This book has developed out of a PhD thesis which I submitted to the University of Warwick, UK, in January 2016. In the process of revising and extending the thesis, I have incurred countless additional debts, the lion’s share of which, however, fell onto the members of my family, whose patience, love, precious time, and support, helped to make it happen. Even though a great deal more work than planned has now gone into the process of preparing the book for publication, I believe that the intellectual settings in which I developed its core arguments, the Global History Centre at Warwick and the European University Institute in Florence, are still very much alive on these pages – as its people and past events have irrevocably shaped my outlook as a historian of global culture and commerce.
Critical for this book’s genesis was my privilege to participate in the erc-funded project Europe’s Asian Centuries: Trading Eurasia 1600–1830 led by Maxine Berg (2010–2014), under whose supervision I conducted my research and learnt to think ambitiously and independently. Arguing the centrality of continental Europe for Britain’s success in the China trade is all the more timely as present-day Britain is breaking away from the European Union in a move that is certainly sustained by a flawed understanding of its historical independence in commerce. The close exchange with Maxine, the post-docs on the erc project, Hanna Hodacs, Felicia Gottmann, Chris Nierstrasz, our museum consultant Helen Clifford (who was so much more than this for all of us), and associate Tim Davies was inspiring and reassuring. I thank each and every one of them for our discussions, their comments on early chapter drafts, and their kind support and encouragement. I also look back with fond memories to the conferences we organised or went to together, at Oxford, Leiden, Venice, and Yale, and fondly remember all the great historians we were able to meet through Maxine’s support and activity. We definitely had the most wonderful and competent administrators: Anna Boneham and Sheilagh Holmes. Sheilagh in particular was of enormous help in the last stages of the PhD. Thank you all!
The Warwick History Department and its associated Global History and Culture Centre offered an exciting programme of lectures and seminars that stimulated my thinking and brought me into contact with people I greatly admire, first and foremost David Arnold, Anne Gerritsen, Rebecca Earle, Giorgio Riello, and Margot Finn. The latter two acted as examiners and through their reports and our discussions played a key role in the preparation of this manuscript for publication. I am also happy to acknowledge the generous
The intense exploration of archival materials at the James Ford Bell Library in Minneapolis, jointly undertaken with Hanna Hodacs, was assisted by the expert advice and kind hospitality of the two local archivists, Margaret Franzen Borg and Marguerite Ragnow. Among the experienced and helpful staff at the British Library, I am particularly indebted to Margaret Makepiece and Richard Morel. It was Richard Morel who keenly encouraged me at a critical early stage of my PhD to pursue my interest in the informal dimensions and practices of the China trade.
My research equally profited from the encounters and exchanges at conferences, seminars and over coffee with numerous colleagues, including Andrew MacKillop, Kate Smith, Leos Müller, Luisa Mengoni, Huw Bowen, Anne L. Murphy, Cátia Antunes, Peer Vries, Stephen MacDowell, Eugénie Margoline-Plot, Kévin le Doudic, Jésus Bohorquez, Robrecht Declercq, Daniel Midena, Emily Erickson, Paul A. Van Dyke, Sebouh Aslanian, Derek Janes, Emile de Bruijn, Lisa Hellman, Georgina Green, Kyoungjin Bae, Adrian Leonard, Edmund Smith, Daniel Robinson, Klaus Weber, Bianca Gaudenzi, Laura Rischbieter, and Jürgen Osterhammel’s team at Konstanz.
With my move to the University of Basel in 2018, I had the good fortune to gain many new colleagues with overlapping research interests, including Martin Lengwiler, Eva Brugger, Susanna Burghartz, and Madeleine Herren-Oesch. The discussions of my work in our study group on object histories and my intense and enlightening conversations with Lesley Nicole Braun were critical for the revision of Chapter 3. As a place to finish this book and to explore new topics and opportunities, Basel proved to be the right place and swiftly became home.
Special thanks are due to Wendel Scholma, acquisitions editor at Brill. Her patience, understanding, and counsel were absolutely invaluable, as was the guidance of the series editor, Peer Vries. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript for their succinct comments and suggestions, which helped me to turn the thesis into a stronger book. The work profited immensely from the careful attention and help of my language and copy editors, Christopher Feeney and Helen Aitcheson. Thank you ever so much! All remaining errors are, of course, my responsibility.
Friends and family have supported me in myriad and existential ways over the years; in Berlin, my hometown, I could always count on true friendship
I am very fortunate to call the best families I can imagine my own. I am very grateful to my three siblings – Kerstin, Tim, and Jan – their partners, and my parents, Monika and Norbert Fellinger, as well as to my in-laws Hans and Karin von Brescius and my brother-in-law Benjamin, who were always happy to help out and listen, and who have encouraged and followed every twist and turn of my career and personal life with pride and unwavering confidence in me and us, as a small, vagabonding family. My mother above all has instilled in me a lifelong curiosity and thirst for knowledge that I am glad to be able to pursue for a living and not only for pleasure. Thank you so much for all the sacrifices you made on my behalf and that of my siblings.
My debts to Moritz von Brescius, my husband, are too large for simple thanks. But I offer them nevertheless, wholeheartedly. Moritz has been my constant companion, an affectionate father, generous and critical reader, and, of course, a source of great delight and love for me and our two wonderful children, Tabea and Hugo. Let’s hope we can soon travel together to China, not least to dig for Hugo’s beloved dinosaurs.