Hugh R. Clark

Maritime Sector, Institutions, and Sea Power of Premodern China

Preface Introduction Maritime Sector and Backward Linkages Maritime Sector and Forward Linkages Maritime Institutions Chinas Sea Power Decline of Chinas Sea Power Conclusion Appendix A: Port Related Place-Names in China Appendix B: Chinese Merchants and the Japanese Market Appendix C: Features of the Northern Sea Fleet

Xuanzang: A Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road (review)

interesting questions about the role of art, industry, audience, and politics in modern European and Chinese societies. The author notices the role of the woodblock and popular or commercial art in nineteenthcentury China, Japan, and France. She reflects on how Song landscape painting established poetic, nonnaturalistic conventions when the European Renaissance was embracing science and optic verisimilitude. There is, however, little discussion or theorizing about the causes of similar styles in different cultures. When, for instance, Prazniak points to Chinese-like mountains in Renaissance windows, her interest is in psychological similarity in the absence of contact. When she discusses the appeal among French impressionists for emotional brushwork and emotive landscapes similar to those of the Song master Guo Xi, she is not writing of influence. Prazniak’s “dialogues” depend on neither contact nor common roots. They are rather opportunities for reflection provided by the juxtaposition of different cultural traditions. The offhandedness of Prazniak’s remark that “Manet probably did not attend” an exhibition in which some of Qi’s work was exhibited in Paris is almost emblematic of her approach. Her dialogues do not trace connections, they make them. They are dialogues in the mind of the historian. As such, they seem sometimes richly suggestive and sometimes misinformed. This, of course, is a remarkably ambitious undertaking. If at times the author seems to do less than meets the eye (for instance, reducing Greek philosophy to Plato, Sun Yat Sen to antidemocratic nationalism, Aquinas to synthesis), she also challenges us to see connections and patterns in places where we might otherwise never have looked and on a scale that inspires. kevin reilly Raritan Valley College