Books in the Transcultural Research - Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context series

This is a set of pioneering studies on Chinese encyclopaedias of modern knowledge (1870-1930). At a transitional time when modern knowledge was sought after yet few modern schools were available, these works were crucial sources of information for an entire generation.

The history of globalization is anything but a no-frills affair that moves smoothly along a clear-cut, unidirectional path of development, eventually leading to seamless global integration.

The aim is to reevaluate and compare the processes of dissolution of diglossia in East Asian and in European languages, especially in Japanese, Chinese and in Slavic languages in the framework of the asymmetries in the emergence of modern written languages.

The book critically investigates the local impact of international organizations beyond a Western rationale and aims to overcome Eurocentric patterns of analysis. Chapter 3 sheds light on international organizations as platforms, expanding the field of research from the diversity of organizations to the patterns of global governance.

It focuses on the pre-industrial era and on the question of similarities, differences and transcultural dynamics in the cultural handling of natural disasters.

Rather than depict the transformations of mathematical knowledge in terms of a process of westernization, the book analyzes the complex interactions between different scientific communities and the ways in which the past, modernity, language, and mathematics were negotiated in a global context.