Big Data and “New” Global History: Global Goods and Trade Networks in Early Modern China and Europe

This paper introduces an innovative method applied to global (economic) history using the tools of digital humanities through the design and development of the GECEM Project Database (www.gecem.eu; www.gecemdatabase.eu). This novel database goes beyond the static Excel files frequently used by conventional scholarship in early modern history studies to mine new historical data through a bottom-up process and analyse the global circulation of goods, consumer behaviour, and trade networks in early modern China and Europe. Macau and Marseille, as strategic entrepôts for the redistribution of goods, serve as the main case study. This research is framed within a polycentric approach to analyse the connectivity of south Chinese and European markets with trade zones of Spain, France, South America, and the Pacific.

Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China, Reviewed by Peter C. Perdue

Ian M. Miller's important book follows the impact of the Chinese state and economy on the forests of southern China, from the eleventh through sixteenth centuries. Besides providing a new narrative of forest history, based on the scouring of official sources, his helpful comparisons to Europe and Japan ask us to rethink how we periodize Chinese history and evaluate the success of the imperial state.

Sustainability in Early Modern China through the Evolution of the Jesuit Accommodation Method

This article clarifies the often overlooked facts attributed to European missionaries in Asia, especially Jesuits, who acted as catalysts of a kind of nuanced acculturation named Accommodatio (adaptation). To a great extent, they became harbingers of culture and science more than faith itself to the dismay of many, including the Roman Church. Such cultural and scientific transference was actually two-pronged, for simultaneously they presented in Europe unique findings related to language, e.g., the Chinese characters (considered to be the sole natural language), geography, cosmology and even governance. Here we try to prove that such procedure contributed positively to the modern scientific notions of sustainability and to provide the kind of accoutrements that model the modern world as we know it. However, in the process, many Jesuits clearly became sinified and eventually acculturated.

Sustainability in Early Modern China through the Jesuit Accommodation method

With this article we would like to clarify the often-disregarded fact by virtue of which the European Missionaries in Asia acted as catalysts of a kind of nuanced acculturation named Accommodatio (adaptation). To a great extent they became harbingers of Culture and Science more than Faith itself to the dismay of many, including the Roman Church. Such cultural and scientific transference was actually two-pronged, for simultaneously they presented in Europe unique findings related to Language, e.g. the Chinese Characters (considered to be the sole natural language), Geography, Cosmology and even Governance. We would try to prove that such procedure contributed positively to the modern scientific notions of sustainability and to provide the kind of accoutrements that model the modern world as we know it.