Science as the Instrument of the Jesuit Mission

To facilitate their missions in China, the Jesuits sought the support of the literati. In communicating with the literati, the Jesuit pioneer Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) found that he was welcomed, not because of his Catholicism, but because of his scientific knowledge and instruments. Ricci began to use the European sciences to cultivate the literati. Such novel, superior knowledge could attract the interest of these learned elites and help establish the prestige of the Catholic Church. Moreover, a unique feature of the Jesuits was their distinct academic qualifications. Most Jesuits were well-educated in science and philosophy. Prior to being sent to mainland China, the Jesuits also learned the Chinese language and culture in academies in Europe and Macau (Xiong Reference Xiong1994). For these reasons, science became the principal instrument of the Jesuits’ missionary expansion in China (Gernet Reference Gernet and Lloyd1985).

The Jesuits translated more than 130 European scientific titles into Chinese. The majority pertained to astronomy, followed by mathematics. The other titles were in geography, medicine, physics, chemistry, and engineering, among other fields. Most translations introduced the scientific achievements that had arisen since the Renaissance (Tsien Reference Tsien1954). In astronomy, for instance, after the Chinese astronomer Guo Shoujing (1231–1316) published Shoushi Li (Seasons-Granting Astronomical System) in 1281, no new astronomical work was produced in China until the coming of the Jesuits three centuries later. By compiling Tian Wen Lüe (Summary of Astronomy) in 1615, Manuel Dias Júnior introduced Galileo’s astronomy and his design for the telescope to China. Chinese scholars also found the European celestial system to be more accurate than that used in China. Similarly, in mathematics, Matteo Ricci translated Christopher Clavius’ Commentary on Euclid’s Elements into Chinese (Jihe Yuanben) in 1607. Clavius’ Commentary was regarded by Chinese scholars as “the crown of Western studies” (Tsien Reference Tsien1954, p. 308).

The Jesuits also introduced many European inventions and scientific instruments to China. For example, Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688) re-equipped the ancient observatory in Beijing with new celestial instruments from Europe. Another well-known example is the mechanical clock. The workings and mechanism of these clocks were not only well-received but impressed the Chinese so much so that many literati wrote poems to express their love for and admiration of the clocks. The Jesuits also brought with them many other novel things; these included the triple prism, microscope, thermometer, cannon, music box, globe, glasses, and other manufactured goods (Tan Reference Tan2011).

From the early 1680s, the diffusion of European sciences to China reached new heights. This was largely due to the arrival of French Jesuit scientists, known as the King’s Mathematicians, from the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris.Footnote ⁷ They brought more than 30 new scientific instruments with them to China; these included quadrants, micrometers, telescopes, equatorial scale plates, and barometers, among others. Using these instruments, they conducted large-scale celestial observations and ground mapping across China (Landry-Deron Reference Landry-Deron2001). They also taught Chinese scholars mathematics and astronomy at the imperial palace, and introduced the logarithmic table, the iterative method for higher-order equations, and the calculation of infinite series.

Unlike in Latin America, the Jesuits’ influence in China remained confined to an elite circle of scholar-officials. Although the number of Jesuits was small, they could still influence a considerable swathe of the Chinese elite. This is because a single Jesuit could stay in different cities of China for many years. If we take Matteo Ricci as an example, he spent 27 years in China and lived in six cities. During this period, he translated 20 European scientific books and introduced many scientific instruments to China, all while maintaining close relationships with a number of Chinese scholars.Footnote ⁸

Relative to their success in knowledge diffusion, the Jesuits’ missionary achievements are considered trivial. It was a challenge for the 433 Jesuits to preach to a huge population of 200 million at the time. Even in the heyday of their China mission (around 1700), the total number of Chinese Catholic converts was alleged to be approximately 200,000 (Standaert Reference Standaert1991),Footnote ⁹ which accounted for merely 0.1 percent of the Chinese population.

Chinese Response to European Sciences

Despite its early success, Chinese science gradually fell behind that of Europe after the fourteenth century (Needham Reference Needham1969). Instead, Confucian moral philosophy dominated the Chinese intellectual realm (Bol Reference Bol2008). Meanwhile, China had become autarkic upon the establishment of the Ming dynasty in 1368, and hence China had little intellectual contact with the West before the arrival of the Jesuits. The Jesuits’ introduction of European sciences gave the Chinese Confucian scholars a new impetus to learning and knowledge acquisition (Gernet Reference Gernet and Lloyd1985).

The introduction of the novel European sciences shocked China’s Confucian literati. This stimulated the literati’s curiosity for new knowledge. Having recognized the backwardness of Chinese science, the literati learned European science from the Jesuits and attempted to revisit Chinese classical sciences using European methods. Overall, China saw an intellectual wave that emphasized science and “concrete learning” (shixue) from the late sixteenth century, though this movement was less revolutionary than that of contemporaneous Europe (Gernet Reference Gernet and Lloyd1985; Elman Reference Elman2005).

A representative case is a relationship between Matteo Ricci and the Ming literatus Xu Guangqi (1562–1633). The chronological account of Xu Guangqi clearly demonstrates the change in his academic pursuits after coming into contact with Ricci. Through Ricci, Xu was able to appreciate the rationale and methodology behind European science. In the Ke Tongwen Suanzhi Xu, a preface to a mathematical treatise by Matteo Ricci and Li Zhizao in 1614, Xu said:

Having recognized the lack of logical reasoning and the mathematical backwardness of Chinese science, Xu applied European sciences to the Chinese studies of mathematics, astronomy, agriculture, and military sciences. Between 1605 and 1633, he finished about 12 works on various sciences.Footnote ¹⁰

Xu Guangqi was by no means an exception among the Chinese literati. In fact, many other Ming and Qing scholars who were students of the Confucian classics, such as Li Zhizao (1565–1630), Wang Zheng (1571–1644), and Dai Zhen (1724–1777), all embraced European science after coming into contact with the Jesuits. They attempted to absorb European mathematical methods in re-constructing Chinese classical astronomy and mathematics and to apply scientific methods to study natural phenomena (Tsien Reference Tsien1954; Black Reference Black1989; Schafer Reference Schafer2011). For example, in the monumental work on Chinese astronomy, Lixiang Kaocheng Houbian (Continuation to An Investigation on the Calendar and Astronomy), Giovanni Cassini’s calendar calculation methods were emphasized (Gernet Reference Gernet and Lloyd1985).

Throughout this process, the communication with the Jesuits was crucial to the scientific achievements of Chinese scholars, who received systematic, nuanced instruction in the novel European sciences from their Jesuit friends. This was especially true of the collaboration between Chinese scholars and the Jesuits that occurred as part of translation. To ensure their Chinese writings were acceptable, the Jesuits needed the aid of Chinese scholars. “It was the usual practice for the text to be orally translated by the foreigners, and for a Chinese then to dictate a correct version” (Tsien Reference Tsien1954, p. 307). This provided the Chinese literati with a good opportunity to systematically study the European sciences. Moreover, Chinese scholars learned from the Jesuits’ academic lectures and demonstrations of European inventions.Footnote ¹¹ Those Chinese literati who could not meet the Jesuits personally could still learn European science through the circulation of Jesuit translations (Zou Reference Zou2011).

Why did the Confucian literati not disparage science or Western learning? There is no doubt that a scholar’s pursuit of science could be driven by his inherent hunger for new knowledge. In any case, the degree holders selected through the highly competitive imperial examinations were an elite among the scholars in Ming-Qing China. They would have been qualified for scientific research by their intelligence, literacy, and years of profound philosophical training.

Beyond their curiosity and qualifications, Chinese literati had also an inclination to study science. The Jesuits’ knowledge supply met the demand of these scholar-officials for useful knowledge in the realm of statecraft. Historically, many administrative affairs in China required knowledge of science and technology. The emperors, for instance, needed astronomers and mathematicians to develop an accurate calendar (otherwise known as nongli or “agricultural calendar”); the latter was crucial for agricultural production, as well as to establish the emperor’s legitimacy as the “Son of Heaven.” The empire also needed experts in topography to map territories and borders and engineers for the production of clocks, glasses, and other luxury goods in the royal factories (Schafer Reference Schafer2011). Officials who were capable of statecraft would undoubtedly have been valued by the emperor.Footnote ¹² No wonder the imperial examinations also tested the knowledge of statecraft in addition to the Confucian classics.Footnote ¹³ To answer these questions, candidates had to master concrete knowledge beyond the scope of Confucian classics (Elman Reference Elman2000).

In a nutshell, although these demand factors were not market-driven and were insufficient to generate scientific revolution as happened in contemporaneous Europe, they had prepared the literati, at least those of the elite circle, to embrace the new scientific knowledge from the West.

Jesuit Scientists and Jesuit Priests

In his Répertoire des Jésuites de Chine de 1552 à 1800, the Jesuit Joseph Dehergne (Reference Dehergne1973) collected the biographies of all the 433 Jesuits sent from Europe to China. This is the most systematic record of Jesuits and their activities in China for that period (Standaert Reference Standaert1991). Based on the time and place of every Jesuit’s activities in China, I enumerated the total number of Jesuits in each prefecture over the decades. Since some Jesuits moved across prefectures, the same Jesuit may be counted for different prefectures if he ever lived there.

To identify the knowledge diffusion effect, I distinguish the Jesuits who were involved in scientific activities in China and those who were not. According to Li and Zha’s (Reference Li and Yongping2002) collection of information on the Jesuits who made scientific contributions in Ming-Qing China, a total of 56 Jesuits participated in scientific activities; these included translating or compiling books about European sciences, introducing European inventions, and conducting scientific surveys, among others.Footnote ¹⁴ These 56 Jesuits are designated as Jesuit scientists. The other 377 Jesuits only did missionary work and thus are designated as Jesuit priests. I use the distribution of the Jesuit scientists to measure the diffusion of European science while using the distribution of the Jesuit priests for comparison.

Chinese Scientific Production

To measure Chinese scientific production, I referenced the number of scientific works (book titles) written by Chinese scholars at the prefecture-level in each decade. The Chinese literati had a culture of writing books and used this platform to publish their scholarly achievements. These works were recorded by a variety of historical compilations, for instance, the local gazetteers, collectanea, and the official chronicles compiled by the imperial authorities.

I obtained the list of Chinese scientific works from Zhongguo Kexue Jishu Dianji Tonghui (Collection of Chinese Classic Works in Science and Technology). Compiled by the Institute for the History of Natural Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1994, the Collection includes a comprehensive record of the scientific works in Chinese history. A total of 305 book titles were recorded between 1501 and 1780.Footnote ¹⁵ The topics included astronomy, mathematics, geography, agriculture, medicine, physics, chemistry, engineering (e.g., irrigation and military sciences), and general sciences, in which astronomy and mathematics dominated (Online Appendix Figure A1). All the books included in the analysis are original works written by Chinese scholars. Their Chinese translations of foreign works were excluded.Footnote ¹⁶ I manually checked each author’s biography and identified the author’s place(s) of residence and the approximate period of publication. For books that have an indeterminate publication period, I imputed it according to the year of the author’s age at midlife.Footnote ¹⁷ Based on the authors’ places of residence and period of publication, I counted the number of book titles by prefecture and decade.

Figure 3 shows the temporal change in the number of Chinese scientific works by three groups of prefectures: prefectures with Jesuit scientists, prefectures with Jesuit priests only, and prefectures without any Jesuits. After the Jesuits entered China in the 1580s, Chinese scientific works increased significantly in the prefectures where there were Jesuit scientists, but not in the prefectures where there were only Jesuit priests or prefectures without any Jesuits. Before 1580, there was not a clear difference or trend in the number of scientific books among the three types of prefectures.

Figure 3

NUMBER OF CHINESE SCIENTIFIC WORKS BY DECADE AND JESUIT RESIDENCES

Notes: The works refer to book titles. Data are obtained from Zhongguo Kexue Jishu Dianji Tonghui (Collection of Chinese Classic Works in Science and Technology). “Jesuit scientists” refers to the Jesuits who were involved in scientific activities in China. “Jesuit priests” refers to the Jesuits who only did missionary work.

Source: See the text.

The advantage of the Collection is that it was compiled by experts in the history of Chinese science. However, as a twentieth-century source, it may not accurately reflect the distribution of scientific production in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. For instance, it is possible that some books may have been lost, were never recorded, or stopped being recorded in the inventing centuries. A related concern is that prefectures with Jesuit scientists might have kept better records of books on science relative to the other prefectures. To address these concerns, I employed a historical source on Chinese scientific books, Chouren Zhuan (Biographies of Astronomers), to check the consistency of its records with those of the Collection.

Written by the eminent Qing scholar (and scientist) Ruan Yuan in the years 1795 to 1799, Chouren Zhuan was an influential compendium of Chinese science in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, reflecting scholars’ recognition and evaluation of Chinese science at the time (Elman Reference Elman2005). It introduced 143 Chinese scientists and their 377 scientific books between 1501 and 1780.Footnote ¹⁸ The time-series pattern in the number of scientific works is consistent between Chouren Zhuan and the Collection (Online Appendix Figure A2). Likewise, the two sources are consistent in the regional distribution of scientific works written during the Jesuit period (Online Appendix Figure A3). A majority of works were produced in eastern China, in particular the Lower Yangtze Delta region and the greater Beijing area. These two areas were also important bases of the Jesuits’ scientific activities (Elman Reference Elman2005).

However, when identifying Chinese scientists and their works, Chouren Zhuan may have criteria different from those of the Collection. For example, literati in the eighteenth century may have had a loose definition of science or adopted a definition on their own term (Elman Reference Elman2005). Moreover, Chouren Zhuan, given its title (literally, Biographies of Astronomers), may focus on the introduction of Chinese astronomers and mathematicians rather than scientists of other disciplines. For these reasons, the analyses of this paper mainly draw upon the data of the Collection while using the data of Chouren Zhuan for a robustness check.

Control Variables

I control for the following observables that may simultaneously affect both the distributions of Jesuits and Chinese scientific production.

The first and foremost is economic prosperity. The Jesuits might have tended to missionize prosperous regions. Meanwhile, prosperous areas were also more likely to produce scientific works. I use the urbanization rate around 1580 as the measure of economic prosperity. Historically, the urbanization rate was closely related to the level of commercialization in China (Skinner Reference Skinner1977). Moreover, most Jesuits and Chinese literati tended to live in big cities simply because the cities were political and cultural centers in imperial China. The urbanization rate was measured by the share of the urban population in the local prefectural population. This data was obtained from Cao (Reference Cao2017).Footnote ¹⁹ In addition, given that Ming-Qing China was an agriculture-dominated society, economic prosperity was also determined by agricultural productivity. Given the lack of data on actual agricultural output, I used a prefecture’s suitability for planting the prevailing major staple crops (wheat, rice, potatoes, and maize) to measure its potential agricultural productivity.Footnote ²⁰

The Jesuits’ locational choices in China might have been shaped by certain geographic factors. The first is the distance to the coast because coastal areas were economically prosperous and convenient for transportation. To measure the distance to the coast, I calculated the shortest great circle distance from a prefecture’s centroid to the nearest point on the coastline. Second, as a major form of inland transportation conduit in Ming-Qing China, rivers may have facilitated the Jesuits’ missionary activities and knowledge diffusion. To measure access to rivers, I calculated the shortest great circle distance from a prefecture’s centroid to the nearest point on a major navigable river.Footnote ²¹ In light of the fact that the Jesuits expanded to mainland China from Macau and that Macau was an important trade port at the time, I control for the shortest (great circle) distance from a prefecture to Macau. Last but not least, I control for the prefectural land area and the locational effect arising from latitude and longitude. The descriptive statistics of all the variables are reported in Table 1.Footnote ²²

Table 1

DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

Note: Refer to the text for definition.

Source: See the text.

Comparing Jesuit Scientists with Jesuit Priests

To rule out the possible violation of the results by unobserved prefectural factors, I restricted the sample to the 81 prefectures where there were Jesuits between 1581 and 1720 (henceforth, Jesuit prefectures). By doing so, I compared the 34 prefectures where there were Jesuit scientists with the remaining 47 prefectures where there were Jesuit priests (but no Jesuit scientists) in terms of Chinese scientific production (Figure 5).

Figure 5

DISTRIBUTIONS OF JESUIT SCIENTISTS AND JESUIT PRIESTS, 1581–1720

Notes: This figure shows the distribution of the Jesuit presence. “Jesuit scientists” refers to the Jesuits who were involved in scientific activities in China. “Jesuit priests” refers to the Jesuits who only did missionary work.

Sources: The data is based on Dehergne (Reference Dehergne1973) and Li and Zha (Reference Li and Yongping2002).

The validity of using the Jesuit priest prefectures as the control group is based on the reasoning that the Jesuit priests were similar to Jesuit scientists in all respects of their China mission, except for the latter’s introduction of European sciences. Specifically, both of them were European missionaries under the authority of the same Catholic order—the Society of Jesus. Both entered mainland China in the 1580s and were subject to the same temporal trends (and shocks) in the missionary expansion and decline in China. Accordingly, the distributions of Jesuit scientists and priests were subject to similar prefectural factors.

To examine this, I compared the Jesuit scientist prefectures with the Jesuit priest prefectures in terms of economic conditions and geography (Online Appendix Table A3). Statistically, there is no significant difference between the two groups in terms of urbanization rate (1580), potential agricultural productivity, and geography (distance to coast, distance to river, distance to Macau, latitude, longitude, and land area). In addition, there is no significant difference between the two groups in terms of the pre-1580 number of Chinese scientific works. This suggests that, relative to the Jesuit priests, the Jesuit scientists did not settle in prefectures where there was a stronger tradition of science before their arrival.

The results using the Jesuit prefectures sample are reported in Table 4. Consistent with the full sample, after 1580, prefectures with Jesuit scientists produced more Chinese scientific works than did the Jesuit priest prefectures (Column (1) of Panel A). The effect remains robust to the inclusion of all the control variables (Column (2)) and when the works of outlier authors (Mei Wending and Xu Guangqi) were excluded (Column (3)). The marginal effect of the Jesuit scientists is almost identical to that of the full sample, suggesting that the effect of the Jesuit scientists on Chinese scientific production came from their introduction of European sciences to China.

Table 4

RESULTS OF THE JESUIT PREFECTURES: COMPARING JESUIT SCIENTISTS WITH JESUIT PRIESTS, 1501–1720

* = Significant at the 10 percent level.

** = Significant at the 5 percent level.

*** = Significant at the 1 percent level.

Notes: All columns report the OLS estimates at the prefecture-decade level between 1501 and 1720. They exclude prefectures where there were no Jesuits at any time from 1581 to 1720, and compare the prefectures of Jesuit scientist residence with the prefectures of Jesuit priest residence only. Column (3) excludes 49 books written by two outlier authors, Mei Wending and Xu Guangqi. Column (4) excludes prefectures where urbanization rate was below the sample mean (5.6 percent). The dependent variable in Column (5) is a dummy that equals one if a prefecture-decade has at least one Chinese scientific work and zero otherwise. Measures of Jesuit scientists, controls, and the clustering of standard errors are same as those of Table 2.

Source: See the text.

Given that the Jesuits tended to live in big cities, I further restricted the Jesuit prefectures to those where there were big cities, in other words, the urbanization rate was above the sample mean of 5.6 percent. This removed 25 Jesuit prefectures with relatively lower urbanization levels. Jesuit scientists still have a significantly positive effect on Chinese science (Column (4) of Table 4). Finally, I converted the dependent variable into a dummy on whether a prefecture had scientific work(s) in each decade; the positive effect of the Jesuit scientists remains significant (Column (5)). The results are consistent with those of the full sample when I use the number of Jesuit scientists and the distance to Jesuit scientists as alternative measures of the Jesuit influence in Panels B and C of Table 4, respectively.Footnote ³²

An alternative way to find a comparable control group is propensity score matching. In Online Appendix A1, I use the propensity score to identify a control group (prefectures without Jesuit scientists) that is similar to the treatment group (prefectures with Jesuit scientists) in terms of the likelihood of being selected by the Jesuit scientists as their residence. Given that the distribution of the Jesuit scientists mainly correlates with the urbanization rate (1580), I use the urbanization rate to predict the propensity scores on a prefecture’s likelihood of being selected by Jesuit scientists. To further improve the similarity between the treatment and the control group, I also do the same matching but within the Jesuit prefectures only. Using the sample of matching, the positive effect of the Jesuit scientists on the number of Chinese scientific works remains robust (Online Appendix Table A5).

To further allay the concern that the Jesuit effect might be driven by unobserved prefectural factors, I employ an instrumental variable approach in Online Appendix A2. I instrument the prefectural distribution of the Jesuit scientists using a prefecture’s shortest great circle distance to the early missionary route explored by the Jesuit pioneer Matteo Ricci between 1582 and 1601. The early missionary route taken by Ricci played an important role in directing the entry and expansion of the later Jesuit scientists but is orthogonal to Chinese science. The instrumented results reaffirm the Jesuit effect on Chinese science.

Works in the Liberal Arts in China

If the effect of Jesuit scientists on Chinese scientific production was driven by unobserved local cultural or human capital factors, these factors should also bear on the book production of other fields. I conducted a falsification test using the number of book titles on two major fields of “liberal arts” in imperial China, history and literature, as the dependent variables. Relative to the works on sciences, works in the liberal arts should be less likely affected by European sciences.Footnote ³³

The data on works of history and literature is obtained from the Siku Quanshu (Complete Library of the Four Treasuries).Footnote ³⁴ Siku Quanshu contains 985 titles that pertain to history and 2,131 titles on literature that were written between 1501 and 1720. Based on the biographies of the authors, I enumerated the number of titles by prefecture and decade. The temporal change in the number of works of history and literature is depicted in Figure 6. Indeed, neither has a rising trend upon the Jesuit arrival, unlike what is found for scientific works. Between the 1630s and the 1650s, production in both the liberal arts and science declined, possibly due to the social unrest caused by dynastic change.

Figure 6

NUMBERS OF CHINESE WORKS ON HISTORY, LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE

Notes: “Works” refers to book titles.

Sources: Data on books of history and literature are obtained from Siku Quanshu, and that of books on science are obtained from Zhongguo Kexue Jishu Dianji Tonghui.

Following the same strategy used in analyzing the publication of scientific works, I found that the Jesuit scientists did not stimulate the growth of Chinese works on history and literature (Table 5). A remaining concern is that Siku Quanshu may be different from the source of scientific works (the Collection) in counting historical books. This would undermine the effectiveness of the comparison of books between the two sources. For robustness, I employ the number of Chinese astronomical works recorded in Siku Quanshu and regress it on the distribution of the Jesuit scientists.Footnote ³⁵ The results show that, when the sample is restricted to the Jesuit prefectures, the Jesuit scientists have a significantly positive effect on the number of astronomical works (Panel C of Online Appendix Table A2).

Table 5

CHINESE “LIBERAL ARTS” AS A PLACEBO, 1501–1720

* = Significant at the 10 percent level.

** = Significant at the 5 percent level.

*** = Significant at the 1 percent level.

Notes: All estimations are the same as in Table 2 except that the dependent variable is the number of Chinese books (titles) on history and literature. Columns (3) and (4) exclude prefectures where there were no Jesuits at any time from 1581 to 1720, and compare the prefectures of Jesuit scientist residence with the prefectures of Jesuit priest residence only. Measures of Jesuit scientists, controls, and the clustering of standard errors are same as those in Table 2.

Source: See the text.

Flexible Times of Entry of the Jesuits

The foregoing analyses examine the overall effect of the Jesuit scientists on Chinese scientific production after 1580. They ignore the prefectural variations in the time of Jesuits’ entry. This section exploits the prefectural variation in the time of entry and examines in a DID setting whether Chinese scientific works increased after the “entry shock” of the Jesuit scientists.

The period of the analysis is still 1501 to 1720. The variable of interest is the Jesuit scientist entry, which is a dummy variable that equals 1 for the decades after the Jesuit scientists first entered a prefecture. After controlling for the prefectural fixed-effects, I compare the difference in Chinese scientific production within the same prefecture pre- and post-Jesuit entry. Hence the causality relies on whether the time of entry was endogenously determined by correlates of Chinese scientific production.

Historical narratives suggest that the time of Jesuit entry into a prefecture was random. Although the Jesuits may have tended to preach in prefectures with a favorable economic or cultural environment, they could not decide the possibility or time of entry. This is because the imperial authorities of China prohibited contact between Chinese and foreigners, let alone allowing the European missionaries to reside and preach in China.Footnote ³⁶ That is why historians describe the Jesuit mission to China as a great adventure (Gernet Reference Gernet and Lloyd1985; Brockey Reference Brockey2007).

Instead, whether and when the Jesuits could enter a prefecture largely depended on coincidence.Footnote ³⁷ After the Jesuits arrived in Macau in 1562, they painstakingly tried many ways to enter mainland China but were expelled by local officials without exception. The chance did not come until December of 1582, when the provincial governor of Guangdong suddenly agreed to let the Jesuits live in the city of Zhaoqing in Guangdong, and giving them the right to build a church and houses. Such unpredictability is best summarized by the Jesuits themselves at the time:

Another representative case of such random entry comes from Matteo Ricci. He had been planning to establish a missionary station in the imperial capital of Beijing. But he did not have an opportunity to do so until he met a prestigious eunuch in Nanjing who appreciated Ricci’s talent. When he returned to Beijing, he took Ricci and recommended Ricci to the emperor in 1601. After waiting for six months, Ricci was finally called in by the emperor and was approved to reside in the capital. Ricci viewed this as “completely unexpected.”

Although Ricci’s success in the imperial capital facilitated the Jesuit mission in China, the Jesuits who came after him still needed to rely on occasional, informal ways to expand their mission to other Chinese cities. For example, Lazzaro Cattaneo could open the new mission in Songjiang only when his friend Xu Guangqi had to return to his hometown of Songjiang in 1608 to mourn his deceased father for three years according to Chinese custom. Three years later, he opened a new parish in the nearby city of Hangzhou, the hometown of his friends, Li Zhizao and Yang Tingjun, who were officials. Likewise, Francesco Sambiasi could not enter the city of Jiading in Jiangsu Province until he obtained the assistance of the official Sun Yuanhua in 1622 (Ricci and Trigault 1953 [1615]).

To further confirm the “haphazard” pattern of the time of entry, I checked the records from the Jesuits’ diaries (Ricci and Trigault 1953 [1615]) and studies by historians (Brockey Reference Brockey2007) for the specific means of entry. There were 20 prefectures for which pertinent records were available (Online Appendix Figure A12). This is a representative sample in the sense that these prefectures were the sites of the major Jesuit residences, accounting for 68 percent of the total number-decade of the Jesuit presence in China between 1581 and 1780. The records show that the Jesuits entered all of these 20 prefectures by chance (Online Appendix Table A8). Of course, we cannot ensure that all the entries of the Jesuits were random events; they might also have been shaped by unobserved time-varying factors in the prefectures they wanted to enter.

The regression results are reported in Table 6. After a Jesuit scientist entered a prefecture, the number of scientific works produced in that prefecture per decade increased by 0.135 (Column (1)). The effect remains robust in Column (2), where I control for the same set of prefecture factors used in Table 2. Given the time-varying nature of the Jesuit scientist entry, I interact each prefectural factor with the decade dummies. Columns (3) and (4) restrict the control group to the prefectures with Jesuit priests only. Doing so does not change the positive effect of the Jesuit scientists’ entry on Chinese science.

Table 6

FLEXIBLE ENTRIES OF THE JESUITS, 1501–1720

* = Significant at the 10 percent level.

** = Significant at the 5 percent level.

*** = Significant at the 1 percent level.

Notes: Jesuit scientist entry is a dummy indicating the period after the first Jesuit scientist arrived in a prefecture. All columns report the OLS estimates. Columns (3) and (4) exclude prefectures where there were no Jesuits at any time from 1581 to 1720 and compare the prefectures of Jesuit scientist residence with the prefectures of Jesuit priest residence only. Controls and the clustering of standard errors are same as those in Table 2.

Source: See the text.

No trend of increase in the number of Chinese scientific works before the Jesuit scientist entry is observed (Online Appendix Figure A6). I lagged seven decades before the time of Jesuit entry for each prefecture. While the difference between prefectures with Jesuit scientists and those without in terms of Chinese scientific works fluctuated over the decades, none of them was statistically significant. The difference in Chinese scientific works rose significantly only after the entry of Jesuit scientists.

To gauge the long-term effect of the Jesuit scientists after they entered a prefecture, I use the cumulative number-decades of the Jesuit scientists since they first entered that prefecture as the proxy. It has a significantly positive effect on the number of Chinese scientific works (Online Appendix Table A9).Footnote ³⁸

Finally, I provide evidence in Online Appendix A3 on the importance of the interaction between the literati and the Jesuit scientists in the production of Chinese science. This coincides with historical anecdotes on the cases of Xu Guangqi, Li Zhizao, and Wang Zheng, who made remarkable achievements in science only after meeting and learning from their Jesuit friends.Footnote ³⁹

Testing the Expulsion Effect

It is impossible to quantify the change in the nature and quality of Chinese science in response to the expulsion of the Jesuits. Nevertheless, I can investigate whether the expulsion systematically discouraged the overall scientific production of Chinese literati. Empirically, I examine whether the effect of the Jesuit scientists on Chinese scientific production turned to be smaller after the emperor began to expel the Jesuits in 1723. Accordingly, I employ the same DID approach as that of Equation (1), except that the sample is extended to the period of expulsion (1721 to 1780). I end the period by 1780, soon after the Jesuit mission was formally dismissed by the Pope.Footnote ⁴⁰ In this case, I examine the interaction terms between the variables of Jesuit scientists and two-period dummies: one is the period of Jesuit presence (1581–1720), whereas the other is the period of Jesuit expulsion (1721–1780). Both take as their reference the pre-Jesuit period of 1501 to 1580.Footnote ⁴¹

The results are reported in Table 7. While Jesuit scientists significantly increased Chinese scientific works after 1580, this effect became smaller and insignificant after 1720 (Panel A). In terms of magnitude, prefectures with Jesuit scientists produced 0.064 more Chinese scientific works per decade than did prefectures without Jesuit scientists during the period of Jesuit presence (1581–1720). However, this difference shrinks to 0.012, an 81 percent reduction, after the Jesuits began to be expelled (1721–1780). The results remain consistent when using Jesuit scientist number to measure the strength of European knowledge diffusion (Panel B). The effect of the distance to Jesuit scientists also turns to be insignificant after 1720, suggesting that the previous spillover of the Jesuits’ knowledge did not persist after the Sino-European contact was broken (Panel C). These results remain robust when I compare the prefectures of Jesuit scientists with the prefectures of Jesuit priests only.

Table 7

THE EFFECT OF JESUIT EXPULSION ON CHINESE SCIENCE

* = Significant at the 10 percent level.

** = Significant at the 5 percent level.

*** = Significant at the 1 percent level.

Notes: This table reports the change in Chinese scientific production after the Jesuits were expelled from China beginning from the 1720s. In Panels A to C, the sample period is 1501–1780, in which 1501–1580 is the reference (pre-Jesuit) period, 1581–1720 is the period of Jesuit presence, and 1721–1780 is the period of Jesuit expulsion. Panel D examines the expulsion effect taking into account the prefectural variations in the timing of Jesuit retreat, in which Jesuit scientist expulsion is a dummy indicating the period after all the Jesuit scientists had been expelled from a prefecture. The sample period of Panel D begins from the heyday of Jesuit presence in China (1681) to the end of the Jesuit China mission (1780). Beijing as an outlier was excluded. Column (2) compares the prefectures of Jesuit scientist residence with the prefectures of Jesuit priest residence only. All columns report the OLS estimates with prefectural and decade fixed effects and a full set of controls that are the same as those of Table 2. Standard errors in parentheses are clustered at the prefectural level by periods (pre-Jesuits 1501–1580, Jesuit presence 1581–1720, and Jesuit expulsion 1721–1780) in Panels A to C, and are clustered at the prefectural level in Panel D. Standard errors in brackets are arbitrarily clustered within a radius of 136 kilometers and within a time window of a century based on Colella et al. (Reference Colella, Rafael, Seyhun O and Mathias2019).

Source: See the text.

The analyses noted previously reveal an overall negative effect of the Jesuit expulsion on Chinese scientific production. However, the time of the Jesuits’ withdrawal also varied across prefectures. After the Yongzheng Emperor ordered the expulsion of Catholic missions from China, the departure of the Jesuits followed a gradual process that was sustained until the late eighteenth century. Following the same DID strategy in examining the entry effect, I test whether Chinese scientific works decreased after all the Jesuit scientists retreated from a prefecture.

The Jesuits’ retreat can also, arguably, be treated as an exogenous shock, simply because it was caused by the emperor’s prohibition of Catholicism due to the Chinese Rites Controversy with the Pope. It was not initiated by the Jesuits or Chinese literati in each prefecture. Certainly, in a prefecture, when and to what extent the government implemented the emperor’s decree of expulsion may have been shaped by some time-varying local factors; for instance, the turnover of local governors, who had different attitudes towards the missionaries. Given this unobservable confounding factor, the coefficient of the expulsion may be biased and hence should be interpreted with caution.

The analysis is restricted to the period between 1681 and 1780, that is, from a year when the Jesuit mission to China was in its heyday to a year after all the Jesuits had retreated from China. I construct a dummy variable of Jesuit scientist expulsion, which equals 1 for the period after all the Jesuit scientists had left a prefecture. The results are reported in Panel D of Table 7. After the Jesuit scientists were expelled, the average number of Chinese scientific works per prefecture per decade decreased by 0.135. The reduction becomes greater (0.145) when I restrict the control group to the prefectures with Jesuit priests only.

Institutional Environment

The first and foremost factor is that Ming-Qing China lacked an institutional environment for scientists to pursue economic progress, and the Jesuits did not bring to China such an institutional change. China’s human capital institution was designed for civil service. The civil examinations offered scholars a stable “ladder of success,” by which they could enter officialdom and enjoy the highest status, esteem, and pecuniary benefits. Under the scholar-to-official incentive scheme, the members of the learned elite were absorbed into this meritocratic system. Although they had an interest in European science, literati scientific endeavors were directed to serve the needs of statecraft, which could bring them career success in the bureaucracy, rather than to apply the new methods in manufacturing, seafaring, and experiments.

Specifically, the literati’s scientific applications concentrated on imperial needs and interests. They mainly adopted the Jesuits’ science to improve China’s calendar, mapping, music, and military affairs, among others. For example, given the importance of the calendar in consolidating the rulers’ monopoly of time and their legitimacy, Chinese mathematicians used logarithms and trigonometry they learned from the Jesuits to make new star tables and to predict solar and lunar eclipses (Landes Reference Landes2006). Therefore, mathematical astronomy was among the most “useful knowledge” in China (Elman Reference Elman2000). Indeed, astronomical and mathematical publications accounted for more than 64 percent of Chinese scientific works produced in the Jesuit period (Online Appendix Figure A1). Another example is cartography. Because of the policy of autarky, voyages abroad and the outside world remained relatively unimportant to Chinese elites. The new cartographical knowledge introduced by the Jesuits was thus only appreciated for its value in mapping the frontier and naval defense rather than in sea voyages and maritime commerce.Footnote ⁴⁶

Therefore, under the state monopoly of education, knowledge, and social mobility, the literati’s scientific pursuits were closely tied with imperial needs rather than with the “market for ideas” seen in contemporaneous Europe.Footnote ⁴⁷ Moreover, the new scientific philosophy and methods were not transmitted to artisans, craftsmen, and merchants, as they were excluded from elite circles. As Mokyr (Reference Mokyr2017, p. 321) has incisively observed, China lacked the institutional bridge found in eighteenth-century Europe “between those who possessed propositional knowledge (who knew things) and those who controlled prescriptive knowledge (who made things).”Footnote ⁴⁸

The Limitations of the Jesuit China Mission

Without any colonial power in China to support them, the Jesuits could only carefully pursue the Confucian elites within the already highly-institutionalized scholar-official system. They could not develop schools and thus expand their human capital influence to the mass of Chinese as their colleagues in the New World did.Footnote ⁴⁹ The consequence was that the Jesuits mainly inspired the scientific curiosity of a small group of learned elite men rather than challenged the education system of China. Classical education to enter civil service still dominated Chinese intellectual life. This is evidenced by the finding that the Jesuits’ knowledge diffusion did not reduce the number of civil examination degree-holders (jinshi) in China (Panel C, Table 8). Although some eminent scientists, including Xu Guangqi and Mei Wending, had apprentices and even formed a small network of the so-called “Western learning school,”Footnote ⁵⁰ an active community of scientists never appeared in Ming-Qing China. There were not regular scientific meetings, salons, and correspondence, let alone the kind of scientific associations and societies that prospered in Enlightenment Europe.

Even within elite circles, the Jesuits did not bring to the literati modern science for industrial use. The Jesuit sciences were basically classical natural philosophy (Gernet Reference Gernet and Lloyd1985; Sivin Reference Sivin1995). Their astronomy was built on the Tychonic system, and their mathematics was essentially static geometric mathematics based on Euclid and Aristotle. They did not introduce China to the revolutionary analytical geometry, dynamic calculus, and mechanics used by engineers (Elman Reference Elman2005).Footnote ⁵¹

China’s industrial enlightenment had to wait until the late nineteenth century, when the Qing dynasty was forced to open up to the West (Spence Reference Spence1990). Under the pressure of the Western industrial powers, the imperial authorities had to modernize their institutions for “self-strengthening.” In particular, the collapse of the civil examination system in 1905 finally released the learned elite to enter the industrial or modern sectors. Their efforts, along with unprecedented Western influence, finally brought to China the genesis of modern growth (Bai and Jia Reference Bai and Ruixue2016; Bai Reference Bai2019).

Since the Jesuits’ intellectual influence did not divert elite interest from statecraft to the material world, it is no wonder the Jesuits left no legacy for China’s modernization era. As shown in Table 9, the Jesuit scientists have no long-term effect on the number of industrial establishments in local prefectures in the 1930s (Columns (1) to (4)).Footnote ⁵² Certainly, the Jesuits’ local influence may have faded out in the long run because of the spatial diffusion of scientific books and knowledge. However, when I use the distance to the Jesuit scientist prefectures to (partially) proxy for the spatial diffusion of science, it still does not bear on the distribution of industrialization (Columns (5) and (6)).Footnote ⁵³

Table 9

JESUIT SCIENTISTS AND INDUSTRIALIZATION IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

* = Significant at the 10 percent level.

** = Significant at the 5 percent level.

*** = Significant at the 1 percent level.

Notes: All columns report the OLS estimates at the prefectural level. Columns (2), (4), and (6) compare the prefectures of Jesuit scientist residence with the prefectures of Jesuit priest residence only. Controls include those of Table 2, the civil examination quotas assigned to each prefecture in 1865 to 1904, and a treaty port dummy (1842 to 1933). Robust standard errors are in parentheses. Standard errors in brackets are clustered within a radius of 136 kilometers to account for possible spatial correlation based on Colella et al. (Reference Colella, Rafael, Seyhun O and Mathias2019).

Source: See the text.