Strangers at the Heavenly Court

This open access book examines the first modern diplomatic contact between Europe and East Asia: the 1517 Portuguese embassy to China. The experience did not end well, for in 1521, the Ming Court decided to cut off relations, and a battle broke out between the Guangdong and Portuguese fleets. This work seeks to explain why this happened. Making extensive use of both Chinese and Western archival sources, it proposes a new interpretation—one that breaks with the traditional “clash of civilizations” viewpoint and focuses instead on the diversity of actors and the complex relationships between them.

James Masaki Fujitani is Assistant Professor of Transnational History at the University of Nottingham Ningbo. His research focuses on intercultural relations in sixteenth-century Asia, with particular focus on Japan, Korea, China, and Portugal.