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Columbia Studies in International and Global History
Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled: A Seventeenth-Century Chinese Christian and His Conflicted Worlds
Born into a low-level literati family in the port city of Ningbo, the seventeenth-century Chinese Christian convert Zhu Zongyuan likely never left his home province. Yet Zhu nonetheless led a remarkably globally connected life. His relations with the outside world, ranging from scholarly activities to involvement with globalizing Catholicism, put him in contact with a complex and contradictory set of foreign and domestic forces.
In Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled, Dominic Sachsenmaier explores the mid-seventeenth-century world and the worldwide flows of ideas through the lens of Zhu's life, combining the local, regional, and global. Taking particular aspects of Zhu's multiple belongings as a starting point, Sachsenmaier analyzes the contexts that framed his worlds as he balanced a local life and his border-crossing faith. At the local level, the book pays attention to the intellectual, political, and social environments of late Ming and early Qing society, including Confucian learning and the Manchu conquest, questioning the role of ethnic and religious identities. At the global level, it considers how individuals like Zhu were situated within the history of organizations and power structures such as the Catholic Church and early modern empires amid larger transformations and encounters. A strikingly original work, this book is a major contribution to East Asian, transnational, and global history, with important implications for historical approaches and methodologies.
In Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled, Dominic Sachsenmaier explores the mid-seventeenth-century world and the worldwide flows of ideas through the lens of Zhu's life, combining the local, regional, and global. Taking particular aspects of Zhu's multiple belongings as a starting point, Sachsenmaier analyzes the contexts that framed his worlds as he balanced a local life and his border-crossing faith. At the local level, the book pays attention to the intellectual, political, and social environments of late Ming and early Qing society, including Confucian learning and the Manchu conquest, questioning the role of ethnic and religious identities. At the global level, it considers how individuals like Zhu were situated within the history of organizations and power structures such as the Catholic Church and early modern empires amid larger transformations and encounters. A strikingly original work, this book is a major contribution to East Asian, transnational, and global history, with important implications for historical approaches and methodologies.
280 pages, Hardcover
First published May 29, 2018
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June 19, 2020
Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled focuses on a Chinese Christian convert in seventeenth-century Ningbo (Zhu Zongyuan) to show early modern entanglements between China (in the period of Ming-Qing transition) and Europe (the Jesuit networks to be exact) that led to his conversion and writings.
On the one hand, China in the mid and late seventeenth century was undergoing intensified commercialization, resulting largely from the inflow of Spanish silver of Bolivia. Portuguese and other European traders, and missionaries, resided in coastal China in the 1600s. It was also a period of internal crisis and dynastic transition. Degree from imperial examination no longer guaranteed entry into bureaucratic apparatus, and the distinction between the gentry and merchants blurred. There was also an increased emphasis on direct relationships between an individual and the teachings rather than classical methods of textual interpretations.
On the other hand, Jesuits were extending their presence in East Asia. They followed a hierarchical organizational structure that had a clear focal point (Rome, or the structure of the Society of Jesus), but could not strictly replicate such institutional makeup in China. Jesuits were thinly spread out in China, and faced a strong central state; they had to accommodate local practices such as ancestor 'worship' rituals that were interpreted as symbolic ats. At the same time, Jesuit missionaries had to make sure that such flexibility didn't go too far. It's telling that, as the author points out, local Chinese Christians were excluded from the ranks of the clergy, regardless of the universalizing impulse of Christianity.
Zhu Zongyuan was one of the lower-ranking degree holders who never seems to have traveled outside of his home, but associated himself with Jesuit/Dominican missionaries and wrote texts that answered questions about Christianity. He posited Christianity as an extension of Confucianism, which unlike Confucianism resolved the question of life and death, and situated Confucianism as a part of global currents of thought rather than an exclusive feature of China. He drew on select understandings of Confucian exegesis to universalize China (i.e. relativizing the divide between 'Zhong' and 'Waiguo' and devalue distance/geography as a determinant factor of what qualifies as 'zhong' or 'hua'.) Interestingly, Europe was idealized as lands free of sin and abundant in fertile soil and natural resources.
This book is about an individual (Zhu Zongyuan), but it is much more than that. Global connections in the early modern Eurasian world come into focus, but through a very much rooted person who audaciously proposed all sorts of creative interpretations and worldviews.
On the one hand, China in the mid and late seventeenth century was undergoing intensified commercialization, resulting largely from the inflow of Spanish silver of Bolivia. Portuguese and other European traders, and missionaries, resided in coastal China in the 1600s. It was also a period of internal crisis and dynastic transition. Degree from imperial examination no longer guaranteed entry into bureaucratic apparatus, and the distinction between the gentry and merchants blurred. There was also an increased emphasis on direct relationships between an individual and the teachings rather than classical methods of textual interpretations.
On the other hand, Jesuits were extending their presence in East Asia. They followed a hierarchical organizational structure that had a clear focal point (Rome, or the structure of the Society of Jesus), but could not strictly replicate such institutional makeup in China. Jesuits were thinly spread out in China, and faced a strong central state; they had to accommodate local practices such as ancestor 'worship' rituals that were interpreted as symbolic ats. At the same time, Jesuit missionaries had to make sure that such flexibility didn't go too far. It's telling that, as the author points out, local Chinese Christians were excluded from the ranks of the clergy, regardless of the universalizing impulse of Christianity.
Zhu Zongyuan was one of the lower-ranking degree holders who never seems to have traveled outside of his home, but associated himself with Jesuit/Dominican missionaries and wrote texts that answered questions about Christianity. He posited Christianity as an extension of Confucianism, which unlike Confucianism resolved the question of life and death, and situated Confucianism as a part of global currents of thought rather than an exclusive feature of China. He drew on select understandings of Confucian exegesis to universalize China (i.e. relativizing the divide between 'Zhong' and 'Waiguo' and devalue distance/geography as a determinant factor of what qualifies as 'zhong' or 'hua'.) Interestingly, Europe was idealized as lands free of sin and abundant in fertile soil and natural resources.
This book is about an individual (Zhu Zongyuan), but it is much more than that. Global connections in the early modern Eurasian world come into focus, but through a very much rooted person who audaciously proposed all sorts of creative interpretations and worldviews.
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