A new book by historian Nile Green describes how the spread of European typography and lithography to key ports such as Istanbul, Calcutta, Singapore, and Shanghai in the nineteenth century brought about an Asian communications revolution. This in turn enabled a process of Asian ‘self-discovery’ via the publication of numerous accounts of different regions of the continent in the many Middle Eastern and Asian languages and scripts rendered in print for the first time. Many of these books and articles were translations of European works, such that when the Quran was printed in Chinese and Japanese, and Confucius translated into Urdu, their source texts were translations into European languages, as were the earliest Bengali books on Japan. In other cases, the new printed books of this Asian age of discovery were travel accounts written in Arabic, Gujarati, Japanese and Persian that described the unfamiliar cultures of other regions of Asia. Surveying the whole of the continent, from Istanbul to Yokohama, How Asia Found Herself: a Story of Intercultural Understanding places the European printing revolution in a larger world historical picture. In his review of the book, author of The Silk Roads Peter Frankopan wrote ‘Green’s book is a tour de force… The question he asks—what is Asia, and on whose terms?—is thrilling, invigorating and important.’
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