A pioneering exploration of how differences in material textual forms conveyed and altered ideas in diverse but connected parts of the world in a period of exceptional social, political and intellectual change. pTechnological advances during the long eighteenth century brought new and exciting intellectual exchange between peoples in different parts of the world. Mutual unfamiliarity with textual forms - those sent to as well as received from Europe - also made knowledge transfer unpredictable and problematic. pThis volume examines how differences in the material production and circulation of textual objects transformed the ways in which knowledge was formulated and received between 1650 and 1850. Essays focus on diverse regions of Britain and Europe, European colonies in the Caribbean and North America, India and East Asia. The volume engages with varied and changing perceptions of China in Europe, the transmission of Christian texts in colonial South Asia, the cross-cultural circulat