{"word_count": 297, "character_count": 2026}
[caption id="attachment_145" align="aligncenter" width="199"] Book cover. Source: Angela Schottenhammer (http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/6499; accessed online 2 July 2014)[/caption]The blog Carnets du Centre de Chine sheds light over the publication of the English version of François GIPOULOUX's book: La Méditerranée asiatique. Villes portuaires et réseaux marchands en Chine, au Japon et en Asie du Sud-Est,xvie-xxie siècle (Paris, CNRS Éditions)  published in 2009.In 2009, François Gipouloux published his La Méditerranée asiatique. Villes portuaires et réseaux marchands en Chine, au Japon et en Asie du Sud-Est,xvie-xxie siècle (Paris, CNRS Éditions), providing scholars for the first time with a general Braudelian synthesis that compared the European and the Asian “Mediterraneans.” He distinguished three different Mediterranean spaces: the European Méditerranées of the repubbliche marinare, the Hanseatic League in the Baltic Seas, and the Asian Mediterranean comprising the Sea of Japan, the Yellow Sea, the South China Sea, the Sulu Sea, and the Sea of the Célèbes. (…)The strength of Gipouloux’s argumentation, however, lies not in historical China but in the present, especially in the decades after the gradual opening of China with the reforms of Deng Xiaoping. I would therefore recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a general Braudelian synthesis of the Mediterranean in a real global context, to scholars who look for similarities between not only Asia and Europe but also past and present, and to those who want to know more about the economic development of modern Chinese port cities – including cities such as Hong Kong or Singapore – and parallels between Chinese and other Asian port cities located in the Asian maritime corridor (…).Read Angela Schottenhammer’s complete report over The Asian Mediterranean: Port Cities and Trading Networks in China, Japan and Southeast Asia, 13th-21st Century, initially published on China Perspectives via the Carnets du Centre de Chine’s page. 