Introduction : British literature of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties
The Far East, the East India Company, and the English imagination
China and the limits of Eurocentric history : Milton, the Jesuits and the Jews of Kaifeng
"Prudently present your regular tribute" : civility, ceremony, and European rivalry in Qing China
Heroic merchants : trade, nationalism, and abjection in Dryden's Amboyna
"I have now done with my island, and all manner of discourse about it" : Crusoe's Farther adventures in the Far East
"So inexhaustible a treasure of gold" : Defoe, credit, and the romance of the South seas
Gulliver, the Japanese, and the fantasy of European abjection
Epilogue : the ideology of trade.