Parallel Journeys: Eurasian History Through Travelers' Eyes (400 Bce-1936 Ce)

This unique anthology presents a sweeping comparative history of Eurasia through the eyes of travelers spanning 2,400 years. Parallel Journeys features over two dozen firsthand accounts by ambassadors, monks, missionaries, merchants, and journalists from both East and West. Figures such as Marco Polo and Zhao Rugua, Matteo Ricci and Xie Qinggao, and Lord Macartney and Guo Songtao are paired thematically to explore how cross-cultural encounters shaped identity, historical perception, and global understanding. Each chapter includes a critical introduction and substantial excerpt, many newly translated from classical Chinese texts. Inspired by the method of comparative biography, the volume highlights how travel writing constructed ideas of the self and the other and contributed to broader processes of imperial expansion, religious exchange, and commercial integration. Ideal for readers and instructors of global history, Asian studies, and world literature, Parallel Journeys offers a powerful framework for teaching and interpreting Eurasian connectivity through the transformative act of travel. *Includes maps and color illustrations.

About the Author :
Anthony J. Barbieri-Low is Professor of Early Chinese and Comparative History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Specializing in the economic, social, legal, and material culture history of Early China, he also researches and teaches about connections and comparisons in global history. He has published prize-winning books on Chinese law and the social history of artisans.

Review :
"An excellent way to get students thinking about how cross-cultural contact changes over time is to read what travelers wrote in different eras. Anthony Barbieri-Low makes this easy for instructors by pairing accounts from travelers moving in opposite directions across Eurasia, to and from China. The book's illustrations and maps further enrich comparison and should spark lively discussion." -Patricia Ebrey, University of Washington "This book deftly juxtaposes pairs of travel accounts, one written by an Asian, often Chinese, traveler heading west and one by a European journeying east. The structure recalls Plutarch's Lives, which pairs a Greek figure with a Roman one, and it succeeds brilliantly because the dialogue between the two sources brings out qualities in each that might otherwise remain unseen. Parallel Journeys will go a long way toward correcting the longstanding but mistaken belief that only Europeans traveled while others, including the Chinese, did not." -Valerie Hansen, Yale University