Summary of Bill Hayton's The Invention of China

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The name China was adopted by Westerners and given new meanings which were then transmitted back to East Asia. In European minds, China became an ancient, independent, continuous state occupying a defined portion of continental East Asia.

#2 The idea of a pre-eminent China traveled from Europe to East and Southeast Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and found a new home in the private discussions and public journals of Qing intellectuals.

#3 The Chinese had two names for their country: Zhongguo, which means central state, and Zhonghua, which means central efflorescence. These names were not used as formal names for the country until the end of the nineteenth century.

#4 The Chinese did not call themselves Chinese, nor their country China. They referred to it as Tamen, or Great Ming. They called themselves Tamenjins, or people of the Great Ming.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822513525

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Insights on Bill Hayton's The Invention of China

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The name China was adopted by Westerners and given new meanings which were then transmitted back to East Asia. In European minds, China became an ancient, independent, continuous state occupying a defined portion of continental East Asia.

#2

The idea of a pre-eminent China traveled from Europe to East and Southeast Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and found a new home in the private discussions and public journals of Qing intellectuals.

#3

The Chinese had two names for their country: Zhongguo, which means central state, and Zhonghua, which means central efflorescence. These names were not used as formal names for the country until the end of the nineteenth century.

#4

The Chinese did not call themselves Chinese, nor their country China. They referred to it as Tamen, or Great Ming. They called themselves Tamenjins, or people of the Great Ming.

#5

By the end of the sixteenth century, Portuguese traders and preachers were faring better than Pereira had done. They had swapped the toehold of Shangchuan for a slightly larger one on Macao and Francis Xavier’s missionary hopes had borne fruit.

#6

The term zhong guo was used in the past to describe a specific culture that was distinct from other cultures. It was not intended to be the name of a country, but rather a claim to legitimacy.

#7

The most common explanation for the name of China is that it is derived from the dynasty of Qin, which formed as a small fiefdom in what is now Gansu province in the northwest of modern China. But there is no evidence that the dynastic name Qin was ever used as the name of the territory.

#8

The name China was never used by the Chinese to describe their territory. It was only ever used by outsiders. The name traveled far, by the second century CE, and was used by the Greco-Roman geographer Ptolemy to describe Sinae and Thinae in his writings.

#9

The Qing Dynasty was founded by a people from outside China, the Manchus, who rode out of their chilly homeland and took over the moribund Ming state in 1644. They were people from outside China but they quickly realized that if they were to rule the former Ming domain successfully, they would have to adopt some of the techniques of their predecessors.

#10

The Jesuit priest Thomas Pereira was sent to China