This paper reinterprets Kang Youwei’s (1858–1927) Neapolitan Travelogue as a pivotal text in the late Qing intellectual transition from the tianxia (天下, “All Under Heaven”) world order to the modern system of nation-states. Written during Kang’s European exile following the failure of the Hundred Days’ Reform, the work transforms his journey through Naples and Pompeii into a site of theoretical experimentation, rather than a mere record of travel. Through a comparative reading of Italian antiquity and Confucian historiography, this study argues that Kang employed Southern Italy as a mirror through which to reimagine China’s relationship to modernity and global civilisation. By analysing Kang’s encounters with Naples’s urban layers, the ruins of Pompeii, and the Mediterranean landscape, the paper introduces the concept of Comparative Antiquarianism—a method through which Kang reconciled China’s imperial heritage with the demands of progress. Naples, viewed as a “living ruin,” provided a tangible embodiment of his sanshi (三世, “Three Ages”) theory, where disorder, transition, and harmony coexist within the same temporal and spatial field. For Kang, Pompeii’s excavation offered archaeological proof for a cyclical conception of modernity, transforming the city into a jian (鑑, “mirror”) warning China of the dangers of political inertia and moral complacency. Rejecting the Social Darwinist hierarchies that dominated early twentieth-century thought, Kang proposed instead a civilisational parity between East and West—an equative gaze that saw both as participants in a shared human cycle of rise, decline, and renewal. Ultimately, Kang’s Yidali youji reframed Sino-Western relations through a utopian vision of Global Harmony (Datong 大同), where Confucian ethics and modern industrial achievements coexist. His Neapolitan reflections thus reveal an alternative, transcultural genealogy of modernity grounded in mutual recognition rather than binary opposition.
Guido Anichini (Fri,) studied this question.