Anthony E. Clark, China Gothic. The Bishop of Beijing and His Cathedral

The underlying argument of Anthony E. Clark’s new book China Gothic: The Bishop of Beijing and His Cathedral is that the French Catholic bishop Alphonse Favier (1837-1905), and his vision for architecture, participated “in several antagonistic divisions related to China’s transition from empire to nation-state” during the late Imperial era (p. 7). In making this claim, Clark seeks to demonstrate that Favier’s Gothic towers rising along Beijing’s skyline stimulated “the emergence of a national...