Mary Prince, Slavery, and Print Culture in the Anglophone Atlantic World by Juliet Shields (review)

Abstract

also contained discernable Confucian sources. Although public schools were not popularized in the United States until the 1900s, Wang pinpoints the Founders’ pioneering efforts to establish a democratic education for the nation. Focusing on Jefferson’s combination of Confucius’s educational principles into his proposals for Virginia educational reform, Wang analyzes how Confucian wisdom of universal education and “choosing students according to their talents” (199) helped shape the K–12 and higher education systems in the United States. China and the Founding of the United States is a timely attempt to revisit the initial stage of Sino-US material and intellectual communications and to reevaluate the influence of Chinese civilization on American nation-building. Strong evidence from Wang’s various sources shows the need to recognize the composite nature of early American culture from different lenses. As Wang notes in the epilogue, the aim of his work is not merely to present Chinese cultural impact, but to emphasize the importance of intercultural understanding and mutual learning between East and West. Despite minor imperfections, like the recurrence of certain archival texts and the overgeneralization of specific Confucian ideas, Wang’s thought-provoking work makes great contributions to early American history, American Studies, and transcultural studies. Given its clear-cut thematic divisions and easily located subheadings, the book could also be a resourceful text for undergraduate or graduate courses. Wang’s fascinating study is a remarkable achievement that will undoubtedly push early American scholarship in new directions at the same time it invites future researchers to uncover the influence of global culture on early American life.