China and 19th Century American Romanticism
By 
My latest at the Diplomat was inspired by a review of Kendall Johnson’s new book on China in the US literary imagination:
How did 19th century Americans think about their contact with Qing China? And how is that still important for U.S. policy towards China today?
China has long occupied a large space in the American worldview. Kendall A. Johnson’s new book The New Middle Kingdom: China and the Early American Romance of Free Trade (reviewed extensively by Dael Norwood at H-Net) suggests that Americans understood their roles in China in literary terms; specifically, they framed their activities in self-consciously romantic language, a framing that helped them associate individual heroism with empire, the spread of free markets, and the expansion of Christianity.