Relating transcendentally: New England Transcendentalism, U.S. evangelicalism, and the antebellum orientalization of China

This project argues that it is important to differentiate U.S. cultural imperialism from its economic imperialism in order to understand the full implications of the United States' relationship with China both during the nineteenth century as well as today. In arguing this, I trace the development of a religious orientalization of China (represented by U.S. evangelicalism) that emerged during the nineteenth century and the spiritual philosophies, particularly New England Transcendentalism, that posed a counter position within that orientalization.;To explore the double lens of the United States' religious and spiritual orientalization of China, represented by both evangelicalism and Transcendentalism, I draw on the theorectical work of Bruno Latour and Kwame Anthony Appiah, both of which offer a way for us to understand how these competing spiritual philosphies could develop contemporaneously despite their differences. Their work also allows us to notice the ways in which the heritage of these religious and spiritual philosophies are still active in U.S. society today and ways in which we can begin to reconceive the active influence of these philosophies in U.S. global policy.;The project's introduction defines and explores this philosophical double lens and provides evidence of its existence in U.S. culture today. Chapter one explores the ways in which the two philosophies worked counter to one another, particularly the way in which evangelicalism's cultural imperialism of China worked as moral justification to economically imperialize the east and the way in which evangelicalism imagined transcendentalism to be a threat to that goal. In chapter two, I continue to explore the ways in which transcendentalism posed a threat to evangelicalism's cultural imperialism and, thus, economic interests in the east. Chapter three proposes, however, that it is impossible to imagine these spiritual philosophies as working independently from one another and suggests that through the antebellum notion of Manifest Destiny we can examine how the two philosophies were culturally intertwined despite their differences. Finally, chapters four and five explore how this religio-philosophical double lens was enacted in social construction of U.S. medicine and gender, revealing the ambiguous state both categories inhabited in nineteenth century U.S. culture and the strength religion, particularly evangelicalism, had in defining them.