“This is a deeply engaging work on the forms and processes of exchange that took place between nascent European nation states, their American colonies, and the range of societies and cultures they conceived as being enclosed within Asia. Caroline Frank’s arguments span continents and oceans as they offer a richly diverse history that is rightly global in scope, packed with illuminating details that fit together like a disciplinary puzzle-in-the-making.”

Robert St. George, University of Pennsylvania

“In a major intervention in the meanings of China and china in the lives of colonial Americans, Caroline Frank recasts standard global tea-porcelain consumption narratives to create a novel dialogue between Qing goods, illicit adventurers, and the Yankee love affair with the ‘Orient.’”

Sucheta Mazumdar, Duke University

“Objectifying China, Imagining America is a beautiful book. It shows what we believed about the remoteness of early America is false. It bases its conclusions on an intimidating amount of research. It is methodologically complex and theoretically sophisticated. It is so clearly and engagingly written it is hard to put down.” 

European Journal of American Studies

“Eminently engaging and often provocative. . . . Objectifying China, Imagining America, grounded in an impressive array of careful and wide-ranging archival research, offers both a rich trove of colorful local details and a useful mapping of some neglected contours of early American material culture. . . . The author’s historical model brings strikingly into view both America’s early participation in world trade networks and the significance of its bounty of Chinese goods in forging the colonists’ sense of their place in an already rapidly globalizing world.”

Journal of Asian Studies

“Frank’s contribution to both the facts and mythology surrounding the role of tea and the American Revolution may be controversial to some readers, but she nonetheless launches a significant volley that new ways of looking at goods will reveal new roles for these goods in the making of a nation.”

American Historical Review

 “A fascinating and eye-opening account of Chinese imports into early America that offers a worthwhile contribution to the new history of globalization. . . . Objectifying China, Imagining America will convince its readers that China must be a part of early American history.”

Business History Review