The Chinese themselves were very indulgent towards us, and happy in the contemplation of a new people, opening to view a fresh source of commerce to their extensive empire. —From the journal of Major Samuel Shaw, as reported in Fowle’s New-Hampshire Gazette, 27 May 1785, and other historical newspapers To...
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World History
The "New People" in China: Using Historical Newspapers to Analyze America’s First Contacts with Asia
The Muslim World in Early U.S. Texts
About a decade ago, I began researching representations of Islam in early national American literary texts; when someone would ask what the subject of my dissertation was, and I gave this answer, I often received responses along the lines of, “ Was there any literature about Islam in the early...
Slow Reading the News: Gandhi’s Philosophical Experiments with His South African Newspaper
During his South African years (1893-1914), Mohandas Gandhi started a printing press and a newspaper, Indian Opinion. One of the world’s great intellectual archives, Indian Opinion constitutes an experiment with reading and writing that fed into Gandhi’s ideas on satyagraha or “passive resistance.” Writing in an age of vertiginous acceleration...
Mr. Jefferson’s Mandarin, Or, a controversial promotion
When the ship Beaver departed New York harbor bound for the China coast in August 1808, the United States was fully embargoed. For over six months the country’s trade had been at a standstill, and all the ports idled. The livelihoods of America’s maritime workers had been sacrificed to the...
Celestial Vision: China’s Scholars in the Connecticut Valley
In September 1872, Yung Wing escorted a delegation of young students from China to Springfield, Massachusetts, under the auspices of an unprecedented enterprise—the Chinese Educational Mission. Wing’s all-male contingent attracted attention throughout the United States. Rumors had circulated for months that in order to bring its isolated nation into the...
