Description
Book SynopsisThis first volume in this groundbreaking new series is a comparative study of practices of historical research in early modern Europe and China. In recent decades, as the history of scholarship has burgeoned into a respected field of academic study, antiquarianism has emerged as an important precursor of the modern historical sciences and their associated museum culture.
Trade ReviewThis volume is the first to juxtapose the autochthonous traditions of antiquarianism of Early Modern Europe and Late Imperial China. Rather than asking only what the West might be able to learn about China, it self-consciously and quite successfully seeks to open up new perspectives on both sides of the comparison. It moreover breaks important ground in suggesting historically traceable links between evidential learning in China and European traditions of 'Herodotean' historiography."
—Lothar von Falkenhausen, University of California, Los Angeles
"This splendid collection of essays is at once a major addition to the literature on the history of scholarship in Western Europe, a burgeoning field in its own right, and a model effort at comparative cultural history . . . The collection as a whole sheds light on areas little known even to erudite scholars."
—Anthony Grafton, Princeton University
