Education About Asia: Online Archives

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Book Review Essay, Resources

Matteo Ricci and the Catholic Mission to China: A Short History with Documents

by Michael Laver

Professor R. Po-chia Hsia positions this new documentary history within a fairly well-received corpus of scholarly literature on Matteo Ricci: Jonathan Spence’s The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, Mary Laven’s Mission to China: Matteo Ricci and the Jesuit Encounter with the East, Liam Brockey’s Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, and the author’s own A Jesuit in the Forbidden City. The distinctive feature of this new book is not only that it is a short historical sketch with...

Feature Article

Butter Diplomacy: Food and Drink as a Social Lubricant in Dutch East India Company Trade with Japan

by Michael Laver

Every year the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea brought roughly half a dozen Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC) ships to Nagasaki, carrying a valuable cargo consisting mainly of various types of silk and other types of cloth, and also Southeast Asian luxury goods, European “rarities,” and foodstuffs such as sugar and spices. After these VOC ships unloaded their precious and varied cargo, negotiations would begin to determine the price of t...

New to EAA?

Before viewing the full archives, view Editor’s Choice Articles, handpicked by EAA Editor, Lucien Ellington, which provide a good overview of EAA and introduction for new readers.