The practice of infanticide can be found throughout Western history from ancient Greece and Rome to early modern Europe, yet in modern times it has come to be seen as a predominantly Chinese problem. What accounts for the engendering of this perception? In Between Birth and Death, Michelle King takes us to the nineteenth century, at the height of Western intrusion in China, to locate the inception of this idea, and she argues that “female infanticide became Chinese in the imperialist context of the late nineteenth century, when it was immutably transformed from a local, moral, philanthropic issue into a cross-cultural, political, scientific issue of international concern” (pp. 7–8).
This finding is established through a combined textual and visual analysis of Chinese and Western records, a great many of which were produced by Western travelers, missionaries, and diplomats (among them renowned sinologists). The Westerners' fascination with Chinese infanticide was...
