"A useful guide for others wanting to explore an understudied subject, the book offers much fascinating information buttressed with an excellent bibliography, including many works in Chinese. Zheng interposes many questions.nicely illustrating the extensive but ill-defined reach of maritime history." J.C. Perry, Tufts University, Choice (July 2012) "The author is to be lauded for having flagged both the importance of maritime trade to Qing China and the consequent boom in consumerism. It will be of interest mainly for historians of global economic and consumer history and of relations between China and Europe." Joanna Waley-Cohen, New York University, The Journal of Asian Studies Vol.

71, No. 4 (November 2012) "[.] includes considerable new material on the growth of Chinese taste for European goods in the early modern era, [.] Zheng's informative treatment of how European goods transformed early modern Chinese patterns of consumption also reminds us that Chinese emperors possessed great curiosity about European products and valued their cultural activities, including music and oil painting." R. Bin Wong, Journal of Global History Vol. 11.1 (March 2016) "[This book] bridges many gaps in knowledge about the transition from imperial China under the Qing to modern China, portraying these changes in more gradual and comprehensible terms than usual.

Second, it intersects unexpectedly with people and phenomena familiar from other contexts. [.] The book makes an important contribution to deepening knowledge of the late Ming and Qing periods." Sally K. Church, Landscape History Vol 37.1 (May 2016) "Zheng's research transcends conventional disciplinary boundaries maintaining an idée fixe on the background: the relationship between the Sea and China's modernisation. [.] Zheng offers fresh details about China's maritime activities" Elisabetta Colla, Lisbon University, Monumenta Serica: Journal of Oriental Studies Volume 65, 2 (2017).