"The Pilgrim Art is a remarkable work of synthesis. With porcelain as his focus, Robert Finlay puts the histories of China, India, the Islamic world, Europe, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and East Africa into dialogue with one another. In highlighting the interactions, exchanges, and influences that linked these regions, he makes a distinctive contribution to understanding of the global past. He blends the histories of production, distribution, and consumption with the histories of technology, trade, and art, as well as social history, commodity history, cultural history, political history, and literary history. The result is a rich stew of historical analysis combining close attention to detail with graceful writing and a clear focus on global themes. The Pilgrim Art ranks as an example of contemporary world history at its finest." --Jerry H. Bentley, Editor of the Journal of World History and author of Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times
"Finlay traces the rise and fall of Chinese porcelain across global flows of desire, artistic symbols and styles, innovation, espionage, competition and colonial power. This is commodity history as it should be written--exciting, engaging, with a masterful attention to regional context, be it France, Japan, India, or the Swahili Coast."--Stewart Gordon, author of When Asia was the World
