China and Maritime Europe, 15001800
China and Maritime Europe, 15001800 , looks at early modern China in some of its most complicated and intriguing relations with a world of increasing global interconnection. New World silver, Chinese tea, Jesuit astronomers at the Chinese court, and merchants and marauders of all kinds play important roles here. Although pieces of these stories have been told before, these chapters provide the most comprehensive and clearest summaries available, based on sources in Chinese and in European languages, making this information accessible to students and scholars interested in the growing connections among continents and civilizations in the early modern period.
John E. Wills, Jr., is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Southern California. He is the author of many books, articles, and chapters on China.
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Cambridge University Press 2011
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First published 2011
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data
Wills, John E. (John Elliot), 1936
China and maritime Europe, 15001800 : trade, settlement, diplomacy, and missions / John E. Wills, Jr.
p. cm.
isbn 978-0-521-43260-3 (hbk.) isbn 978-0-521-17945-4 (pbk.)
1. Europe Relations China. 2. China Relations Europe. 3. China
History Ming dynasty, 13681644. 4. China History Qing dynasty
16441912. 5. China Commerce Europe. 6. Europe Commerce
China. 7. Missions China History. 8. Europe History, Naval. I. Title.
d34.c6w55 2010
303.48251040903dc22 2010031361
isbn 978-0-521-43260-3 Hardback
isbn 978-0-521-17945-4 Paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Preface
The essays collected in this volume are revised versions of chapters originally prepared for publication in volumes 8 and 9 of The Cambridge History of China . The authors have undertaken this separate publication because they believe their subjects are connected with each other in ways that might not be apparent in the contexts of the two Cambridge History volumes and because they wish to make them more accessible to scholars who might not notice their appearance in those volumes and would appreciate having access to them in this more compact and convenient format. We have particularly in mind our colleagues in various areas of study of early modern European relations with Asia who do not specialize in the study of China scholars of the Islamic world, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Japan, and Korea including historians of Christian missions elsewhere in Asia. All of these studies are in the midst of vigorous revivals. Specialized conferences and publications abound, so that we are likely to meet these intellectual collaborators at a meeting in Macao or Pondicherry, at a Vasco da Gama quincentenary conference in Australia, or at a meeting in Europe focused on the career of a particular missionary. Our studies and those of all these colleagues are contributing more or less deliberately to the very exciting efforts to develop a non-Eurocentric historiography of the early modern world.
Our chapters offer much context, data, and bibliographic guidance for those who wish to make further contributions to the already flourishing literature on early modern world trade, in which Chinas provision of high-quality manufactures and tea and its nearly insatiable appetite for silver were important driving forces. They will also be of use to others working on world history topics that have been energetically discussed only very recently, such as the comparison of the internal authority structures and foreign relations of state systems, the indigenization of religions of foreign origins, and the dynamics of multiethnic societies, especially those in port cities. We hope that our colleagues working on all these themes in relation to China and other parts of Asia will find in this book some small payment on the great debt we owe them for their recent sophisticated studies and summaries. Finally, we have enjoyed contacts with and encouragement from colleagues in the Peoples Republic of China in ways we could scarcely imagine when we began work on these chapters in the 1980s. Chinese scholars long were frustrated by the difficulties of learning foreign languages and obtaining access to non-Chinese sources, but a younger generation is overcoming these obstacles and becoming full participants in the international networks of scholarship on the topics discussed in this volume. Here too we hope the volume will be of use in maintaining dialogue and establishing some sound basic narratives.
Versions of the first and second chapters of this book appeared in volume 8 of The Cambridge History of China . The author of have added some references to recent scholarship. We have made every effort to keep our bibliographies up to date and to revise our expositions and analyses in the light of the most recent scholarship. We hope readers will use these pointers to explore further and to keep up with emerging work. For missionary-related topics, we are especially happy to be able to refer readers to the treasures of information and interpretation in Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China: Volume One: 6351800 .
