| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 110.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Lydia H. Liu. The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2004. Pp. xiii, 318. $45.00.

This is a curious book. Lydia H. Liu argues for semiotics as the defining aspect of the invention of China in the modern world, and as the defining moment of modern sovereign thinking in the nineteenth-century clash of the British and Qing Empires. Yet, if these are primarily semiotic events, what historical claim is being made? As Liu notes toward the end of the book, the science of philology privileged a putative transparency between language and culture. Liu's semiotics twists the emphasis: it retains language in its privileged position, even as the focus on historically produced translingual practice disavows transparency. This focus allows for a number of fascinating insights and accounts that should alter the narratives China studies textbooks continue to hold dear. But for scholars who have given up those old modes of inquiry—the most likely readers of this challenging book—the argument does not add up.

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