Oriental Networks

BÄRBEL CZENNIA has served as associate professor of English at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and as tenured senior lecturer of English literature at Georg-August-UniversitÄt GÖttingen, Germany, for more than 25 years. She is the author or editor of many essays and two books, including Celebrities: The Idiom of a Modern Era.GREG CLINGHAM is emeritus professor of English at Bucknell University, a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and the author or editor of ten books, including Johnson, Writing, and Memory. From 1996 to 2018, he was director of the Bucknell University Press.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentIntroduction: Oriental Networks in the Long Eighteenth CenturyBÄrbel CzenniaChapter 1: Knowing and Growing Tea: China, Britain, and the Formation of a Modern Global CommodityRichard CoultonChapter 2: China-Pugs: The Global Circulation of Chinoiseries, Porcelain, and Lapdogs, 1660–1800Stephanie Howard-SmithChapter 3: Green Rubies from the Ganges: Eighteenth-Century Gardening as Intercultural NetworkingBÄrbel CzenniaChapter 4: The Blood of Noble Martyrs: Penelope Aubin’s Global Economy of Virtue as Critique of Imperial NetworksSamara Anne CahillChapter 5: Robert Morrison and the Dialogic Representation of Imperial ChinaJennifer L. HargraveChapter 6: At Home with Empire? Charles Lamb, the East India Company, and “The South Sea House”James WattChapter 7: Commerce and Cosmology on Lord George Macartney’s Embassy to China, 1792–94Greg ClinghamChapter 8: Extreme Networking: Maria Graham’s Mountaintop, Underground, Intercontinental, and Otherwise Multidimensional ConnectionsKevin L. CopeBibliographyIndexAbout the Contributors

"Oriental Networks provides ample evidence that the networked worlds of the twenty-first century descend, in crucial ways, from eighteenth-century European experiments in global interconnection, both material and conceptual, with a particular focus on the East. The ambivalence of eighteenth-century orientalisms lends itself to the complex and sometimes unpredictable dynamics of transculturation and exchange within emergent paradigms of empire. These case studies invite response from non-Eurocentric sites of knowledge and thus initiate an important conversation." - Eugenia Zuroski (author of A Taste for China: English Subjectivity and the Prehistory of Orientalism) "The topic is clearly timely, as questions surrounding globalization and networks continue to be some of the most pressing of the twenty-first century. Such questions thus continue to demand historical investigation that is both substantial in its scholarship and innovative in its approach – a dual hurdle that Oriental Networks clears with ease, even panache. The editors are to be commended on their choice of contributions, which impressively encompass canonical and non-canonical writers, and contain an embarrassment of archival riches. The fact that the collection is lavishly, intelligently illustrated is a real bonus, too!" - Evan Gottlieb (author of Romantic Globalism: British Literature and Modern World Order, 1750-1830) "The topic is clearly timely, as questions surrounding globalization and networks continue to be some of the most pressing of the twenty-first century. Such questions thus continue to demand historical investigation that is both substantial in its scholarship and innovative in its approach – a dual hurdle that Oriental Networks clears with ease, even panache. The editors are to be commended on their choice of contributions, which impressively encompass canonical and non-canonical writers, and contain an embarrassment of archival riches. The fact that the collection is lavishly, intelligently illustrated is a real bonus, too!" - Evan Gottlieb (author of Romantic Globalism: British Literature and Modern World Order, 1750-1830) "Oriental Networks provides ample evidence that the networked worlds of the twenty-first century descend, in crucial ways, from eighteenth-century European experiments in global interconnection, both material and conceptual, with a particular focus on the East. The ambivalence of eighteenth-century orientalisms lends itself to the complex and sometimes unpredictable dynamics of transculturation and exchange within emergent paradigms of empire. These case studies invite response from non-Eurocentric sites of knowledge and thus initiate an important conversation." - Eugenia Zuroski (author of A Taste for China: English Subjectivity and the Prehistory of Orientalism)