| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Jonathan D. Spence. The Chan's Great Continent: China in Western Minds. New York: W. W. Norton. 1998. Pp. xviii, 279. $27.50.

What is a "Chan"? Jonathan D. Spence has picked the word from a Hart Crane poem imagining how China appeared in Christopher Columbus's mind, and the "Chan" is in fact the Khan of Marco Polo's Travels (1298)—itself to some extent a product of imagination—upon which Christopher Columbus based his conceptions of China. The ambiguity is deliberate; Spence's new book deals with images of China in Western texts throughout the last eight centuries: the "collective projections" (as C. G. Jung would have it) as well as individual visions. Spence digs deep for the roots of the perennial Western admiration-mixed-with-fear syndrome in relation to China, tracing the ever-growing complexity of this from thirteenth-century travel reports to the present times. The result is a splendid book. Less scholarly than previous works by Spence on the intellectual interface between China and the West, it is easy and enjoyable to read yet full of insights. It is also vast in its scope, and the interpretive framework is quite open, with few attempts at categorization. . . .

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