1368: China and the Making of the Modern World

The establishment of the Great Ming dynasty in 1368 was a monumental event in world history. It prompted a series of diplomatic missions across the South China Sea and Indian Ocean that paved the way for China's first modern global era. In 1368 award-winning author Dr. Ali Humayun Akhtar maps China's ascendance from the Age of Exploration up until nineteenth-century industrialization, offering a new picture of the encounters that made the modern world.

Spectacular accounts in Persian and Ottoman Turkish describe Ming emperors in palaces of silk. Malay legends recounted stories of Chinese princesses and their entourages traveling to Melaka, cultivating new tastes for Chinese imports. During Europe's Age of Exploration, Spanish and Portuguese mariners charted new routes to China in search of these storied commodities. Among the ships' passengers were Italian Jesuits, who established a permanent foothold in centers like Manila and Macau. Their linguistic skills in Chinese and Japanese facilitated joint projects with local cartographers and botanists, which they published in Amsterdam's printing presses. At the height of the Enlightenment, coffeehouses in Paris were served Chinese tea in porcelain cups while intellectuals debated the merits of Confucius. China, in other words, went global, and the cultural impact on the world's trade networks was profound.

With the onset of the British Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, however, there was a shift in European innovation and commercial patterns. Across the British Empire, the rise of steam engines and factories facilitated the mass production and export. What did the world learn from China across the five centuries connecting the Ming's global expeditions with the end of the Opium Wars? Akhtar's new retelling of global history provides much-needed context for understanding modern China and the West, particularly as a newly rising China inspires debates about the future of international economic development.