| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

David Porter. Ideographia: The Chinese Cipher in Early Modern Europe. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2001. Pp. xii, 296. $49.50.

Departing from Europe's first response to Chinese ideograms and using China as a cipher, David Porter presents additional European reaction to Chinese religions, artifacts, and trade. In the book's introduction (p. 13), he states that he has limited his discussion to Britain, France, and Germany. In the same breath, he exempts the "French physiocrats" and Montesquieu from his study. The tremendous impact of Montesquieu's L'Esprit des lois (1748), especially his contention that China was only governed by corporeal punishment and fear, thus becomes nonexistent. Moreover, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who opined that the Chinese culture degenerated its people, and Denis Diderot, who refuted systematically the positive points advanced by China's advocates, are also bypassed. Presenting Voltaire alone is tantamount to distorting the French discussion on China during the Enlightenment. . . .

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