Abstract
If one considers only Western Europe, the early modern age was a period of maritime empires. However, if one takes into account the whole of Eurasia, then it appears as predominantly an age of continental empires. As late as 1700, six powers—the Habsburg Monarchy, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, the Safavid Empire, the Mughal Empire, and the Qing Empire—still seemed to dwarf Western Europe in territorial extent, so much so that it would be reasonable to ask how far and in what ways the latter’s overseas expansion was shaped by the overwhelming dominance of other empires on land. As suggested by Subrahmanyam, broadening our spatial scope to encompass Eurasia as a whole also leads to the extension of the chronological scope of early modernity.1 Turning our attention to East Asia, this extended scope would correspond to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and the early and middle period of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911). The Qing is now increasingly envisioned as a time when China—the territories previously ruled by the Ming—was conquered and then ruled by the Manchus, who made it part of an expanding empire.2 From this perspective, the “first globalization” was a time of interactions between empires on an unprecedented scale, rather than the rise of the imperial phenomenon itself.
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Notes
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, “Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia,” Modern Asian Studies 31/3 (1997): 735–762, esp. 736–739.
See Joanna Waley-Cohen, “The New Qing History,” Radical History Review 88 (2004): 193–206.
Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard U. P., 2005).
The borders of the People’s Republic of China are almost identical to the Qing borders of 1800, except that Outer Mongolia no longer belongs to it. Laura Hostetler, “Contending Cartographic Claims? The Qing Empire in Manchu, Chinese, and European Maps,” in The Imperial Map: Cartography and the Mastery of Empire, ed. James R. Akerman (Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 2009), 93–132.
Benjamin A. Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (Berkeley: U. of California P., 2000).
Christopher Cullen, “Wu xing zhan 五星占 Prognostics of the Five Planets,” SCIAMVS 12 (2011): 193–249, 194–195.
This phrase is borrowed from the title of Erik Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China (Leiden: Brill, 1959).
See, for example, Yabuuti Kiyosi 薮内清, Chūgoku no tenmon rekihō 中国の天 文暦法 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1969), 177–191, and 202–234.
The titles of some recent publications still reflect this approach; see, for example, Xiaoxin Wu, ed., Encounters and Dialogues: Changing Perspectives on Chinese-Western Exchanges from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 2005).
Liam M. Brockey, Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard U. P., 2007).
Those few specialists occupy the front stage in traditional historiography, for example, in George H. Dunne, Generation of Giants: The Story of the Jesuits in China during the Last Decades of the Ming Dynasty (Notre Dame: U. of Notre Dame P., 1962).
See, among others, Antonella Romano, “Observer, vénérer, servir: Une polémique jésuite autour du Tribunal des mathématiques de Pékin,” Annales 59/4 (2004): 729–756; and
Catherine Jami, “Representations and Uses of ‘European Science’ in China (1582–1722),” Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 34 (2005): 197–213.
Keizo Hashimoto, Hsü Kuang-Ch’i and Astronomical Reform: The Process of the Chinese Acceptance of Western Astronomy, 1629–1635 (Osaka: Kansai U. P., 1988).
See, for example, Willard Peterson, “Learning from Heaven: The Introduction of Christianity and Other Western Ideas into Late Ming China,” in The Cambridge History of China: The Ming Dynasty 1368–1644, ed. Denis Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1998), 708–788;
Catherine Jami, “Heavenly Learning, Statecraft and Scholarship: The Jesuits and Their Mathematics in China,” in Oxford Handbook of History of Mathematics, ed. Eleanor Robson and Jackie Stedall (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2008), 57–84.
Catherine Jami, The Emperor’s New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority during the Kangxi Reign (1662–1722) (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2012).
Noël Golvers, “La mission des jésuites en Chine en 1678: Un cri d’alarme!,” pts. 1–2 Courrier Verbiest 5 (1993): 2–5, and 6 (1994): 4–9. Glenn Ames, Colbert, Mercantilism and the French Quest of Asian Trade (DeKalb: Northern Illinois U. P., 1996).
Other questions concerned weapons, fortifications, ships, soldiers, and various aspects of geography, technology, and customs. Virgile Pinot, Documents inédits relatifs à la connaissance de la Chine en France de 1685 à 1740 (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1932), 7–9.
Catherine Jami, “Pékin au début de la dynastie Qing: Capitale des savoirs et relais de l’Académie royale des sciences de Paris,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 55/2 (2008): 43–69.
Paul Pelliot, Le premier voyage de l’Amphitrite (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1930).
Here and in what follows, I use “Tartary” in this sense rather than in the more restrictive one (the Manchu homeland) used in Mark C. Elliott, “The Limits of Tartary: Manchuria in Imperial and National Geographies,” Journal of Asian Studies 59/3 (2000): 603–646.
Louis Lecomte [Le Comte], Un jésuite à Pékin: Nouveaux mémoires sur l’état présent de la Chine, 1687–1692 (Paris: Phébus, 1990), 511–512.
These tables were not published; Cassini had given a copy to Jean de Fontaney before the latter’s departure for China; Florence C. Hsia, Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Mission in Late Imperial China (Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 2009), 56.
Isabelle Landry-Deron, “Les mathématiciens envoyés en Chine par Louis XIV en 1685,” Archive for the History of Exact Science 55 (2001): 423–463, 445.
Chengzhi 承志 (Kicengge), “Manwen ‘Wula dengchu difang tu’ kao 滿文《 烏喇等處地方圖》,” Gugong xueshu jikan故宮學術季刊 26/4 (2009): 1–74.
Borjigidai Oyunbilig, Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte des Berichts über den persönlichen Feldzug des Kangxi Kaisers gegen Galdan (1696–1697) (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1999); Peter C. Perdue, China Marches West, 190–193.
Davor Antonucci is preparing an annotated edition and a translation of Thomas’s manuscript, based on his PhD dissertation, Università Roma 1 La Sapienza, 2006; see Davor Antonucci, “An Unpublished Manuscript by Antoine Thomas: The ‘De bello Cam hi imperatoris tartaro: Sinici contra Tartaros Erutanos. Feliciter Confecto anno 1697,’” in A Lifelong Dedication to the China Mission: Essays Presented in Honor of Father Jeroom Heyndrickx, CICM, on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday and the 25th Anniversary of the F. Verbiest Institute K. U. Leuven, ed. Noël Golvers and Sara Lievens (Leuven: Ferdinand Verbiest Institute, 2007), 15–28.
Quoted in Mme Yves de Thomaz de Bossierre. Jean-François Gerbillon, S. J. (1654–1707): Un des cinq mathématiciens envoyés en Chine par Louis XIV (Leuven: Ferdinand Verbiest Foundation, 1994), 84, fn. 50.
Michael G. Chang, A Court on Horseback: Imperial Touring and the Construction of Qing Rule, 1680–1785 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007); this book focuses mainly on Qianlong’s southern tours; its title epitomizes well the general point I am making here; see esp. 73.
See also Jonathan Spence, Ts’ao Yin and the K’ang-hsi Emperor: Bondservant and Master (New Haven: Yale U. P., 1966), 124–157;
Pierre Etienne Will, “Vu de Shanghai,” in Kangxi: Empereur de Chine 1622–1722. La Cité Interdite à Versailles: Catalogue de l’exposition au Musée national du Château de Versailles (27 janvier-9 mai 2004) (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2004), 29–41; Catherine Jami, The Emperor’s New Mathematics, 120–135.
See James A. Millward, Ruth W. Dunnell, Mark C. Elliott, and Philippe Forêt, eds., New Qing Imperial History: The Making of Inner Asia Empire at Qing Chengde (London: Routledge Curzon, 2006), which again focuses on the Qianlong Emperor.
Catherine Jami, “Western Learning and Imperial Control: The Kangxi Emperor’s (r. 1662–1722) Performance,” Late Imperial China 23/1 (2002): 28–49, 32–33, and 35–37.
There were obviously many more; see Liu Lu 劉潞, ed., Qinggong xiyang yiqi 清宮西洋儀器 (Hong Kong: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1998), 124–132.
Ibid., vol. 4: 286; this might be similar to the item described in Liu Lu Qinggong xiyang yiqi, 111; however, the radius of the instrument preserved is 26 cm (half a foot would be closer to 15 cm). Michael Butterfield (“Buterfield,” 1635–1724), an English instrument maker, worked in Paris; Camille Frémontier, Les instruments de mathématiques XVI e –XVIII e siècle (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2002), 347.
Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 23 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P. 1954-), vol. 4, bk. 3: 273–279.
Mario Cams, “The Early Qing Geographical Surveys (1708–1716) as a Case of Collaboration between the Jesuits and the Kangxi Court,” Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal 34 (2012): 1–20.
See also Cordell D. K. Yee, “Traditional Chinese Cartography and the Myth of Westernization,” in Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward (Chicago: U. of Chicago P., 1994), 170–402, 180–185.
Antoine Gaubil, Correspondance de Pékin 1722–1759, ed. Renée Simon (Genève: Droz, 1970), 541–542.
Theodore N. Foss, “A Western Interpretation of China: Jesuit Cartography,” in East Meets West: The Jesuits in China, 1582–1773, ed. Charles E. Ronan and Bonnie B. C. Oh (Chicago: Loyola U. P., 1988), 209–251, 223.
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© 2014 László Kontler, Antonella Romano, Silvia Sebastiani, and Borbála Zsuzsanna Török
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Jami, C. (2014). The Jesuits’ Negotiation of Science between France and China (1685–1722): Knowledge and Modes of Imperial Expansion. In: Kontler, L., Romano, A., Sebastiani, S., Török, B.Z. (eds) Negotiating Knowledge in Early Modern Empires. Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137484017_3
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