The Reconstruction of Imperial Mathematics in China During the Kangxi Reign (1662-1722)

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 88-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Catherine Jami
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Lecture Notes ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
And Algebra

AbstractContrary to astronomy, the early modern Chinese State did not systematically sponsor mathematics. However, early in his reign, the Kangxi Emperor studied this subject with the Jesuit missionaries in charge of the calendar. His first teacher, Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688) relied on textbooks based on Christoph Clavius' (1538-1612). Those who succeeded Verbiest as imperial tutors in the 1690s produced lecture notes in Manchu and Chinese. Newly discovered manuscripts show Antoine Thomas (1644-1709) wrote substantial treatises on arithmetic and algebra while teaching those subjects. In 1713, the emperor commissioned a group of scholars and officials to compile a standard survey of mathematics (Shuli jingyun, "Essential principles of mathematics"). This work opened with the claim that mathematics had its roots in Chinese Antiquity. However, it can be shown that the Jesuits' lecture notes were the main source of the Shuli jingyun. The reconstruction of mathematics under Kangxi's patronage is thus best characterised as the imperial appropriation of Western learning.

‘Chinese’ hegemony from a Korean shi perspective: aretocracy in the early modern East Asia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inho Choi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
World Order ◽  
Legitimate Authority ◽  
Normative Influence ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Chinese State

Abstract The study of pre-modern Chinese hegemony is crucial for both theorizing hegemony and envisioning a new global order. I argue the pre-modern Chinese hegemony was a reciprocal rule of virtue, or aretocracy, driven by the transnational sociocultural elites shi. In contrast to the prevailing models of Chinese hegemony, the Early Modern East Asia was not dominated by the unilateral normative influence of the Chinese state. The Chinese and non-Chinese shi as non-statist sociocultural elites co-produced, through their shared civilizational heritage, a hegemonic order in which they had to show excellence in civil virtues to wield legitimate authority. In particular, the Ming and Chosŏn shi developed a tradition of envoy poetry exchanges as a medium for co-constructing Chinese hegemony as aretocracy. The remarkable role of excellent ethos for world order making in Early Modern East Asia compels us to re-imagine how we conduct our global governance.

Becoming “Indians”: The Jesuit Missionary Path from Italy to Asia

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-50
Author(s):  
Camilla Russell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Jesuit Missions ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Italian Provinces ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Jesuit Missionary

The Jesuit missions in Asia were among the most audacious undertakings by Europeans in the early modern period. This article focuses on a still relatively little understood aspect of the enterprise: its appointment process. It draws together disparate archival documents to recreate the steps to becoming a Jesuit missionary, specifically the Litterae indipetae (petitions for the “Indies”), provincial reports about missionary candidates, and replies to applicants from the Jesuit superior general. Focusing on candidates from the Italian provinces of the Society of Jesus, the article outlines not just how Jesuit missionaries were appointed but also the priorities, motivations, and attitudes that informed their assessment and selection. Missionaries were made, the study shows, through a specific “way of proceeding” that was negotiated between all parties and seen in both organizational and spiritual terms, beginning with the vocation itself, which, whether the applicant departed or not, earned him the name indiano.

Jesuits and Islam in Early Modern Europe

2018 ◽  
pp. 348-378
Author(s):  
Emanuele Colombo
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Ignatius Of Loyola ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Willingness To Engage

This chapter discusses Jesuit narratives of Islam and the Jesuits’ approaches to Muslims in early modern Europe. It argues that the Jesuits’ interaction with Islam was a key component of the Society’s identity, despite the fact that the order was not celebrated for the success of this interaction. It explores the desire of Ignatius of Loyola and the first Jesuits to convert Muslims; the history of Muslims who converted to Catholicism and joined the Society of Jesus; the Jesuits’ tension between a polemical attitude and a missionary approach to Muslims; and, finally, the Jesuits’ willingness to engage Islam and their attempts to study Arabic during this period. The chapter sheds new light on the presence of Islam in early modern Europe and helps our understanding of views that also influenced early modern Jesuit missionaries overseas, most of whom undertook their formation in Europe.

scholarly journals The Perils of Accommodation: Jesuit Missionary Strategies in the Early Modern World

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 395-414
Author(s):  
Andrés I. Prieto
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Matteo Ricci ◽  
Jesuit Missionaries ◽  
Jose De Acosta ◽  
Christian Message

The notion of accommodation, or the adaptation of one’s message to one’s audience, has been regarded as a central feature of the Jesuit way of proceeding at least since the seventeenth century. In recent years, scholars have come to understand accommodation as a rhetorical principle, which—while rooted in the rules of classical oratory—permeated all the works and ministries performed by the Jesuits of the Old Society. By comparing the theoretical notions about accommodation and the advantages and risks of adapting both the Christian message to native cultures and vice versa, this paper shows how and under what conditions the Jesuit missionaries were able to translate this rhetorical principle into a proselytizing praxis. By focusing on the examples of José de Acosta in Peru, Matteo Ricci in China, and of those Jesuits working in the missions in Paraguay and Chile, this essay will show how the needs in the missionary field superseded and overruled the theoretical requirements set beforehand. They revealed the ways in which the political and cultural context in which the missionaries operated determined the negotiations needed in order to achieve a common ground with their would-be converts if their mission was going to happen at all.

scholarly journals Variations on gui and the Trouble with Ghosts in Modern Chinese Fiction

2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Imbach
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Chinese Fiction ◽  
Republican Era ◽  
Modern Chinese Fiction

AbstractGhosts appear in a great number of fictional works from the early modern period to the present. Yet, to this date no systematic study of this very heterogeneous textual corpus has been undertaken. This paper proposes as a useful starting point a review of figures and discourses of spectrality, mainly in Republican-era literary and critical texts, that focuses in particular on the different meanings and usages of the term

Origins of the Modern Chinese State (review)

2003 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 196-202
Author(s):  
Susan Mann
Keyword(s):  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Chinese State

Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-192
Author(s):  
Niccolò Pianciola
Keyword(s):  
Modern Chinese ◽  
Chinese State
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