Enlightened by China. Representations and Myths in 18th-Century Europe

What did Europe see when it looked at China? In the 18th century, it saw a laboratory of civilization and a testing ground for its own ideas. Enlightened by China. Representations and Myths in 18th-Century Europe reconstructs the birth and decline of the myth of China: from the Confucian model celebrated by the Jesuits to censorship by the Roman church; from Lettres édifiantes et curieuses andJean-Baptiste Du Halde’s Description de la Chine to the Chinese presence in Europe; from Paolo Mattia Doria to Oliver Goldsmith and the Neapolitan reformers, from the representation of Europe for the Chinese to the images that shaped the collective imagination. What emerges is an intertwined history of religion, politics, economics, and visual cultures, in which admiration and dominion, science and propaganda, universalism and empire challenge one another. It is a book that helps us to understand how the Enlightenment also constructed itself through China, and how Europe shaped its own modernity.