‘The Observations We Made in the Indies and in China’: The Shaping of the Jesuits’ Knowledge of China by Other Parts of the Non-Western World (2018)
The Jesuits’ experience in China is usually analysed within the framework of Sino-Western relations. However, Jesuits’ writings often evoked their experience in and knowledge about China in association with other parts of the non-European world, including India, South-East Asia, the Middle East, Africa and America. Based on a prosopographical analysis of China Jesuits’ biographical data, we first demonstrate that the encounter with other non-European regions was an integral part of the China Jesuits’ itineraries; for they all travelled through intermediate areas on their way to China, and some also did so on their way back to Europe. Secondly, relying mainly on examples drawn from French Jesuits’ scholarship between the 1680s and the 1750s, we demonstrate how encounters with other non-European regions and the overseas interests of their home country shaped the Jesuits’ scientific agenda as well as the way they understood things Chinese. Lastly, we illustrate how Jesuits keenly studied historical and contemporaneous accounts in Chinese and Manchu on the neighbouring regions of the Qing empire. We argue that the body of knowledge produced by the China Jesuits should be studied in a spatial framework that goes beyond the China-Europe dichotomy since it was, on one hand, filtered by the Jesuits’ knowledge about other non-European regions and, on the other hand, concerned with a geographical area larger than the territory of China under the Ming and even the Qing dynasty. We also argue that, in the eighteenth century in particular, the China Jesuits’ scholarship was configured by the spatial dynamics shaping the Society of Jesus, Bourbon France and Qing China; thereby, we contribute to a better understanding of both the French Jesuit and Qing networks, and the interconnections between them.
...MoreArticle Huiyi Wu; Alexander Statman; Mario Cams (2018) Focus Introduction: Displacing Jesuit Science in Qing China. East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (pp. 15-23).
Similar Citations
Article
Asen, Daniel;
(2009)
“Manchu Anatomy”: Anatomical Knowledge and the Jesuits in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century China
(/isis/citation/CBB000932785/)
Book
Jami, Catherine;
(2012)
The Emperor's New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority during the Kangxi Reign (1662--1722)
(/isis/citation/CBB001250505/)
Article
Mario Cams;
(2017)
Not Just a Jesuit Atlas of China: Qing Imperial Cartography and Its European Connections
(/isis/citation/CBB854183550/)
Article
Jami, Catherine;
Han, Qi;
(2003)
The Reconstruction of Imperial Mathematics in China During the Kangxi Reign (1622--1722)
(/isis/citation/CBB000470589/)
Book
Južnič, Stanislav;
Zhou, Pingping;
(2014)
Liu Songling: jiu Yesu hui zai Jing zui hou yi wei wei da de tian wen xue jia
(/isis/citation/CBB001551222/)
Book
Mario Cams;
(2017)
Companions in Geography: East-West Collaboration in the Mapping of Qing China (c.1685-1735)
(/isis/citation/CBB321187384/)
Article
Longfei Chu;
Haohao Zhu;
(2019)
Re-examining the impact of European astronomy in seventeenth-century China: a study of Xue Fengzuo’s system of thought and his integration of Chinese and Western knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB719816395/)
Article
Alexander Statman;
(2018)
A Forgotten Friendship: How a French Missionary and a Manchu Prince Studied Electricity and Ballooning in Late Eighteenth Century Beijing
(/isis/citation/CBB120398438/)
Article
Mario Cams;
(2017)
Converging interests and scientific circulation between Paris and Beijing (1685-1735): The path towards a new Qing cartographic practice
(/isis/citation/CBB892004080/)
Article
Mario Cams;
(2018)
Blurring the Boundaries: Integrating Techniques of Land Surveying on the Qing’s Mongolian Frontier
(/isis/citation/CBB111379837/)
Chapter
Benjamin A. Elman;
(2010)
The Investigation of Things (gewu 格 物), Natural Studies (gezhixue 格 致 學), and Evidental Studies (kaozhengxue 考 證 學) Gewu in Late Imperial China, 1600-1800
(/isis/citation/CBB533601903/)
Article
Noël Golvers;
(2017)
Antoine Thomas, SJ, and his Synopsis Mathematica: Biography of a Jesuit Mathematical Textbook for the China Mission
(/isis/citation/CBB720799742/)
Book
Hsia, Florence C.;
(2009)
Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China
(/isis/citation/CBB001020040/)
Article
Giuliano Mori;
(2020)
Natural Theology and Ancient Theology in the Jesuit China Mission
(/isis/citation/CBB795207474/)
Article
Yeo, Insok;
(2012)
Zhuzhiqunzheng, the Jesuit Translation of Western Medicine and Its Influence on Korean and Chinese Intellectuals
(/isis/citation/CBB001210627/)
Article
Puente-Ballesteros, Beatriz;
(2011)
Jesuit Medicine in the Kangxi Court (1662--1722): Imperial Networks and Patronage
(/isis/citation/CBB001221357/)
Article
Golvers, Noël;
(2011)
The Jesuits in China and the Circulation of Western Books in the Sciences (17th--18th Centuries): The Medical and Pharmaceutical Sections in the SJ Libraries of Peking
(/isis/citation/CBB001221356/)
Article
Lim, Jong-tae;
(2008)
Locating a Center on the Surface of a Globe: Negotiating China's Position on the Spherical Earth in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century China and Korea
(/isis/citation/CBB000850159/)
Article
Benjamin A. Elman;
(2002)
Jesuit Scientia and Natural Studies in Late Imperial China, 1600-18001
(/isis/citation/CBB352876334/)
Article
Keizo Hashimoto;
(2019)
The Eastern Assimilation of Western Astronomical Knowledge in Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties
(/isis/citation/CBB776807960/)
Be the first to comment!