This is a fine book, one which makes a signal contribution to our understanding of early modern Europe's interactions with East Asia. The author gives the reader several layers of narrative, description, and analysis. One is centered on Matteo Ricci, the focal point for much of the book. More than anything else, this work is a critical biography of Ricci. Hsia gives us the most well-rounded picture available today of Ricci, of whose fifty-eight years about twenty-seven were spent in China, the last decade (1600–1610) in Beijing, the great capital of the Ming Dynasty. Hsia avoids hagiography, and is judicious and convincing in his judgments. But Ricci is always the touchstone, and the story never loses track of him. We follow his upbringing in Macerata and Rome, his initial time in Goa in India, his assignment to the China field and first entry into China in 1583. This period of several years through the 1570s was the most difficult and frustrating for Ricci and his confreres, partly because there were so few of them, and Ricci's own language skills were still being developed, while newer members of the China Mission were at a much more elementary level still. Then the story becomes one of Ricci‘s “ascent” through networks of Chinese friends and acquaintances through the 1590s to the status of permanent resident in the imperial capital, specifically authorized by the reigning Wan-li emperor (Jonathan D. Spence, “Matteo Ricci and the Ascent to Peking,” in East Meets West: The Jesuits in China, 1582–1773, Charles E. Ronan, S. J., and Bonnie B. C. Oh, eds., [Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1988], 3–18). Hsia elucidates clearly the provincial base of personal connections, which Ricci carefully cultivated in cities such as Shaozhou, Nanchang, and Nanjing, as he gradually moved northward towards the capital. These connections facilitated his eventual move to Beijing in 1600 and enhanced his influence there. He had friends and acquaintances scattered among the Chinese elite and they magnified Ricci's presence in the capital.

Hsia has very conscientiously used all conceivable Western and Chinese sources. The result is a sensitively drawn portrait of Ricci in all his facets: a Jesuit, product of both the Renaissance and the Catholic Reformation in Europe; well educated in sciences and mathematics; a self-conscious cultural intermediary between china and the West; withal a sincere missionary of the faith. Ricci was a complex figure; the author manifests that complexity very nicely.

This book joins a handful of other excellent books on the early modern Catholic missions in China which have appeared recently. These include, in particular, works by Liam Brockey (Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724 [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007]) and Eugenio Menegon (Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, Asia Center, 2009]). These works draw our attention to those sectors of the Catholic missions operating far from the Jesuits in Beijing or in provincial capitals. Brockey shows how Jesuits in locales more rustic than Beijing were stretched too thinly over a broad area to have sustained contact with their converts, resulting in extensive lay participation to manage the affairs of the congregations in between visits of the peripatetic missionaries. Menegon, on the other hand, describes the largely Dominican communities of northeastern Fujian province on the southeast coast of China. In these communities as well, lay believers, including many women and members of the local elite class of degree-holders, played a large role in the affairs of the church. Both of these works, with their emphasis on areas other than large urban places, add a great deal to our understanding of the whole picture of seventeenth-century Catholicism in China. Yet, somehow in the end we are drawn back to Ricci. His intelligence, cultural sensitivity, and dedication still fascinate us today. Some years ago Jonathan Spence did a penetrating interpretive study of Ricci, but it was limited in its coverage of Ricci's life (The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci [New York: Viking, 1984]). Professor Hsia's extensive training in early modern European history combined with his facility in Chinese sources make him the ideal scholar to undertake the project of an up-to-date critical biography of Ricci, one grounded in the scholarship on both early modern Europe and China. In this he has succeeded admirably, in my opinion. In its carefulness and depth of research, its elegance of prose, and its balanced evaluations, I believe that this book will stand the test of time.