In recent decades, the work of scholars such as Tonio Andrade, Ronnie Hsia, and John Wills has greatly increased knowledge of contact between the Chinese and Europeans during the early modern period. With the major exception of the Jesuit mission in China, however, previous scholarship on these encounters has focused mostly on trade and politics rather than cultural exchanges. The essays in Foreign Devils and Philosophers: Cultural Encounters between the Chinese, the Dutch, and Other Europeans, 1590–1800, edited by Thijs Weststeijn, refocus attention to the cultural aspects of these contacts. Although some essays do focus on the Jesuits, the authors also aim to highlight British and (especially) Dutch undertakings in China. By examining the entangled encounters between the Chinese and Europeans, they hope that their work will help create a framework that integrates the study of cultural perspectives into world history. They mostly succeed in accomplishing these objectives.

Philosophers and Foreign Devils emerged from a 2016 seminar at Fudan University attended by scholars from both China and the Low Countries. The contributors include four Chinese scholars and seven historians from the Low Countries (six from the Netherlands, one from Belgium). The chapters are arranged in chronological order, beginning in the late 1500s, when Dutch merchants were planning to initiate direct trade relations with China, and ending with the last Dutch East India Company embassy to the Chinese court in the 1790s shortly before the company was dissolved. The essays cover a wide range of topics related to cultural history, including the stereotypes groups deploy when describing others, material culture, religion, and intellectual exchanges. The authors emphasize the roles played by both Europeans and the Chinese in establishing these cultural connections. The essays are also balanced between Chinese portrayals of Europeans and vice versa.

There is much to praise in Foreign Devils and Philosophers. Weststeijn's introduction, provides an excellent overview of the book and makes a powerful argument for an increased focus on cultural aspects of world history. Full-color images of relevant paintings, manuscripts, and objects accompany chapters discussing art and material culture. Appendices provide valuable supplemental information such as full texts of relevant documents in both their original languages and in English translation, often for the first time. Especially notable is Weststeijn's extensive thirty-page list of all known Chinese objects and books present in the Low Countries during the 1600s. Several essays clearly represent just a small portion of a much larger research project, especially Noël Golvers's chapter on Jesuit libraries in China.

The first few chapters mostly focus on Chinese and European representations of each other. Djoeke van Netten's and Lennert Gesterkamp's contributions examine early Chinese and Dutch stereotypes of each other. The Dutch generally perceived the Chinese as a highly civilized and wealthy people, while the most important early Chinese account of the Dutch depicts them in mostly positive terms despite following the standard Chinese practice of calling them “red-haired barbarians” (57). Dong Shaoxin's essay traces how European stereotypes of East Asians, in this case the “Tartars” (Manchus) who conquered the Ming Dynasty, became more nuanced as direct contacts between them and Europeans increased. Stereotypes they remained, however, as Jesuit writings repeatedly contrasted the “effeminate” Chinese with the more “masculine” Tartars (82). Chapter 5, written by Weststeijn, examines how the cultural expectations expressed in these stereotypes were challenged by Chinese visitors to the Netherlands. Consisting mostly of a catalog of possible Chinese visitors to the Dutch Republic, including images made of them, the chapter would have benefited from more analysis. A stronger study of how images both reflect a group's perception of foreigners and reinforce the group's own cultural identity can be found in Sun Jing's contribution discussing depictions of Europeans at the mid-Qing Court. Here, too, one sees how stereotypes became more nuanced as contacts between the Chinese and Europeans increased.

Other essays focus on the cultural impact of actual interactions between the Chinese and Europeans. Joris van den Tol provides one example of this “synergetic entanglement” (132) in his examination of how frequent interactions between Chinese merchants and the Dutch East India Company leadership on Formosa led the merchants to structure their petitions following Dutch norms. Doing so, in turn, increased the merchants’ ability to shape company decisions. In mainland China, of course, Europeans were the supplicants, here examined in two essays. Chen Yufang lays out the strategies employed by the Jesuit Tomas Pereira to build a network of relationships with important figures throughout the Chinese government, while Cai Xiangyu focuses on the impetus behind the Dutch East India Company's last mission to the Chinese imperial court in 1794. The latter also sheds light on the cultural framework of both Dutch and British trade missions to China during the late eighteenth century.

While many essays touch upon Sino-British relations, it is the focus of only two chapters. Willemijn van Noord's contribution, one of the best in the collection, examines Sir Constantijn Huygen's unsuccessful efforts to convince Mary II to preserve a Chinese lacquer screen intact rather than dismantling it to use as decorative paneling. Huygens primarily attempted to do so through a letter supposedly written by Chinese scholars enraged by Mary's planned actions. Van Noord ably uses the incident to show how artifacts both shape and reflect stereotypical views about another culture. Trude Dijkstra's essay uses the Royal Society's decision in 1687 to publish a review of the first Latin translation of Confucius in its Philosophical Transactions as an example of how early modern cultural encounters between the Chinese and Europeans were expressed in print. Although its focus is on the Jesuit mission to China rather than Sino-British relations, Golvers's contribution also examines the importance of printed works in cultural exchanges.

Together, the essays that make up Foreign Devils and Philosophers provide an excellent look at the entangled history of cultural encounters between the Chinese and Europeans during the early modern period. The collection offers an admirable example of how to integrate cultural perspectives into the study of world history.