ABSTRACT
This book postulates that a conscious struggle for social justice is not unique to the European experience but occurs widely across the globe and throughout time, driven by structural necessity instead of Volksgeist. Rather than attempt a comprehensive argument, the book examines the case of China and England in the preindustrial era. The Introduction is divided into three parts. The first part examines the notion of rights both as a period term and as a rubric for examining struggles against systemic inequality throughout time and space. Working backward from recent studies, we find that one of the earliest uses of “rights” as common to mankind, rather than inherited with one’s station, appears in the English editor’s preface to translations of exemplary Chinese policy documents. We find further that some of the sentiments promulgated there could sit comfortably alongside many Enlightenment essays. The second section explains the book’s method of examining the evolution of tropic strategies for visualizing political abstractions. If, as proposed, tropic strategies are linked to cognitive dexterity, then we should find allegory more common in early societies and metonymy or reportage more common later when a large, literate public emerges on the historical scene. The third section explains the use of translingual and trans-visual analysis to undertake cross-cultural comparison on a more level playing field. Neither the chapter nor the book concludes that radical thought in England evolved because of Chinese “influence.” The convergence of radical English thought and China’s best political thought came about because, throughout the preceding century, intellectuals in England, France, and Holland had been fighting many of the same battles as those Chinese statesmen who wrote those exemplary essays. Courageous intellectuals in both China and England faced a common challenge – the privileges of the few versus the needs of the many. We should not be surprised if the arguments they developed bear a close resemblance.
