Empire of Great Brightness

"In a way, this is perhaps a little bit of a surprise, because this is a book which is actually focused on China, and not a book about the exchange between Europe and China – although China is not presented as being entirely isolated. My reasons for including it are two-fold. For one thing, its author, Craig Clunas, is one of the great historians of material culture practising at the moment – he really is able to show us how a society functioned by means of studying its objects and, again, it’s very beautifully illustrated. I also chose this book because Clunas plays a bit of a joke in the opening pages, where he describes China in its great age of print, and its age of cultural productivity – a time of discovery, a time of novelty, paired with great respect for the past, for antiquity – and he lures us into thinking that he’s describing Europe, because the description he offers is a very classic description of Renaissance Europe and he’s borrowing a lot of his terms from the great 19th century historian of the Italian Renaissance, Jacob Burckhardt. But then, of course, his punchline is: I’m talking about Ming China. I think it makes a nice parallel with the other books about Renaissance Europe. Yes, of course. Craig Clunas has spent his entire career immersed in this stuff, so he’s very good at guiding the reader through what is undoubtedly very unfamiliar material. Some of his “material” sources are texts themselves, which also indicates a new move, I think – a new kind of historical turn. We’ve talked a lot so far about material culture, but writing itself can be a material object. And this is obviously the case in China, where there’s this fascination with calligraphy and the beauty of the written word. In all kinds of ways, it’s very unfamiliar terrain. But Clunas’s great genius is his ability to convey this to an audience of non-specialists."