Asia in the Making of Europe, Volume III

Asia in the Making of Europe traces European
encounters with Asia, and the ways in which those encounters
have altered the development of western society, art,
literature, science, and religion since the Renaissance. In
doing so, this work provides a much-needed perspective
necessary for a balanced view of European and Asian history.

A Century of Advance, the third volume of this
monumental work, is devoted to the seventeenth century.
Donald F. Lach and Edwin Van Kley have researched virtually
all the writings on Asia published in Europe at this time,
in an effort to understand how contemporaries saw Asian
societies and peoples. During this century, more and better
information became available as merchants and missionaries
pushed deeper into the interiors of the Asian lands
previously known only on their peripheries. While
conducting commerce and spreading Christianity, westerners
"discovered" Manchuria, Korea, Tibet, Formosa, and
Australia; they also learned much more than their
predecessors about Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism and
about their importance in Asian life. Their countrymen,
eager for news from the East, read of their exploits in the
widely published Jesuit letterbooks, mission reports, and
merchant travelogues.

These sources are valuable to modern scholars for the
insights they provide on the development of European
culture. They also provide details of everyday life not
included in native Asian sources, and aspects of Asian
culture that have passed out of existence and thus are
unfamiliar to modern scholars. The authors' extraordinarily
detailed and insightful readings of the documents of
discovery, contribute greatly to a more balanced
understanding of Asian history, in addition to deepening our
understanding of this critical era in European history.