into the issues of Yang’s reassessment of Chinese history and political systems under the influences of Christianity and Western learning. It concludes that Yang’s Christian-centered interpretation of Chinese history and his aspirations for European-style institutions led him to question the importance of monarchy in China, with the result that he shifted his interest to the state, declaring an urgent need for pragmatic learning to strengthen state power. Citing the Jesuit fathers’ swift mastery of the Chinese classics and Western languages’ unlimited applications, Yang further became critical of the Sinocentric worldview of Chinese tradition.
The Local Was Global: The Singapore Mutiny of 1915
Heather Streets-Salter, 539
This article explores the little-known Singapore Mutiny of 1915 as a case study demonstrating the permeable nature of colonial boundaries in Southeast Asia, and especially the multiple influences at work on colonies in the region outside of their relationships to their respective metropoles. It argues that despite the relative insignificance of the mutiny to larger historical narratives, seemingly local events like this allow a glimpse into the concrete ways larger intercolonial and global connections informed the beliefs and actions of ordinary people. The article begins by exploring the causes of the mutiny and argues that its outbreak cannot be understood without attention to networks and ideologies that crisscrossed the world in 1915, especially with regard to pan-Islamism and radical Indian nationalism. It then explores the responses to the mutiny by a multiplicity of actors, and argues that larger global conditions, alliances, and rivalries fundamentally shaped both official and nonofficial responses to the mutiny, even as they highlighted strong preexisting official networks between colonies and independent nations all over Southeast and East Asia.
“A Missionary from the East to Western Pagans”: Kagawa Toyohiko’s 1936 U.S. Tour
Robert Shaffer, 577
The 1936 U.S. tour by Japanese Protestant evangelist and social reformer Kagawa Toyohiko shows that the Christian missionary enterprise did not go in only one direction. Leading American Protestants welcomed Kagawa’s aid in demonstrating Christianity’s relevance during the Great Depression, hoping that his identification with the poor and his strategy of building economic cooperatives would resonate in the United States. The author characterizes the tour’s organizers, including current and former American missionaries, as “critical internationalists,” whose interactions with the wider world convinced them that they needed to learn from others and that their own society needed to change.
Chinese Influence or Images? Fluctuating Histories of How Enlightenment Europe Read China
Stefan Gaarsmand Jacobsen, 623
This historiographical survey reveals major fluctuations in twentieth-century studies of how early modern Europe received descriptions of China by travelers and missionaries. The article argues that historians working on the cultural history of this reception have alternated between an overall understanding of this interregional entanglement as either an image, in the meaning of a projection, or an actual influence upon European developments. The image approach and the influence approach are shown to be mutually exclusive, and this is explained by relating the specialized results of the field to the debates on “the West” and “the Other” that reached an apex with Edward Said’s Orientalism. Therefore, apart from presenting a complete state of the art for this field, the article analyzes how the ethical and political research debates of the 1970s made the concept of influence untenable until other branches of world history had been insisting on world historical entanglements for almost a decade in the beginning of the 2000s.
BOOK REVIEWS
David Palumbo-Liu, Bruce Robbins, and Nirvana Tanoukhi, eds. Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale, Culture
reviewed by Kevan Harris, 661
Dominic Sachsenmaier. Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and Approaches in a Connected World
reviewed by Prakash Kumar, 664
Christopher Ehret. History and the Testimony of Language
reviewed by Timothy Scarnecchia, 666
John Clifford Holt, ed. The Sri Lanka Reader: History, Culture, Politics
reviewed by Victor C. de Munck, 670
Touraj Daryaee, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History
reviewed by H. Lyman Stebbins, 673
Nigel Saul. Chivalry in Medieval England
reviewed by Kate McGrath, 676
Geoffrey C. Gunn. History without Borders: The Making of an Asian World Region, 1000–1800
reviewed by Keng We Koh, 679
R. I. Moore. The War on Heresy
reviewed by Claire Taylor, 681
Charles Carlton. This Seat of Mars: War and the British Isles, 1485–1746
reviewed by Nathan James Martin, 688
Carina L. Johnson. Cultural Hierarchy in Sixteenth-Century Europe: The Ottomans and Mexicans
reviewed by Yuen-Gen Liang, 690
Fariba Zarinebaf. Crime and Punishment in Istanbul: 1700–1800
reviewed by Will Hanley, 693
Timothy May. The Mongol Conquests in World History
reviewed by Anne F. Broadbridge, 696
Brian C. Black. Crude Reality: Petroleum in World History
reviewed by Timothy James Lecain, 699
James E. McClellan III and François Regourd. The Colonial Machine: French Science and Overseas Expansion
in the Old Regime
reviewed by Barbara Traver, 701
Antoinette Burton. Empire in Question: Reading, Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism
reviewed by Nicole M. Mares, 704
Gunnar Skirbekk. Multiple Modernities: A Tale of Scandinavian Experiences
reviewed by Magnus Fiskesjö, 707
Michael E. Bonine, Abbas Amanat, and Michael Ezekiel Gasper, eds. Is There a Middle East? The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept
reviewed by Karen Culcasi, 710
Dominique Kirchner Reill. Nationalists Who Feared the Nation: Adriatic Multi-Nationalism in Habsburg Dalmatia, Trieste, and Venice
reviewed by Nicole M. Phelps, 712
Davide Rodogno. Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire, 1815–1914
reviewed by Anna M. Mirkova, 715
Sean McMeekin. The Russian Origins of the First World War
reviewed by Laurie Stoff, 719
Parna Sengupta. Pedagogy for Religion: Missionary Education and the Fashioning of Hindus and Muslims in Bengal
reviewed by Kelly Elliott, 721
James C. Giesen. Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South
reviewed by Tiffany M. Fink, 724
Theodore Ziolowski. Gilgamesh among Us: Modern Encounters with the Ancient Epic
reviewed by Alhena Gadotti, 726
Toby Green. The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589
reviewed by Rebecca Shumway, 729
Dalia Abdelhady. The Lebanese Diaspora: The Arab Immigrant Experience in Montreal, New York, and Paris
reviewed by Franck Salameh, 731
Panikos Panayi and Pippa Virdee, eds. Refugees and the End of Empire: Imperial Collapse and Forced Migration in the Twentieth Century
reviewed by Melissa K. Byrnes, 733