【Seminar】 Professor ZHANG Longxi: John Webb and China in the Political Imaginary of Restoration England (2025/10/4)
With the generous support from the Eurasia Foundation (from Asia), the Jao Tsung-I Academy of Sinology will organize a new lecture series “Encounters in the Old World, East and West: From a Transdisciplinary Perspective” from October 2025 to April 2026. The series will feature 15 lectures, focusing on early interaction, connectivity, and relationships across time and space between European and Asian civilizations. The first session will be delivered by Prof. ZHANG Longxi, all are welcome. The event details are as follows:
John Webb and China in the Political Imaginary of Restoration England
Speaker: Prof. ZHANG Longxi
Li De Chair Professor, Yenching Academy of Peking University
Xiaoxiang Chair Professor of Comparative Literature, Hunan Normal University
Foreign Member of The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities
Foreign Member of Academia Europaea
Date: 4 October 2025, Saturday
Time: 16:30–18:00
Venue: SWT 702, Level 7, Shaw Tower, Shaw Campus, Hong Kong Baptist University
Language: English
Registration form: https://forms.office.com/r/47WFxRsHTZ
Abstract: As a country without the influence of a predominant religious institution, China provided a model of secular state and good governance for European intellectuals during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. John Webb (1611–1672), a disgruntled English architect, wrote a curious essay on the Chinese language as the Adamic language created by God in the Garden of Eden, and this should be understood in the specific context of the seventeenth-century pursuit of the perfect language with strong political implications. Without personal experience of China or any knowledge of the Chinese language, Webb’s peculiar argument reflects even better the idea of China in Restoration England, and by revisiting Webb’s essay on the seventeenth-century background, we may realize how positive the image of China was at that time, how it was completely reversed and erased during the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries in the age of colonialism and imperialism, and more significantly, how important it is to rethink the history of Chinese-Western encounters that is so crucial, so relevant, and so important for our world today.
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