ABSTRACT
From Lagos, Henry embarked in 1415 on the conquest of Ceuta, a North African stronghold of the Moors east of the Straits of Gibraltar. His mission was fraught with many unanticipated but far-reaching consequences. Nanyang was not yet the source of any identifiable challenge to Ming rule, nor could the penetration of the region be expected to forestall resurgent nomad power in central Asia. The seventeenth century was the great age of decorative art, and although the Qing achieved an empire of unprecedented size and stability, the tendency toward superficial elaboration and involution reflected a cultural effeteness that is all too well exhibited in the character of Baoyu and his companions. In opposition to China's enclosed garden world, the Portuguese world of the sixteenth century was an expansive yet incomplete and unfulfilled cultural empire. But on this margin of interaction, the edges of the two worlds touched: Cultures met and sometimes mingled.
