A Continent at the Service of the Evangelization of China: America in the Sino-Jesuit Geographical Production
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Aug 1, 2022
Keywords:
America, Chinese literati, jesuits, Ming-Qing dynasties, representations América, dinastías Ming y Qing, jesuitas, literatos chinos, representaciones
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Abstract
This article examines the historical and geographical discourses about the Americas transmitted to China by Jesuit missionaries during the 16th-18th centuries. It seeks to demonstrate how missionaries and their Chinese collaborators carefully and strategically created their information about America to support their political and missionary agenda. In the first section, the article provides a general introduction to the mission’s strategies and its relation with the Sino-Jesuit geographic production. In the following sections, the article exemplifies the connection between the Sino-Jesuit production about the Americas and the mission’s agenda through an analysis of its information about the geography, ethnography and the “discovery” of the continent The article argues that the representations about the geography, peoples, and history of the continent reflect three interrelated interests: capturing the attention of Chinese literati; emphasizing the high development of European civilization; and communicating religious messages.
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References
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Wang, Edward. “History, Space and Ethnicity: The Chinese Worldview”. Journal of World History, vol. 10, n.° 2, 1999, pp. 285-305.
Wu, Liwei. “Mingqing chuanjiaoshi dui Shanhaijing de jiedu” [La interpretación del Itinerario de mares y montañas de los misioneros [jesuitas] durante las dinastías Ming y Qing]. Zhongguo lishi dili luncong [Revista de geografía histórica de China], vol. 20, n.° 3, 2005, pp. 117-126.
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Zhouyi [El libro de los cambios, compilado c. II a.C.]. Traducido al chino moderno y comentado por Yang Tiancai y Zhang Shanwen. Pekín, Zhonghua shuju, 2014.
Zhang, Qiong. Making the New World Their Own. Chinese Encounters with Jesuit Science in the Age of Discovery. Leiden, Brill, 2015.
Zou, Zhenhuan. Wan Ming hanwen xixue jingdian: bianyi, quanyi, liuchuan yu yingxiang [Clásicos de estudios occidentales en chino de la dinastía Ming tardía: edición, traducción, notas explicativas, circulación e influencia]. Shanghái, Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2011.
Brook, Timothy. Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World. Nueva York, Bloomsbury Press, 2008.
Chen, Hui-Hung. “The Human Body as a Universe: Understanding Heaven by Visualization and Sensibility in Jesuit Cartography”. The Catholic Historical Review, vol. 93, n.° 3 , 2007, pp. 517-552.
Chen, Minsun. “Ferdinand Verbiest and the Geographical Works by Jesuits in Chinese 1584-1674”. Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J. (1623-1688): Jesuit Missionary, Scientist, Engineer and Diplomat. Ed. John W. Witek. Sankt Augustin, Steyler Verlag, 1994, pp. 123-133.
Cosgrove, Denis. Geography and Vision. Seeing, Imagining and Representing the World. Londres, I.B. Tauris, 2010.
Chu, Pingyi. “Trust, Instruments, and Cross-Cultural Scientific Exchanges: The Chinese Debate over the Shape of the Earth, 1600-1800”. Science in Context, vol. 12, n.° 3, 1999, pp. 385-412.
Domingues, Francisco Contente. “Science and Technology in Portuguese Navigation: The Idea of Experience in the Sixteenth Century”. Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400-1800. Ed. Francisco Bethencourt y Diogo Ramada Curto. Nueva York, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 460-479.
Edgerton, Samuel Y., Jr. “From Mental Matrix to Mappamundi to Christian Empire”. Art and Cartography. Six Historical Essays. Ed. David Woodward. Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1987, pp.10-50.
Elman, Benjamin. On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2005.
Furtado, Francisco, con la colaboración de Li Zhizao. Huanyou quan [Investigación acerca del Cielo y la Tierra, 1628]. Siku quanshu cunmu congshu [Libros enlistados para ser “preservados” por los editores de la Completa colección de los cuatro tesoros]. Ed. Ji Yun, et al., zi [sección de “filósofos”], vol. 94. Jinan, Qili shushe, 1995-1997, pp. 1-189.
Henderson, John B. The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology. 3.o edición. Taipéi: Windstone Press, 2011.
Gautier-Dalché, Patrick. “The Reception of Ptolemy’s Geography (End of the Fourteenth to Beginning of the Sixteenth century)”. The History of Cartography. Ed. David Woodward, vol. 3, part. 1. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007, pp.285-364.
Goodrich. Carrington L. “China’s First Knowledge of the Americas”. Geographical Review, vol. 28, n.° 3, 1938, pp. 400-411.
Headley, John M. “The Sixteenth-Century Venetian Celebration of the Earth’s Total Habitability: The Issue of the Fully Habitable World for Renaissance Europe”. Journal of World History, vol. 8, n.° 1, 1997, pp. 1-27.
— —. “Geography and Empire in the Late Renaissance: Botero’s Assignment, Western Universalism and the Civilizing Process”. Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 53, n.° 4, 2000, pp. 1119-1155.
Hong, Jianrong. Xixue yu ruxue de jiaorong: Wan Ming shenshi Xiong Renlin Diwei zhong de shijie dili shuxie [La amalgamación de los estudios confucianos y occidentales: Diwei, el escrito sobre la geografía del mundo del literato de la dinastía Ming tardía, Xiong Renlin]. Taipéi, Hua Mulan wenhua chubanshe, 2010.
Jensen, Lionel M. Manufacturing Confucianism. Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization. Durham, Duke University Press, 1997.
Kupperman, Karen Ordahl, editora. America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750. Chapel Hill,The Universtiy of North Caroline Press,1995.
Lao Zi. Tao Te Ching. Trad. Arthur Waley, versión bilingüe. Pekín, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Center, 2007.
Lewis, Martin W. y Kären E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents. A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1997.
Luk, Bernard Hung-kay. “A Study of Giulio Aleni’s Chih-fang wai-chi, 職方外紀”. Bulletin of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 40, n.° 1, 1977, pp. 58-84.
Magini, Giovanni Antonio. Moderna tavole di geografia. Venetia, Appreffo Gio. Battifta, & Giorgio Calignani Fratelli, 1598.
Needham, Joseph y Wang Ling. Science and Civilization in China. Vol.3, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1959.
O’Gorman, Edmundo. The Invention of America: An Enquiry into the Historical Nature of the New World and the Meaning of its History. Bloomington, University of Indiana Press, 1961.
Pagden, Anthony. The Fall of Natural Man. The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnography. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Park, Chris C. Sacred Worlds. An Introduction to Geography and Religion. Londres, Routledge, 1994.
Ricci, Matteo, con la colaboración de Li Zhizao. “Kunyu wanguo quantu” [Un completo mapa geográfico de la miríada de reinos, 1602]. Li Madou zhongwen zhuyi ji [Los trabajos en chino y traducciones de Matteo Ricci]. Ed. Zhu Weizheng. Shanghái, Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2001, pp. 173-226.
Rojas, Miguel. América imaginaria. 2.o edición. Santiago, Erdosain–Pehuén, 2015.
Smith, Richard. Mapping China and Managing the World: Culture, Cartography, and Cosmology in Late Imperial China. Nueva York, Routledge, 2013.
Standaert, Nicolas. “The Investigation of Things and the Fathoming of Principles (Gewu Qiongli) in the Seventeenth-Century Contact Between Jesuits and Chinese Scholars”. Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J. (1623-1688): Jesuit Missionary, Scientist, Engineer and Diplomat. Ed. John W. Witek. 395-420. Sankt Augustin, Steyler Verlag, 1994, pp. 395-420.
Teng, Emma Jinhua. Taiwan’s Imagined Geography. Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683-1895. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2004.
Verbiest, Ferdinand. Kunyu tushuo [Explicación ilustrada de la geografía de la Tierra, 1674]. Jingyin wenyuange siku quanshu [Edición fotolitográfica de la Completa colección de los cuatro tesoros del Pabellón de Wenyuan, 1773-1782]. Ed. Ji Yun et al., shi [sección de “historia”], vol. 594. Taipéi, Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1983, pp. 729-792.
Vidal Kunstmann, José Miguel. “Representing the Americas in the Sino-Jesuit Contact Zone (1584-1819)”. Tesis para optar al grado de Doctor en Historia, Universidad Normal del Este de China, 2018.
Wang, Edward. “History, Space and Ethnicity: The Chinese Worldview”. Journal of World History, vol. 10, n.° 2, 1999, pp. 285-305.
Wu, Liwei. “Mingqing chuanjiaoshi dui Shanhaijing de jiedu” [La interpretación del Itinerario de mares y montañas de los misioneros [jesuitas] durante las dinastías Ming y Qing]. Zhongguo lishi dili luncong [Revista de geografía histórica de China], vol. 20, n.° 3, 2005, pp. 117-126.
Wynter, Silvia. “1492: A New World View”. Race, Discourse and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View. Eds. Vera Lawrence Hyatt y Rex Nettleford. Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995, pp. 5-55.
Zhouyi [El libro de los cambios, compilado c. II a.C.]. Traducido al chino moderno y comentado por Yang Tiancai y Zhang Shanwen. Pekín, Zhonghua shuju, 2014.
Zhang, Qiong. Making the New World Their Own. Chinese Encounters with Jesuit Science in the Age of Discovery. Leiden, Brill, 2015.
Zou, Zhenhuan. Wan Ming hanwen xixue jingdian: bianyi, quanyi, liuchuan yu yingxiang [Clásicos de estudios occidentales en chino de la dinastía Ming tardía: edición, traducción, notas explicativas, circulación e influencia]. Shanghái, Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2011.