Between Machine and Man: The Question of Creation in the Transmission of Western Mechanical Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century China (A Case Study)

This paper aims to explore how the Jesuit missionaries and their Chinese supporters negotiated the tension between mechanical knowledge, along with its embedded theological implications and the Chinese worldview by examining the Yuanxi qiqi tushuo luzui 遠西奇器圖說錄最 and the biography of a Chinese inventor Huang Lüzhuang 黃履莊 in the context of the polemical debates on Christianity in seventeenth century China. Centring on the concept of creation, I demonstrate how the understanding of machine or automata relates to broader questions regarding the natural world and human agency at the juncture of intellectual transformations in both Europe and China: While some European thinkers, inspired by machines, promoted the worldview of a passive nature analogous to machine, concepts of unity and spontaneity provided the Chinese with an opportunity to account for the autonomy of the machine as something operating in accordance with the self-generating natural world.

Harbingers

This chapter offers a brief but comprehensive review of some of the premodern historical antecedents following the launch of Chicago's Parliament of Religions. It recounts the profile of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), who on the cusp of the modern age represents an especially arresting case in his efforts to bring multiple religious voices from the Indian subcontinent, together with European Jesuit missionaries, into conversation with one another. The chapter seeks to spotlight several salient examples of harbingers of interreligious dialogue. It draws preponderantly from Western and, to a lesser extent, Islamic civilizations after the advent of Christianity — with the partial exception of the Mongol court and Akbar. The chapter also emphasizes that not only do the terms interreligious and interfaith not exist in the premodern world, but the same is true for our present-day usage of religion. Ultimately, the chapter discusses the instances of and ideas about conversation/debate/dialogue among various religious groups or individuals that, whether intentionally or not, resulted in mutual understanding or at least bear witness to “religious others” interacting and intellectually taking stock of one another.

Plantation as Mission: American Indians, Enslaved Africans, and Jesuit Missionaries in Maryland

Jesuit endeavors in Maryland are difficult to categorize as either missions or plantations. Archaeological sites associated with the Maryland Mission/ Province bear similarities to Jesuit mission sites in New France as well as plantations in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is clear that in Maryland, the Jesuits did not enforce a distinction between missions as places of conversion and plantations as sites of capitalist production. Moreover, people of American Indian, African, and European ancestry have been connected with Maryland’s Jesuit plantations throughout their history. Archaeological evidence of Indian missions in Maryland—however fragmented—contributes to a narrative of the Maryland mission that is at odds with prevailing nineteenth- and twentieth-century histories. Archaeology demonstrates the importance of critically reflecting on available historical evidence, including a historiographic focus on either mission or plantation, on the written history of Jesuits in the Americas. Furthermore, historical archaeologists must reconceptualize missions as both places and practices.

Introduction: The Archaeology of Jesuit Sites in the Americas

The archaeological record of Jesuit sites in the Americas preserves an essential resource for the study of daily life among individuals in the Jesuit sphere of influence. The full potential of an archaeological synthesis of these sites has yet to be realized, since systematic excavations have occurred at only a relatively small number of Jesuit sites in the American continents and the Caribbean. This essay serves to introduce a collection of five archaeological case studies and a conclusion, which show how archaeology complements the written histories of Jesuits from Nasca to New France. These case studies address several major themes, including the definition of mission sites, scales of analysis, the nature of missionary “success,” and overcoming historical silences. In particular, they articulate the influence of Jesuit missionaries on the material worlds of numerous cosmopolitan communities of colonists, enslaved Africans, and American Indians.

Jesuit Missionaries and Enslavement at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century: An Assessment from the Loyola Plantation in French Guiana

We present an overview of the archaeological research carried out on a sugar plantation operated by the Jesuits in French Guiana. The Jesuits’ production was exported to Europe to provide funds to develop their missions among Native people living in French Guiana and Amazonia. We present a brief history of the plantation and discuss the place the missionaries occupied in the colonial venture and their role in the economy of the colony. Loyola was a large and successful plantation compared with other plantations in French Guiana, and its success rested on the exploitation of enslaved labor. Recent research on the area covered by the plantation storehouse, its chapel, and the forecourt in front has allowed us to reassess our initial interpretation of the chronology and development of the plantation. In doing so, we realized that the Jesuits rigorously conformed to the architectural principles of the Enlightenment to symbolize their prestige in the colony.

The First Evangelization of Indigenous Peoples of New France: The Radical Way to Martyrdom of Jesuit Missionaries

The French Jesuits played a significant role in the first evangelization of the indigenous peoples of North America in the early 17th century. They focused on the evangelization of the Huron and Iroquois tribes which remained in constant conflict with each other. In their work they cut themselves off from the commercial interests of colonial countries, especially of France. After a dozen or so years, they were already able to convey evangelical values in tribal languages, being firmly immersed in the local culture. Thus, they were precursors of the inculturation of the Gospel. The missionaries were characterized by deep Christological spirituality, founded on contemplation of the cross, and, therefore, able to endure boldly the hardships of evangelization. As the result of the vile strategies of colonial powers stirring up tribal disputes, they faced numerous misfortunes, and, ultimately, many of them suffered martyrdom. Consequently, their missionary effort became a path to personal holiness and an irreplaceable contribution to the strengthening of the newly established Church communities on the American soil.

Transmission of Renaissance herbal images to China: the Beitang copy of Mattioli’s commentaries on Dioscorides and its annotations

The Beitang Collection, heritage of a seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit library in Beijing now housed in the National Library of China, contains an incomplete copy of Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s commentary on an Italian edition of Pedanius Dioscorides's De materia medica (1568) bearing extensive annotations in Chinese. Two hundred odd plant and animal names in a northern Chinese patois were recorded alongside illustrations, creating a rare record of seventeenth-century Chinese folk knowledge and of Sino-Western interaction in the field of natural history. Based on close analysis of the annotations and other contemporary sources, we argue that the annotations were probably made in Beijing by one or more Chinese low-level literati and Jesuit missionaries during the first two decades of the seventeenth century. We also conclude that the annotations were most likely directed at a Chinese audience, to whom the Jesuits intended to illustrate European craftsmanship using Mattioli’s images. This document probably constitutes the earliest known evidence of Jesuits' attempts at transmitting the art of European natural history drawings to China.

The Jesuits and the Globalization of the Renaissance

Following a brief discussion of comparative and entangled history, and of the extension of studies of the Renaissance to the world beyond Europe, this article focusses on the Jesuits as carriers of the ideas and forms of the European Renaissance to their mission stations in Asia and the Americas. In their attempts to adapt or ‘accommodate’ Christianity to the cultures of the peoples that they were attempting to convert, Jesuit missionaries made use of Renaissance humanism, rhetoric, grammar and the concern with manners and customs that was later known as ethnography. The missionaries also made use of art and architecture in the Renaissance style to reinforce the Christian message. Their use of local craftsmen had the unintended consequence of introducing new elements into this western style, producing a hybrid art. However, without wanting it or even knowing it, the Jesuits prepared the way for the later reception of western art in India, China and Japan.