"The dissertation focuses on the changing western image of China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Post-Modernist studies in the China field always maintain the images of China in Europe were distorted, misrepresented, deformed or demonized by the West. Returning to the historical environment this thesis examines the issue by an empirical approach in which the process of China pictures first appeared and was produced in Europe from the middle 17th century to the Opium War is clearly documented. The first part of this dissertation is a historical narrative of the China paintings and drawings by draughtsman, engravers, scholars, geographers, botanists, and missionaries. Included in our discussion are: (i) the China paintings by early traders as represented by John Nieuhof the draughtsman of Dutch East India Company during his voyage to China and Montanus's Atlas Chinensis; (ii) the Catholic Jesuits works about China: Michael Boym's Atlas Imperii Sinarum and Flora Sinensis Martino Martini's Novus Atlas Sinensis and Athanasius Kircher's China Illustrata; (iii) William Alexander who accompanied Earl Macartney's embassy to China and who during the trip produced several books with illustrations about the costume of China. Also included in this category is the engraving volume of George Staunton's An Authentic Account of an Embassy From the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China; (iv) Commercial artists' China paintings in the early 19th century. They included British painter George Chinnery and his works--portraits landscapes and sketches done in Macao and Canton; (v) Finally the European artists who captured the China image in the eve of the Opium War such as French artists Auguste Borget's Sketches of China and the Chinese and Honore Daumier's illustrations in Voyage en Chine etc. The second part of this dissertation focuses on the above thematic expressions from these China paintings: (i) image of Chinese cities; (ii) customs and costumes; (iii) plants and flora. In each theme exemplary paintings and illustrations are carefully discussed and analyzed with the aim to finding out what kind of concerns and understanding these westerners had about China and how this knowing and understanding influenced the popular image of the Middle Kingdom in the European mind before the real conflict and military encounter between the east and west in the nineteenth century."--OCLC record.