The field of Jesuit studies has long been a fertile arena for historical research and Europe Meets China—China Meets Europe is certainly a worthwhile addition to it, especially for those who are interested in intensive academic research on the role and agency of Jesuits in Chinese imperial politics and networks. The edited volume has seven essays and an introduction that were presented at the International and Interdisciplinary Symposium at the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, Bonn, May 2012. The essays deal with diverse but inter-related facets of the early European Chinese interactions in the seventeenth century using rich Jesuit archival material in multiple languages as well as other historical sources. The general research questions that the conference and the essays sought to deal with address the degree and modalities of the exchange between the two groups and the possibility of “any real dialogue” between the two.
Bernhard Führer writes that the papers in the collection attempt to employ a cultural-psychological framework to the analysis of the cross cultural interactions, which is strangely missing with the exception of Shu Jyuan’s paper on the trial of Johann Adam Schall before the Supreme Court of Peking. The first essay, by Isaia Iannacone on Niklass Trigault and Schreck Terrentius on the intricacies of the accommodation of the Jesuits in China, deals at length with the introduction of western science to Chinese imperial courts and the adaptation of the Jesuits to their new work environments in completely different cultural conditions other than their own and their subsequent successes or failures at the same. Through a case study of two Jesuits, Iannacone throws light on the professional and personal worlds of the Jesuits and their dispositions within the missionary network. Exploring the causality of suicide and/or loneliness is an onerous task, especially using historical sources that may only tell one side of the story. But the evidence provided by the author of suicide as “infamous death or escape from shameful death” or of loneliness resulting from ostracism needs, as stated in the introduction, to be substantiated further through supplementary historical or psychoanalytic theory. Nevertheless, the essay is commendable in portraying the intense challenges meted out to the missionaries in their pursuit of science in imperial China.
Gregory Blue’s chapter on Xu Guangqi, a Chinese collaborator and a patron of the Jesuit mission, traces the trajectories of this man’s encounters with European religion and science. The biographical sketch of Xu Guangqi, in which the author contextualises him in the early modern imperial and scientific world and the reading of Guangqi’s personal evolution against the backdrop of a “synthesis of Chinese and Western traditions”, is quite engaging as the situation as aptly pointed out by the author is further complicated by the complex relation between Buddhism and Confucianism in the same period. Blue also excels at bringing out the knottiness involved in the scientific exchange and shows that the transfer itself was highly mediated and did not involve a complete consensus. The multifaceted nature of the “protagonist” is clearly proved with his expertise in fields ranging from agriculture to military strategy to hydraulic engineering and astronomy. The argument that Blue makes in his conclusion, that western science made the impact which it did in the East owing to the facilitating role played by collaborators such as Guangqi, is indeed an important one in the field of the history of scientific or cultural exchanges.
Hui Hung-Chen’s chapter on Christian sacred images in early modern Chin, which uses a Chinese treatise titled Zaowuzhu chuixiang attributed to Xu Guangqi, is one of the most lucid essays in the volume. It explores religio-cultural negotiations concerning the introduction of God’s form and how it related to Chinese theological conceptualizations about incarnation and its fundamental efficacy in displaying the historical and religious significance of Christ’s figure. Chen identifies both the debates between the Calvinists and Catholics in early modern Europe as well as the Jesuit “invention of an evangelical method” to cater to a non-European audience in the discussion of the Christian images in China. The question on the inter-play of textuality and religious material culture is left unanswered and, hopefully, will be answered by future research. Other questions, especially those about the reception of the images by Chinese commoners and converts as well as about Jesuit circuits in China and in Europe, have to be asked and a furthering probing of sources may yield additional answers.
Liam Matthew Brockey compiles a picture of the professional career of André Palmeiro, in his capacity as a visitor in India and China and his managerial skills in meeting diplomatic and cultural crises, by using archival material from the Ajuda library in Lisbon and the Society of Jesus in Rome. He argues that the Society of Jesus functioned as a bureaucracy through analysing the Office of the Visitor, who was a commissioner with either secular and/or ecclesiastical powers, the boundaries of which were highly blurred in the case of early modern empires. The paper investigates the mission strategies employed by the Jesuits and how often the “visitor” would have to employ considerable tact while moving between theological and secular circles to engage, negotiate and resolve debates. The argument made by Brockey on the close link between empire and the Jesuit missionary networks and its manifold overlaps, especially in the role of members of the religious orders serving as conduits of both political and economic dialogues between the Portuguese and Asian empires, is a most relevant one. Due to its intensive focus on the person of Palmeiro, the paper, in places, reads like a eulogy of Palmeiro since all other actors in the missionary network fade into irrelevance against his management skill. While the author tries to understand the administrative logic of Palmeiro’s decisions in India and China, there is no discussion of their impact or of the mechanisms by which the decisions were implemented.
Manjusha Kuruppath engages the theme of Calvinist-Catholic contestations through the representations of Johan Schall Von Bell in Dutch sources. The Dutch mission to the Peking court was the stage for much Portuguese-Dutch intrigue, with the Jesuits playing the role of conspirators turning the emperor against the Dutch. Kuruppath effectively depicts the clout that Schall Von Bell possessed in the Peking court and his uneasy relationship with the Dutch, but she does not inform the reader how he amassed such an enviable position within the court. Instead, she focuses on the print conflict between Nieuhof’s allegations in Gezantchap and counter arguments by Hazart in his Kerckelycke Historie, especially in the representation of Schall as a dangerous adversary in the former and as one who merits acclaim in lieu of his power and influence in the latter. In the process, Kuruppath illustrates the ways that early modern Europe engaged with occurrences in far-off China.
Shu-Jyuan Deiwiks attempts to understand the cultural and psychological aspects of the trial of Adam Schall and fellow missionaries at the court of Peking by using the Secret Manchu documents. While Deiwiks’ discussion of source material is certainly relevant, the applicability of psycho-analytical methodology to historical material is not quite convincing since it generalises what may be very specific cultural experiences (e.g., the experience of conversion and forsaking of faith in the face of social challenges).
Claudia von Collani’s chapter examines the failure of Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon’s mission and its ramifications on Christian missionary work in China by scrutinizing the semiotic context of Chinese imperial politics and the significance of courtly rites in forging diplomatic ties. She addresses how the Kangxi emperor’s legitimacy derived from the mandate from heaven and how a cultural mismatch led to the failure of the mission. It is clear from the chapter that the author tries to place the interaction of papal legate and the Kangxi emperor within the Chinese cosmological understanding of spaces and rites, about which the European counterpart would have very limited knowledge. The precarious role played by Christian missionaries, who had to juggle ecclesiastical and imperial circuits and adapt to the cultural traditions of both East and West, is effectively brought out. However, the constant rhetoric of East versus West that echoes throughout the paper glosses over of a lot of grey areas, for instances the role of those missionaries who rose to considerable positions in the imperial courts (e.g., like of Schall).
Overall, the volume will serve the interest of academics and researchers who are engaged in the highly subject specific study of Christian/Jesuit interactions with China. A general critique that can be made of the volume is that it only talks about China meeting Europe and not vice versa. Since there is very little data about whether there was any scientific knowledge transferred from China to Europe or any discussion about the impact that Chinese traditions or knowledge had on Europe, the book can be considered not about European-Chinese scientific exchange (as the subtitle informs the reader) but about the history of European interactions and encounters with the Chinese in the early modern period.
