Italia e Cina (review)

50 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. ?, Spring 1999 Giuliano Bertuccioli and Federico Masini. Italia e Cina. Roma-Bari: Editori Laterza, 1996. vii, 366 pp. Hardcover, isbn 88-420-5088-1. Ltalia e Cina narrates the encounters between Chinese and Italians from the Han and Roman empires to 1911, the year ofthe republican revolution that brought to an end the imperial system in China. In the words ofthe authors, the book aims at "recounting" some ofthe most crucial aspects of the "exchange ofideas and culture" between China and Italy while "summing up the opinions that each of the two countries had about the other throughout the centuries" (pp. v-vi). Italia e Cina relies on an impressive number ofLatin, Italian, Greek, and Chinese primary sources, some translated and published here for the first time. The richness of the documentation is reflected in the abundance of information and anecdotes about travelers, merchants, and missionaries who ventured from the Italian peninsula to the land of the celestial empire. It was the choice of the authors ofthis book not to target a scholarly audience. They have instead aimed at introducing the history of Italy's encounter with China to a wider Italian readership, with an eye to the recent wave of Chinese immigration to Italy. For this reason Bertuccioli and Masini chose to produce an easy-to-read introductory work, in a "light register." This accessibility would certainly be worthy ofpraise if it had not confined the book to an anecdotal dimension. Italia e Cina glides over the surface of a massive amount of information and centuries ofhistory without attempting to illuminate the cultural and historical value of the encounters that are described in such detail. This is unfortunate because Italia e Cina is one the few existing works that focuses on China's relations with Europe before the Opium War. Its narration of China's encounters with "others" could have offered a crucial contribution to breaking down the stereotypical image of Chinese culture as monolithic and largely unchanged through centuries of cultural and intellectual isolation. In spite of their choice not to offer an interpretative analysis, however, and because of the novelty of the topic and the richness in information and sources, this book still constitutes a valuable reference for anyone interested in pre-nineteenth-century cultural exchanges between Europe and China. Giuliano Bertuccioli, Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Rome, La Sapienza, is a longtime student ofearly reciprocal perceptions between the Roman and the Han empires and one ofthe few scholars famil-© 1999 by University iar with material on China at the Vatican archives. He is the author ofthe first ofHawai'i Pressfour chapters of the book covering the period from the early Han to the Ming. Bertuccioli opens his narrative with an interesting overview ofearly "missed" or "secondhand" encounters between the Roman and Han empires. Here he displays Reviews 51 impressive scholarship and an astounding familiarity with Latin and Greek sources most often ignored by China historians. He then moves on to a narrative of the journeys to China of resourceful and adventurous Venetian and Genoese merchants. This section vividly portrays the cosmopolitan atmosphere ofthe Mongol (Yuan dynasty) empire where Italians mingled with Turks, Arabs, and Indians, enjoying an unprecedented freedom to convert locals to the Christian faith and to trade and reside in China. The Mongol empire emerges from Bertuccioli's description as a melting pot ofdifferent cultures, a great meeting ground of cultural trends that reached from the "Occident" to the "Orient." It is one ofthe strong points ofthe book that Bertuccioli makes the reader aware of the inadequacy ofour understanding ofthe Yuan empire and the need for new studies that can cast light on the Mongol legacy to Chinese civilization. However, it is precisely in this section that one begins most strongly to feel the lack ofhistorical background. Bertuccioli conceptualizes the Roman Empire, the merchant city-states of Renaissance Italy, the Vatican, and the unified Italian kingdom as all one and the same actor—Italy—largely ignoring differences in social, economic, cultural, and intellectual conditions and how they affected the visions and goals of travelers to China in different historical periods. The vital...