Where the Roads Met: East and West in the Silk Production Process (17th to 19th Century) (review)

298 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 Claudio Zanier. Where the Roads Met: East and West in the Silk Production Process (17th to 19th Century). Italian School ofEast Asian Studies Occasional Papers, vol. 5. Kyoto: Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 1994. ix, 106 pp. Paperback, isbn 490-07930-7-8. This slender volume contains the revised and annotated texts oftwo essays delivered by Professor Zanier at the Italian School of East Asian Studies in Kyoto in !993—"Pre-Modern European Silk Technology and East Asia: Who Imported What?" (pp. 1-69) and "The European Quest for East Asian Sericultural Techniques : Matthieu Bonafous and the Translation ofthe Yôsan hiroku -H-Ä#a£ in 1848" (pp. 71-94)—followed by a bibliography (pp. 95-104). Since much of the book, particularly the first essay, is concerned with technical matters, it also contains a number ofhandsome and helpful illustrations that complement the text. The first essay, which is the more substantial of the two, considers the question of Chinese influence on European (primarily Italian and French) silk reeling and tiirowing technology from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. It also briefly examines the possibility of European influence on similar Chinese technology during this same period—an era notable in the annals of sericulture as the period when European manufacturers succeeded in wresting preeminence in silk production from their East Asian competitors, ifonly for the relatively briefperiod of a couple ofcenturies. The author takes a careful look at the important aspects of silk production, particularly in Europe, through the examination ofdocuments in various French and Italian archives as well as information from Chinese sources and from European sources on China that were available at the time. He concludes tiiat, while it is often difficult to prove instances oftechnological borrowing, some important European innovations in silk reeling and throwing appear to have been exactly that—European improvements that were not imitative of Chinese techniques. It should be noted that his argument for indigenous European innovations in silk reeling (the unwinding of the silk filament from the cocoon) seems more assured than his argument concerning silk throwing (the twisting together of several silk filaments to form a thread). The author also suggests that some of this European technology was introduced to East Asia, which he believes was more receptive to it than many have supposed. In tiiis essay, Zanier is often critical ofthe methods employed and conclusions 1996 by University reached by Dieter Kuhn in his Textile Technology: Spinningand Reeling, which constitutes volume 5, part 9, ofJoseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China. Kuhn argues that European improvements in silk technology were the result of the gradual dissemination of Chinese models. Zanier believes that Kuhn was not ofHawai'i Press Reviews 299 aware ofthe European archival materials that (in the former's opinion) point to the indigenous European development ofsome important silk-producing techniques . Zanier further makes the point that European technological innovations in silk production cannot be divorced from other important developments in Europe , such as changes in methods of financing, management, and die organization and supervision oflabor. The European silk "revolution" was "part ofan economical and social fabric" (p. 37), not simply the result oftechnological improvements. The book's second essay, shorter and narrower in scope, is still ofinterest for the study of the transfer ofsilk technology, as it examines the history ofthe French translation ofthe Japanese text Yösan hiroku (Secret record ofthe raising of silkworms) that was made in order to disseminate its information to Europeans . This translation, which followed on the heels of Stanislas Julien's Résumé des principaux traités chinois sur la culture des mûriers et l'éducation des vers à soie of 1837, was arranged by Matthieu Bonafous, a scientist from a family with a long history in the silk trade. Bonafous, who did not read Japanese, edited and annotated die translation, which was published as Yo-san-fi-rok: L'art d'élever les vers à soie au Japon. ... in 1848. Zanier points out that the efforts ofboth Julien and Bonafous were not simply "exercises in exoticism," but serious attempts to transmit the most important information on sericulture from East Asia to Europe. Zanier...