Libraries of Western Learning for China: Circulation of Western Books between Europe and China in the Jesuit Mission (ca. 1650 - ca. 1750)
- Format:
- Book
- Year:
- 2012-15
- Publisher:
- KU Leuven, Ferdinand Verbiest Stichting
- Place published:
- Louvain
- Language:
- Abstract:
3 volumes:
1. Logistics of book acquisition and circulation
The first volume of a wide-ranging study of the spread and penetration of Western books in late-Ming, early-Qing China via Jesuit missionaries. The study is based mainly on archival sources (letters,manuscripts, treatises), supplemented with the extant books (‘Beitang collection’), especially those containing an inscription (ca. 2,500). This first volume focuses on the logistics of the book acquisiton: from the selection made in China, through the role of the book agents and donors in Europe, to the delivery routes. The prosopographical study of the names mentioned in the book inscriptions revealsnot only the identity of the original owners and the intentional donors - and by consequence the milieusof interest and participation in the Jesuit mission - but especially the roughly fifteen regional support networks of the mission, ranging from Sicily and the Low Countries, on the one hand, and Mitteleuropa and Portugal, on the other. The next volume will focus on the formation of regional Western libraries inChina (in Peking and the other main cities, but also in ‘minor’ residences), the different ‘classes’ of booksrepresented (from Bible study through sciences to belles lettres), and the different ways these books were used by the Jesuit readers for their missionary goals, within the program of an ‘apostolate of the press’,leading to the transmission to, and reception by, the Chinese literati. As such, this study - when completed - will reveal a largely neglected chapter of European book and reading history, and at the same time a crucial chapter in the intercultural exchange between the late humanistic Western culture and Chinese culture, in which the printed book played a pivotal role.
2. Formation of Jesuit librariesThis book continues the story of the circulation of Western books between Europe and China during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries within the context of the Jesuit missions in Asia. This second volume describes how the Jesuits formed their libraries in China, with special reference to the strategy initiated by Niccolò Longobardo in 1610/1611 and implemented by Nicolas Trigault and Johann Schreck Terrentius between 1616 and 1619. This study begins with an overview of the characteristics of the missionary libraries, comparing them to the general characteristics of Jesuit libraries in Europe. After a critical reflection, a series of ‘indirect’ sources such as manuscript notations and references from letters are then employed to reconstruct the history of the Jesuit (and to a lesser extent, non-Jesuit) libraries in China. In addition to the three main libraries in Peking (Xitang / Nantang; Dongtang and Beitang), this study will also focus on the Jesuit collections at Macau, Canton, Hangzhou, and other sites between circa 1600 and the 1820s, the moment at which the last Peking library, the Nantang library, was closed. In conclusion, this study presents a general conclusion about the nature of Jesuit book collecting in China based on all of the relevant details recuperated from the fragmentary sources used here. This material will serve as the foundation for the third volume, the final one in the series, which will describe twenty-eight taxonomic classes of Western books, reflecting the domains of interest of both Jesuits and Chinese and the ‘exchange of knowledge and encounter of ideas’ between early modern Europeans and Late Imperial Chinese ‘literati’.
3. Of books and readers
After having described the acquisition process of the Western books in the China mission (vol. 1) and their disposition in the libraries of the Jesuit colleges and residences spread over China (vol. 2), in this last volume we arrive on the level of the individual books and their manifold, various contents. Through a classification of the titles of both the extant books and those only indirectly known through achival sources in 24 classes, we try to get a grasp on the very differentiated reading and interests of the Jesuit in China, which cover the entire range from Bible and exegesis through science and history to linguistics and 'Belles Lettres'; from incunabula to late-18th century productions, reflecting consecutive phases of contemporary European culture such as Late Humanism, the 'New Science', Cartesianism, Newtonism and Enlightenment. We try to understand the circulation and the use of these books in China, in direct relation to the (not always aligned) opinions of the individual Jesuits, their activities in China and their engagement in the ongoing polemics in Europe on the position and methods of the mission itself. The real cornerstone of this entire library-project is the transmission of these contents to the Chinese 'literati', by analyzing the evidence of the Jesuits' reading and working with these books in view of their teaching and writing, and the reception of all this by the Chinese, in which this entire project, started ca. 1610, reached its final aims.
- Who (Jesuits):
- What (Subjects):
- Where (Locations):
- When (Centuries):
- Worldcat URL:
- Publisher URL:
- Number of Pages:
- 679, 559, 637
- ISBN:
- 978-90-8209-090-1978-90-8209-093-2978-90-8143-657-1