Europe's "Discovery" of China and the Writing of World History

Abstract

Ours is an age of renewed interest in world history. The enthusiastic reception given William McNeill's The Rise of West a few years ago amply illustrates our concern for written history that embraces entire human community and that transcends national, religious, and cultural boundaries. Courses in world history or world civilization seem to be replacing traditional Western civilization courses in our colleges, and we are inundated with textbooks that try to integrate bits of Asian and African history with that of West. Comparative historical studies abound. We have created international commissions for writing of world history, such as UNESCO project, in hope of more successfully avoiding parochial interpretations. The parochial labels and phrases that still clutter our professional vocabulary are gradually being replaced by more descriptive terms: Oriental has become Asian; Far East is now East Asia; and Near East may become Eastern Mediterranean. It is obvious that world history is one of major concerns of this generation's historians. Interest in world history did not begin in our of course. Historians in Western, Christian tradition have always been concerned with world history-universal history, they called it. Universal histories also pretended to be histories of mankind. They described man's beginnings and his development through all time he had been on earth. But while their titles typically embraced the history of world from its creation to our own day, world described between their covers was usually limited to ancient Near East, Greece, Rome, and Western Christendom. The most obvious change since day of old universal history has been a redefinition of what should be included in world history-a change toward geographic universality as well as or even in place of chronological universality. The redefinition of content of world history also has had a fairly long history in West. At least since Renaissance, Western scholars have had to assimilate newly discovered information, both from antiquity and from non-European world, with their view of world history. Usually this new information could be accommodated without impairing traditional struc-