Research Fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies, Taipei

Autorizzazione del Consiglio di Facoltà del 18 luglio 2016

This project aimed to map the circulation of information about Italy in China during the last six decades of the Qing dynasty. This was done by tracing recurring element in the excerpts about Italy, both in terms of contents and phrasing (identical sentences or lexical units). Considering the amount and typology of sources that mention Italy in the period from 1859 to 1911, the task was accomplished by relying on digital technologies, such as the database called “The Database for the study of Modern Chinese Thought and Literature” (中國近現代思想及文學史專業數據庫 (1830-1930) held by Taiwan National Chengchi University. The choice of Italy as a subject seemed to suit this kind of experimental search, as the information about Italy in the Late Qing sources is rich without being excessively abundant. As a matter of fact, during the second half of the 19th century Italy was not massively present in China, as it was not involved in the Opium wars and the unequal treaties; still, it was not completely absent, as some information about its emancipation from the foreign rulers and its unification (1861) reached the Qing empire very soon (1867).