Oriental Networks

"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