Spreading Without Being Seen: Towards a Global History of Early Modern Chinese Paper

Abstract

This article demonstrates that premodern Chinese papers were far more globally dispersed than previously recognized. It argues that one reason for the absence of early modern Chinese papers in our historiographies is the divergences between the idea of Chinese papers, which are described in Chinese sources as products of a standardized process that followed similar methods for each variety, and the realities of the heterogeneity of paper types and places of production. Through an examination of a newly appreciated type of evidence, paper trademark stamps, scholars should be able to develop new methods for the study of the circulation of paper.