Florence C. Hsia - Sojourners in a Strange Land: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China: Jesuits and Their Scientific Missions in Late Imperial China

This study has its roots in a remarkable senior seminar on the comparative history of science in Europe and China that was directed by Willard J. Peterson and Michael S. Mahoney, who together first led me to think about early modern Jesuits and their peregrinations through landscapes both sacred and profane. I hope that Michael Mahoney, who passed away in the summer of 2008, would have enjoyed reading it. Noel M. Swerdlow encouraged me to pursue my initial interest in the life and work of Antoine Gaubil. He provided invaluable advice and criticism, as did Guy Alitto and Daniel Garber, who also helped me think outside the confines of European history and the history of science, along with Mordechai Feingold. I would also like to thank Lorraine Daston and Robert J. Richards for much stimulating conversation and good cheer over the years, and my colleagues at the University of WisconsinMadison, especially Ron Numbers and Robin Rider, for their encouragement.

I have presented portions of this book to audiences at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Kings College London, Boston College, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Johns Hopkins University, and also at meetings of the History of Science Society, the French Historical Society, and the International Congress of History of Science. For their many insights and thoughtful queries, I would especially like to thank Ken Adler, John Carson, Nathaniel Comfort, Nicholas Dew, Benjamin Elman, Paula Findlen, Mary Fissell, Anne Goldgar, Anthony Grafton, Marta Hanson, Steven J. Harris, Lillian Hoddeson, David Hull, Donald R. Kelley, Catherine Jami, T.J.A. Le Goff, Morris Low, Lawrence Principe, John W. OMalley, Harry M. Marks, Antonella Romano, and Nicolas Standaert. I would also like to thank Gabriele Zu Rhein for an unexpected and delightful discussion about Johann Adam Schall von Bell, and for her equally unexpected and generous gift: an engraving of Schall as head of the imperial Astronomical Bureau. Special thanks are due as well to the anonymous readers from the University of Chicago Press; to Renaldo Migaldi for his meticulous copyediting; and above all to my editor, Karen Merikangas Darling, for many invaluable comments and suggestions for refining the manuscript.

This project has been generously supported during its evolution. My dissertation research was funded by a University of Chicago Century Fellowship, an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities (199394), and a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship (199497), with research travel supported by an Eric Cochrane Traveling Fellowship (1995) and the Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine. Further research was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University, the University of WisconsinMadison Graduate School Research Committee, an ACLS/Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship (200304), and an NSF Science and Technology Studies Scholars Award (no. SES-0324181, 200305). The Department of History at Princeton University kindly appointed me a visiting fellow from 2003 to 2004. A final research trip was funded by an EDS-Stewart Research Grant from the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at the University of San Francisco (2005-06).

Librarians and archivists at the University of Chicago, the University of WisconsinMadison, the Adler Planetarium, the Newberry Library, the Ohio State University, the University of Missouri, the New York Public Library, the Ricci Institute in San Francisco, the Bibliothque Nationale de France, the Archives Nationales in Paris, the Bibliothque de lObservatoire de Paris, the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbttel, and the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu have been extraordinarily helpful in my quest for texts, both script and print. Sections of for providing and granting permission to reproduce images from their holdings.

In addition to such institutional and professional support, I have been fortunate in receiving encouragement of a more personal nature throughout the writing of this book. I would especially like to thank Shirley Austin and George H. Austin, whose great hospitality has truly given me a home away from home in my travels; Susan Paul and Daniel Garber, whose clafoutis, gravlax, and deep generosity of spirit have sustained me over the years; Rachana Kamtekar, whose unfailing optimism and good citizenship in the Republic of Letters have been both a support and an inspiration; and, last but by no means least, Katy Abramson, whose intellectual and professional commitment to that Scottish infidel, David Hume, has not prevented her from reading and commenting on this book in its many iterations, nor from supporting me in the course of a long and often difficult journey.