Asia in the Making of Europe, Volume III: A Century of Advance. Book 4: East Asia

By Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. Van Kley

This monumental series, acclaimed as a "masterpiece of comprehensive scholarship" in the New York Times Book Review, reveals the impact of Asia's high civilizations on the development of modern Western society. The authors examine the ways in which European encounters with Asia have altered the development of Western society, art, literature, science, and religion since the Renaissance.

In Volume III: A Century of Advance, the authors have researched seventeenth-century European writings on Asia in an effort to understand how contemporaries saw Asian societies and peoples.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Release date: Jul 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9780226467009

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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 1993 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. Published 1993

Paperback edition 1998

Printed in the United States of America

98        5  4  3  2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Revised for volume 3)

Lach, Donald F. (Donald Frederick), 1917–

Asia in the making of Europe.

Vol. 3 -by Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. Van Kley.

Includes bibliographies and indexes.

Contents: v. 1. The century of discovery. 2.v.—v. 2. A century of wonder. Book 1. The visual arts. Book 2. The literary arts. Book 3. The scholarly disciplines. 3. v.—v. 3. A century of advance. Book 1. Trade, missions, literature. Book 2. South Asia. Book 3. Southeast Asia. Book 4. East Asia. 4 v.

1. Europe—Civilization—Oriental influences.

2. Asia—History. 3. Asia—Discovery and exploration.

I. Van Kley, Edwin J. II. Title.

CB203.L32       303.48’2405’0903         64-19848

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This publication has been supported by a grant

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48 —1992.

ASIA

IN THE MAKING OF EUROPE

DONALD F. LACH and EDWIN J. VAN KLEY

VOLUME

III

A Century of Advance

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

CHICAGO AND LONDON

Contents

BOOK FOUR

(PART III CONTINUED)

List of Abbreviations

Note to Illustrations

List of Illustrations

List of Maps

Chapter XX: CHINA: THE LATE MING DYNASTY

1. Jesuit Letterbooks, Ethnohistories, and Travelogues

2. Geography, Climate, and Names

3. Government and Administration

4. Economic Life

5. Society and Customs

6. Intellectual Life

7. Religion and Philosophy

Chapter XXI: CHINA: THE EARLY CH’ING DYNASTY

1. The Manchu Conquest

2. The Post-Conquest Literature

3. The Land and Its People

4. Government and Administration

5. Intellectual Life

6. Religion and Philosophy

Chapter XXII: CHINA’S PERIPHERY

1. Inner Asia

A. Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and Eastern Siberia

B. Mongolia and Central Asia

2. Tibet

3. Korea

4. Formosa (Taiwan)

Chapter XXIII: JAPAN

1. Missionary Reports to 1650

2. English and Dutch Descriptions before 1650

3. Post-1650 Reports

Chapter XXIV: EPILOGUE: A COMPOSITE PICTURE

General Bibliography

Reference Materials

Source Materials

Jesuit Letterbooks

Chapter Bibliographies

Notes

Cumulative Index

(Contents of other books in Volume III)

BOOK ONE

PART I

The Continuing Expansion in the East

Introduction

Chapter I: EMPIRE AND TRADE

1. The Iberian Maritime Empire of the East

2. Iberia’s Shrinking Trade

3. The Dutch Empire

4. Jan Company’s Trade

5. The English East India Company

6. The Lesser Companies

7. European-Asian Economic Relations at Century’s End

Appendix: Spice Prices and Quantities in the Seventeenth Century

Chapter II: THE CHRISTIAN MISSION

1. The Friars of the Padroado

2. The Padroado Jesuits in South Asia

3. The Padroado Jesuits in East Asia

4. The Spanish Patronato of the East

5. Propaganda Fide (1622), Missions Etrangères (1664), and the Jesuits

6. The Protestant Missions

Appendix: The Archbishops of Goa in the Seventeenth Century

PART II

The Printed Word

Introduction

Chapter III: THE IBERIAN LITERATURE

1. Exploration, Conquest, and Mission Stations

2. A Nervous Era of Peace, 1609-21

3. Imperial Breakdown in Europe and Asia, 1621-41

4. The Restoration Era, 1641-1700

Chapter IV: THE ITALIAN LITERATURE

1. The Jesuit Letters to Mid-Century

2. New Horizons and Old Polemics

Chapter V: THE FRENCH LITERATURE

1. The Jesuit Letters and the Pre-Company Voyages

2. The Paris Society of Foreign Missions and the French East India Company

3. Siam and China

Chapter VI: THE NETHERLANDISH LITERATURE

1. Early Voyages to the East Indies, 1597-1625

2. Penetrations beyond the East Indies to 1645

3. Isaac Commelin’s Begin ende Voortgangh (1645)

4. New Horizons and Dimensions, 1646-71

5. Fin de siècle: Decline

Chapter VII: THE GERMAN AND DANISH LITERATURE

1. Jesuit Letterbooks and Relations to Mid-Century

2. Travel Collections to Mid-Century

3. A Limited Revival, 1650-1700

Chapter VIII: THE ENGLISH LITERATURE

1. The First Generation, 1600-1626

2. The Turbulent Middle Years, 1630-80

3. A Late Harvest, 1680-1700

BOOK TWO

PART III

The European Images of Asia

Introduction

Chapter IX: THE MUGHUL EMPIRE BEFORE AURANGZIB

1. The English and Dutch Profile: First Generation

2. The Mughul Court to 1618

3. Gujarat Unveiled

4. Shah Jahan (r. 1627-58) and His Empire

5. Shah Jahan and His Sons

Chapter X: THE EMPIRE OF AURANGZIB

1. The Court, the Nobility, and the Army

2. The Provinces

3. Surat

4. Bombay and the Portuguese Ports

5. The Deccan Wars, Rajputs, and Sivaji

6. Religious Beliefs and Practices

7. Economy and Society

Chapter XI: FROM GOA TO CAPE COMORIN

1. Goa, the Metropole

2. Bijapur

3. Kanara

4. Malabar and the Portuguese

5. Malabar and the Dutch

Chapter XII: INSULAR SOUTH ASIA

1. The Maldive and Laccadive Archipelagoes

2. Ceylon

A. Sources

B. The Land and Its Products

C. Government and Society

Chapter XIII: COROMANDEL

1. The Jesuit Enterprises

2. The Advent of the Dutch and English

3. Hinduism at Pulicat (Tamilnadu)

4. The Downfall of Two Empires: Vijayanagar and Golconda

Appendix: The Castes of South Asia in the Seventeenth Century (According to European Authors)

BOOK THREE

(PART III CONTINUED)

Chapter XIV: CONTINENTAL SOUTHEAST ASIA: MALAYA, PEGU, ARAKAN, CAMBODIA, AND LAOS

1. Malaya

2. Pegu and Arakan

3. Cambodia and Laos

Chapter XV: SIAM

1. Iberian and Dutch Accounts

2. Narai (r. 1656-88) and the French

3. The Physical Environment

4. State Service and Administration

5. Society, Culture, and Buddhism

Chapter XVI: VIETNAM

1. First Notices

2. The Nguyên and the Christians

3. Tongking under the Trinh

Chapter XVII: INSULINDIA: THE WESTERN ARCHIPELAGO

1. Java

A. Development of the Literature

B. Geography and the Landscape

C. Batavia, the Metropole and Its Hinterland

D. Character, Customs, Society, and Culture

E. Political Life

F. Economics and Trade

2. Bali

3. Sumatra

A. Placement, Climate, and Products

B. Acheh and Other Towns

C. Populace, Customs, and Beliefs

D. Economy and Polity

4. Borneo

Chapter XVIII: INSULINDIA: THE EASTERN ARCHIPELAGO AND THE AUSTRAL LANDS

1. The Moluccas

2. Amboina (Ambon)

3. The Bandas

4. Celebes

5. The Lesser Sundas

6. Insular Southeast Asia’s Eastern and Southern Periphery: New Guinea, the Pacific Islands, and Australia

A. New Guinea and Neighboring Islands

B. Australia and New Zealand

Chapter XIX: THE PHILIPPINES AND THE MARIANAS (LADRONES)

1. Indios (Filipinos) and Spaniards

2. Deeper Penetrations

3. Mindanao and Jolo

4. Guam and the Marianas (Ladrones)

Abbreviations

A Note to the Illustrations

Study of the illustrations of Asia published in seventeenth-century Europe shows that the artists and illustrators tried in most cases to depict reality when they had the sources, such as sketches from the men in the field or the portable objects brought to Europe—plants, animals, costumes, paintings, porcelains, and so on. Many of the engravings based on sketches and paintings are convincing in their reality, such as the depiction of the Potala palace in Lhasa (pl. 384), the portrait of the Old Viceroy of Kwangtung (pl. 323), and the drawings of Siamese and Chinese boats. A number of Asian objects—Chinese scroll paintings, a Buddhist prayer wheel, and small animals—appeared in European engravings and paintings for the first time. Asians, like the Siamese emissaries to France, were sketched from life in Europe and their portraits engraved.

When sources were lacking, the illustrators and artists filled in the gaps in their knowledge by following literary texts, or by producing imaginary depictions, including maps. The illustrations of Japan, for example, are far more fantastic than those depicting other places, perhaps because Japan so stringently limited intercourse over much of the century. Printing-house engravers frequently borrowed illustrations from earlier editions and often improved upon them by adding their own touches which had the effect of Europeanizing them.

Illustrations were translated along with texts in various ways. If the publisher of a translation had close relations with the original publisher or printer he might borrow the original copperplate engravings or have the original publisher pull prints from the original plates to be bound with the translated pages. Engraved captions could be rubbed out of the plate and redone in the new language, although many printers did not bother to do so. Lacking the cooperation of the original printers, new engravings could still be made from a print. The simplest method was to place the print face down on the varnished and waxed copper plate to be engraved and then to rub the back of the print causing the ink from the print to adhere to the waxed surface of the plate. The resulting image was then used to engrave, or etch with nitric acid, the new plate, and being reversed it would print exactly as the original version printed. If the engraver wanted to avoid damaging the print, however, which he might well need to finish the engraving, he would use a thin sheet of paper dusted with black lead or black chalk to transfer the image from the print to the new copper plate. He might further protect the print by putting oiled paper on top of it while he traced the picture. This procedure worked whether the print was face down or face up against the plate. In fact it was easier to trace the picture if the print were face up, in which case the new plate would be etched in reverse of the original plate. For a seventeenth-century description of the ways in which new plates could be etched from prints see William Faithorne, The Art of Graveing and Etching (New York, 1970), pp. 41–44 (first edition, London, 1662). See also Coolie Verner, Copperplate Printing, in David Woodward (ed.), Five Centuries of Map Printing (Chicago, 1975), p. 53. We have included a number of illustrations that were borrowed by one printer from another: see, for example, plates 113 and 114; 117, 118, 121; 174; 312 and 313; 412 and 413;.419–21.

Most of the following illustrations were taken from seventeenth-century books held in the Department of Special Collections in the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago. Others have been obtained from libraries and archives in Europe and the United States, which have kindly granted us permission to reproduce them. Wherever possible, efforts are made in the captions to analyze the illustrations and to provide relevant collateral information whenever such was available.

Almost all of the four hundred or so illustrations were reproduced from the photographs taken (or retaken) by Alma Lach, an inveterate photographer and cookbook author. We were also aided and abetted by the personnel of the Special Collections department—especially the late Robert Rosenthal, Daniel Meyer, and Kim Coventry-—in locating the illustrations and in preparing them for photography. Father Harrie A. Vanderstappen, professor emeritus of Far Eastern art at the University of Chicago and a man endowed with marvelous sight and insight, helped us to analyze the illustrations relating to East Asia. C. M. Naim of the Department of South Asian Languages at the University of Chicago likewise contributed generously of his skills, particularly with reference to the Mughul seals (pls. 117, 118, and 121 here depicted. The China illustrations have benefited from the contributions of Ma Tai-loi and Tai Wen-pai of the East Asian Collection of the Regenstein Library and of Zhijia Shen who generously gave freely of her time and knowledge. The captions for the Japan illustrations have been improved by the gracious efforts of Yoko Kuki of the East Asian Collection of the Regenstein Library. Tetsuo Najita of Chicago’s History Department lent a hand in the preparation of the caption for pl. 432. Ann Adams and Francis Dowley of Chicago’s Art Department helped us to analyze some of the engravings, especially those prepared by Dutch illustrators.

To all of these generous scholars we express our sincere gratitude for their contributions to the illustration program.

Illustrations

BOOK ONE

FOLLOWING PAGE 338

1. Mid-seventeenth-century map of Asia

2. Willem Blaeu’s map of Asia

3. Map of the Mughul Empire, from Dapper’s Asia, 1681

4. South and Southeast Asia, from Johan Blaeu’s Atlas major, 1662

5. Ceylon and the Maldives, from Sanson d’Abbeville’s L’Asie, 1652

6. Continental Southeast Asia, from Morden’s Geography Rectified, 1688

7. Course of the Menam, from La Loubère’s Du royaume de Siam, 1691

8. Malacca and its environs, from Dampier’s Voyages, 1700

9. The Moluccas, from Blaeu’s Atlas major

10. Asia from Bay of Bengal to the Marianas, from Thévenot’s Relations, 1666

11. Japan and Korea, from Blaeu’s Atlas major

12. Harbor of Surat

13. Dutch factory at Surat

14. Market at Goa

15. English fort at Bombay

16. Harbor and wharf of Arakan

17. Batavia, ca. 1655

18. Amboina and its inhabitants

19. Dutch factory at Banda

20. Tidore and its fort

21. Dutch envoys in Cambodia

22. Fort Zeelandia in Taiwan

23. Dutch ambassadors in Peking, 1656

24. Macao

25. Canton

26. Dutch factory at Hirado

27. Dutch factory on Deshima

28. Palanquins

29. Merchants of Bantam

30. Man and woman of Goa

31. Chinese merchant couple

32. Dutch fleet before Bantam in 1596

33. Thee (tea), or cha, bush

34. King of Ternate’s banquet for the Dutch, 1601

35. Coins of Siam

36. 1601 Malay-Latin vocabulary

37. 1672 Oriental-Italian vocabulary

38. Warehouse and shipyard of Dutch East India Company in Amsterdam

39. Old East India House in London

40. East India House in Amsterdam

41. East Indian birds

42. Japanese converts suspended head down

43. Execution of three Japanese converts

44. A Japanese crucifixion

45. Preparation for an execution by suspension

46. Persecution of Christians in Japan

47. Christians being burned alive

48. Suspension of a Christian

49. Torture of Christians at Arima

50. Portrait of Johann Adam Schall as court mandarin

51. Miraculous cross of Thomas the Apostle at Mylapore

52. Portrait of Matteo Ricci and his convert Paul

53. Portrait of Nicolas Trigault

54. Frontispiece, Gian Filippo de Marini, Delle missioni, 1663

55. Title page, Trigault, Christiana expeditione, 1615

56. Title page, Trigault, Christianis triumphis, 1623

57. Title page, Luis de Guzman, Historia de las missiones, 1601

58. Title page, Declaration Given by the Chinese Emperour Kam Hi in the Year 1700

59. Title page, Nicolas Pimenta, Epistola, 1601

60. Title page, Johann Adam Schall, Historica relatio, 1672

61. Title page, Trigault, Vita Gasparis Barzaei, 1610

62. Title page and another page from Antonio de Gouvea, Innocentia victrix, 1671

63. Portrait of Philippus Baldaeus

64. Portrait of Wouter Schouten

65. Portrait of Johann Nieuhof

66. Portrait of Alvarez Semedo

67. Portrait of Jean de Thévenot

68. Frontispiece, Olfert Dapper, Asia, 1681

69. Frontispiece, Johann Nieuhof, Gesandtschafft, 1666

70. Frontispiece, J. T. and J. I. De Bry, India orientalis, 1601

71. Frontispiece, Johann von der Behr, Diarium, 1669

72. Title page of Regni Chinensis descriptio, with Chinese landscape painting, 1639

73. Title page, Edward Terry, Voyage to East India, 1655

74. Title page, Johan van Twist, Generale beschrijvinge van Indien, 1648

75. Title page, Johan Albrecht von Mandelslo, Ein Schreiben, 1645

76. Title page, Philippe de Sainte-Trinité, Orientalische Reisebeschreibung, 1671

77. Frontispiece, ibid.

78. Title page, Giuseppe di Santa Maria Sebastiani, Seconde speditione, 1672

79. Title page, Giovanni Filippo Marini, Historia, 1665

80. Title page, Louis Le Compte, Memoirs and Observations, 1697

81. Title page, Robert Knox, Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, 1681

82. Title page, Adam Olearius, Offt begehrte Beschreibung der cewen orientalischen Reise, 1647

83. Title page, Bernhard Varen, Descriptio Regni Japoniae et Siam, 1673

84. Title page, Simon de La Loubère, Du royaume de Siam, 1691

85. Title page, Gabriel Dellon, History of the Inquisition at Goa, 1688

86. Title page, Athanasius Kircher, China illustrata, 1667

87. Portrait of Athanasius Kircher

88. Title page, Johann Jacob Saar, Ost-Indianische funfzehen-jährige Kriegs-Dienste, 1672

89. Title page, Abbé Carré, Voyage des Indes Orientales, 1699

90. Title page, Pietro Della Valle, Travels, 1665

91. Title page, Johann von der Behr, Diarium, oder Tage-Buch, 1668

92. Title page, Gotthard Arthus, Historia Indiae Orientalis, 1668

93. Title page, David Haex, Dictionarium Malaico-Latinum et Latino-Malaicum, 1631

94. Title page, Nicolaas Witsen, Noord en Oost Tartarye, 1692

95. Title page, Thomas Herbert, Some Yeares Travels, 1638

96. Title page, A. and J. Churchill, Collection of Voyages and Travels, 1744

97. Frontispiece, Arnoldus Montanus, Die Gesantschaften an die Keiser van Japan, 1669

98. Title page, Willem Lodewyckszoon, Premier livre, 1609

99. Malay-Latin phrases from Haex’s Dictionarium

100. Malay-Latin wordlist (ibid.)

101. German-Malay wordlist from Dapper’s Beschreibung, 1681

102. Portrait of Edward Terry

103. Portrait of Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri

104. Portrait of Sir Thomas Roe

105. Portrait of Joris van Spilbergen

106. Portrait of Ove Gjedde

BOOK TWO

FOLLOWING PAGE 756

Introduction: The Mughul Empire on European Printed Maps

107. Map of the Mughul Empire, from Terry’s Voyage, 1655

108. Map of the Mughul Empire, from Sanson d’Abbeville’s L’Asie, 1652

109. Map of the Mughul Empire, from Blaeu’s Asia major, 1662

110. Map of the Mughul Empire, from Melchisédech Thévenot’s Relations, 1663

111. Map of Kashmir, from Bernier’s Voyages, 1723

112. Portrait of Akbar

113. Indian paintings of Jahangir, Khurram, and slave

114. The same Mughul miniatures in a French translation

115. Prince Salim, or Jahangir

116. Nur Mahal, Jahangir’s empress

117. Seal of Jahangir, from Purchas

118. Seal of Jahangir, by a French engraver

119. 120, 121. Portrait, standard, and seal of Jahangir

122. Aurangzib in camp

123. Mughul court at Agra

124. Woman and man of Surat

125. Court and throne of Great Mogul at Lahore

126. Wrestlers of Surat

127. Fakirs under a banyan tree

128. Means of transport in Sind

129. Elements of Sanskrit

130. Hook-swinging

131. Yogi austerities

132. Festival of Hassan and Hossein

133. Brahma, the Creator

Introduction to seventeenth-century printed maps of South India

134. Map of South India

135. Map of places in India

136. South India and its periphery

137. Frontispiece, Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede, Hortus indicus malabaricus, 1678

138. Frontispiece, Willem Piso, De Indiae utriusque re naturali et medica, 1658

139. Malabar (Tamil) alphabet

140. Malabar vowels

141. Malabar cyphers

142. Letter from Brahmans of Malabar in the Malayalam language

143. Letter of Emanuel Carneiro in Malayalam

144. Letter of Itti Achudem in Malayalam

145. Portrait of John Fryer

146. Title page, Fryer, A New Account, 1698

147. Specimen of Malabar script

148. The Zamorin’s palace at Calicut

149. The Zamorin and his palace

150. Ixora (Siva)

151. Ganesha, son of Siva

152. Ten avatars of Vishnu

153. Nareen, first avatar according to Kircher

154. Ramchandra, the Embodiment of Righteousness

155. Narseng, the Man-Lion avatar

156. The goddess Bhavani, the ninth avatar

157. The horse avatar

158. Vishnu: the fish incarnation, from Baldaeus

159. The tortoise incarnation

160. Boar incarnation

161. Man-Lion incarnation

162. The Dwarf, or fifth avatar

163. Rama-with-the-Ax

164. Ravana in Lanka: Ramachandra, the Embodiment of Righteousness

165. Eighth avatar: Krishna

166. Buddha as ninth avatar

167. Kalki, or tenth avatar

168. Frontispiece, Baldaeus, Afgoderye der Oost-Indische heydenen, 1672

169. Portrait of Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakestein

170. The Indian tamarind and papaya

171. Arabian jasmine

172. Snake-charmer of Malabar

173. Learning to write the alphabet in the sand

174. Map of Ceylon, ca. 1602

175. Map of Jaffna and adjacent islands

176. Map of Kandy on Ceylon

177. Map of the Maldives and Ceylon

178. Spilbergen and the king of Kandy

179. City of Kandy in 1602

180. Arms and seal of the king of Ceylon

181. The god of the king of Matecalo on Ceylon

182. Raja Sinha (Lion-King) of Kandy

183. Noble of Kandy

184. Cinnamon harvesting in Ceylon

185. Butter making in Ceylon

186. Sinhalese preparing for rice planting

187. On smoothing their fields

188. Treading out the rice

189. Treading out the rice indoors

190. Execution by elephant

191. Cremation in Ceylon

192. Drinking custom in Ceylon

193. Sinhalese pond fishing

194. Wild man of Ceylon

195. Talipot parasol of Ceylon

196. Title page, Abraham Roger, De open-deure tot het verborgen heydendom, 1651

197. Frontispiece, Roger, French translation, 1670

198. Title page, Daniel Havart, Op en Ondergangh van Cormandel, 1693

199. Hook-hanging

200. Brahman austerities

201. Sepulchre of the kings and princes of Golconda

202. Portrait of Sultan Muhammed Qutb

203. Portrait of Sultan Abdullah Qutb Shah

204. Portrait of Sultan Abu’l Hasan

205. Persian miniature portrait of Abu’l Hasan

206. Portrait of Akkana of Golconda

207. Sultan Abu’l Hasan visits the Dutch church at Masulipatam

208. Laurens Pit and the sultan

BOOK THREE FOLLOWING PAGE 1380

209. French map of Siam, 1691

210. King Narai of Siam on the royal elephant

211. Imperial three-tiered vase of gold filigree

212. Crocodile of Siam: anatomical description

213. Title page, Observations physiques et mathematiques, 1688

214. Mandarin’s balon (galley)

215. Noblemen’s ballon

216. Water-pipe smoked by the Moors of Siam

217. Siamese rhythmic musical instruments

218. Siamese song in Western notation

219. Siamese alphabets, Pali alphabets, Siamese numbers

220. Buddhist monastery in Siam

221. Siamese images of the Buddha

222. The three Siamese envoys to France, 1686

223. Second Siamese emissary

224. Third Siamese emissary

225. Reception of the Siamese emissaries by Louis XIV

226. Title page, Histoire de la revolution de Siam, 1691

227. Title page, Abbé de Choisy, Journal du voyage de Siam, 1687

228. Title page, Pierre Joseph D’Orleans, Histoire . . . de la revolution, 1692

229. Title page, Alexandre de Chaumont, Relation de l’ambassade, 1686

230. Audience hall of the king of Siam

231. Illustrative plate of 1693 showing maps of Ayut’ia and Bangkok, Siamese trees, plough, insect, and golden imperial vase

232. Map of India extra Gangem

233. Insulindia: Western archipelago

234. Map of Borneo, 1601

235. Map of the Moluccas, 1688

236. Map of the Moluccas, from Blaeu’s Atlas major, 1662

237. Map of Banda, 1609

238. Dutch map of Vietnam and Hainan Island, ca. 1660

239. Frontispiece, Vremde reyse inde coninckrycken Cambodia ende Louwen, 1669

240. Daniel Tavernier’s map of Tongking

241. Map recording the gradual uncovering of the Austral lands

242. Map of the Philippines and the Ladrones

243. Mrauk-u, royal capital of Arakan, in 1660

244. Procession of the queen of Patani

245. Royal palace of Tuban

246. French-Malay-Javan vocabulary, 1609

247. Makassar soldiers with blowpipes

248. Sketch of Bantam

249. Foreign merchants at Bantam

250. Javanese of Bantam on the way to market

251. Principal Chinese merchants at Bantam

252. Muslim legate from Mecca with governor of Bantam

253. Chinese shrine in Bantam

254. King of Bali in royal chariot drawn by white oxen

255. Gentleman of Bali on the move

256. Sumatran chief and his people

257. Javanese gong orchestra

258. Javanese dancers

259. Takraw, Malay football

260. Javanese cockfight

261. Mosque of Japara in Java

262. Harbor of Gamulamo in Ternate

263. The Tygers Graft, a canal street of Batavia

264. Batavia: betel and pynang garden

265. Batavia: Fort Ryswick

266. Soldier of the imperial guard in Tongking

267. Mandarin of Tongking

268. Fishing at Ternate

269. Indian salamander or gecko

270. A strange bat, or the flying fox

271. The melon tree, or the papaya

272. Close-up of the durian fruit

273. The Javanese rhinoceros

274. The dodo

275. Animals of the Indian Ocean islands

276. Emu, or cassowary

277. The Orang-Utan

278. Durians, banyan, and bamboo

279. Title page, Antonio de Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, 1609

280. Market at Bantam

281. Title page, Christophoro Borri, Cochin-China, 1633

282. Title page, Vremde geschiedenissen in de koninckrijcken van Cambodia en Louwen-lant, 1669

283. Title page, Sebastian Manrique, Itinerario de las missiones, 1653

BOOK FOUR

FOLLOWING PAGE 173O

284. Purchas’ map of China

285. Map of China and its eastern periphery (1652)

286. Martini’s map of China and its periphery

287. Map of China dated 1654

288. Map of China dated 1655

289. Couplet’s map of China

290. Kircher’s map of China

291. Nieuhof’s map of China

292. Map with route of Dutch embassy from Canton to Peking

293. Route of Dutch ambassadors in China

294. Frontispiece, Blaeu, Atlas major, Vol. X

295. Frontispiece, Martini, Novus atlas sinensis

296. Title page, Kircher, Chine illustrée

297. Title page, Blaeu, Atlas major, Vol. X

298. Portrait, Johann Nieuhof

299. Mysterious flying bridge of Shensi

300. The Great wall myth

301. Mountains of the Five Horses’ Heads

302. Map of Metropolitan Peking

303. Peking with Great Wall in the distance

304. City plan of Peking

305. Imperial city at Peking

306. Imperial throne in Peking

307. Observatory at Peking

308. Tartar Gate in the Great Wall near Hsi-ning

309. Confucius in the Imperial Academy

310. Johann Schall in Mandarin dress

311. Shun-chih, the first Manchu emperor

312. Portrait of the K’ang-hsi emperor published 1697

313. Portrait of the K’ang-hsi emperor published 1710

314. Reception of emissaries at the imperial court

315. Mughul envoys to Peking

316. 317. Two Chinese noble ladies

318. Nanking Province

319. Vista of Nanking

320. Street in Nanking, 1656

321. Porcelain Pagoda of Nanking

322. Banquet in honor of Dutch emissaries

323. Portrait of Old Viceroy of Kwangtung

324. Xaocheu, or Sucheu

325. Chinese map of Chekiang Province

326. Nangan (Nan-an) in Kiangsi Province

327. Different types of Chinese vessels

328. Floating village

329. Tonglou (Dong-liu), a Yangtze town

330. Dragon boat

331. Dutch Fort Zeelandia on Taiwan

332. Macao

333. Celestial, terrestrial, and infernal gods of the Chinese

334. Temple of Sang-Won-Hab

335. Chinese idols

336. Various types of Chinese priests

337. Chinese priests or monks

338. Chinese temple and pagoda

339. Chinese sepulchre

340. Chinese costumes

341. Chinese ladies

342. Porcelain couple

343. Title page, Magalhaes, History

344. Magalaes’ Chinese commentary on Confucius

345. Title page, Confucius Sinarum philosophus

346. Title page, Martini, Decas prima, official Jesuit version

347. Title page, Martini, Decas prima, Blaeu version

348. Martini’s hexagrams of the I Ching, published 1658

349. The sixty-four hexagrams, from Confucius Sinarum philosophus, 1687

350. Letters invented by Fu-hsi, the first emperor

351. Examples of the Chinese writing system

352. Attempt to alphabetize Chinese

353. Sample page from Chinese-French dictionary

354. Title page, Couplet, Tabula chronologia

355. Chung yung, or Doctrine of the Mean

356, 357, 358. Parts of the body, pulses, and acu-points in Chinese medicine

359. Title page, Boym, Clavis medica

360. Draag Zetel, or palanquin

361. Chinese farmers

362. Ruffian and his prize

363. Chinese actors in costume

364. Popular performers

365. The mango

366. The phoenix and the forest chicken

367. Cormorant, or fishing bird

368. Chinese fruit trees: persimmon, custard, and a nameless fruit

369. Chinese fruit trees: cinnamon, durian, and banana

370. Giambo and litchi trees and fruit

371. Title page, Palafox, History of the Conquest of China by the Tartars

372. Map of Great Tartary from the Volga to the Strait of Iessu (Yezo)

373. Title page, Foy de la Neuville, Relation de Muscovie

374. Emissary of the Lamas

375. Kalmuks and their habitations

376. Tanguts

377. Emissaries from South Tartary to Peking

378. Costume of a Tartar archer

379. Costume of a Tungusic warrior

380. Tartar cavalier and Tartar woman

381. Tartar (Manchu) women

382. Tartar (Manchu) men

383. Woman in the dress of northern Tartary

384. The Potala

385. The Dalai Lama and Han, revered king of Tangut

386. The idol Manipe in Lhasa

387. Pagodes, deity of the Indians, with Manipe

388. Title page, Semedo, History

389. Title page, Baudier, Histoire

390. Map of Japan

391. 392. Title page and frontispiece, Montanus, Ambassades

393. Miyako (Kyoto)

394. Title page, Varen, Descriptio regni Japoniae

395. Imperial palace at Miyako

396. Daibutsu temple and its idol

397. Buddhist temple of a thousand images

398. Idol at Dubo near Miyako

399. Rich carriage of a lady-in-waiting

400. Edo (Tokyo)

401. The Tokaido (road from Osaka to Edo)

402. Shogun’s castle at Edo

403. Part of the shogunal castle

404. Shogunal audience in Japan

405. Sepulchre at Nikko, grave of Tokugawa Ieyasu

406. Temple of the Golden Amida in Edo

407. Shaka (Buddha) in an Edo temple

408. Japanese Buddhist priest

409. Bonze preaching

410. Japanese god with three heads and Buddha Amida

411. Wandering Buddhist priests

412. Temple of Vaccata in Kyushu

413. Temple of Vaccata in Kyushu, in reverse image

414. Temple of Kannon in Osaka

415. Chateau and pleasure house near Fisen (Hizen)

416. Japanese cross

417. Costumes of Japanese women in Edo

418. Dress of women of quality

419. Urban costume of Suringa (Suruga)

420. Daimyo and wife

421. Japanese clothing

422. Noble Japanese woman and her entourage

423. Japanese men of substance

424. Seppuku—ritual suicide in Japan

425. Faisena, a Japanese pleasure yacht or flyboat

426. Japanese emblems and decorations

427. Japanese writing instruments

428. Two types of Tzudtzinsic trees

429. Japanese prostitutes of a pleasure quarter

430. Wandering players

431. Japanese fisherman and wife

432. Japanese charter of privileges granted the English by the Emperour of Japan, 1613

433. Japanese beggars of the road

Maps

BOOK ONE

1. Principal centers of European activity in Asia

BOOK TWO

2. The Mughul Empire and South India

3. Eastern Gujarat

4. West Deccan and the west coast of India from Gujarat to the Goa area

5. From Goa to Cape Comorin (around 1680)

6. Insular South Asia ca. 1680

7. Southeastern India ca. 1670

BOOK THREE

8. Continental Southeast Asia

9. Insulindia: the western archipelago

10. Insulindia: the eastern archipelago

11. Australia, New Guinea, and the surrounding islands

BOOK FOUR

12. China and its periphery

13. Tokugawa Japan

CHAPTER XX

China: The Late Ming Dynasty

The Ming (1368–1644) was a native, or Han, Chinese dynasty which stood chronologically between the foreign Mongol (Yüan, 1280–1368) and Manchu (Ch’ing, 1644–1912) dynasties. The twenty-first of the official dynasties, the Ming had reached its apogee by the time the Europeans became active in the mid-sixteenth century off China’s southeastern coast. In its last hundred years the Ming dynasty declined precipitously, particularly after 1620. The empire’s foreign trade, especially its silver imports, was cut severely by the worldwide trading depression of 1620 to 1660. Internally it suffered from inflation, extreme cold weather in the north, and droughts, floods, and famines in the south. Under these severe conditions the empire’s population fell off abruptly and the rich became richer and the poor more impoverished. As class lines and economic divisions sharpened, unrest and criticism of the government grew apace. At Peking, the Ming capital since 1421, and at Nanking, its second capital, an underpaid officialdom became more lethargic and restive.

The last two Ming emperors supported an elaborate court hierarchy dominated by a horde of eunuchs, who were masters of the harem and the powerful arm of the emperors in managing the palace bureaucracy and the imperial treasury. As their influence and numbers mounted, the eunuchs arrogated broad police powers to themselves while isolating the emperor from important affairs of state. Strategically located between the ministries and the throne, the eunuchs of the palace transmitted the memorials to the emperor and drafted the imperial responses. Under these conditions corruption and factionalism tore the bureaucracy apart and public services collapsed. Distressed by the deterioration of the dynasty, conscientious bureaucrats, literati, and soldiers organized into groups demanding reform. Some disillusioned and disgruntled officials and military leaders collaborated with the Manchus who had begun around 1620 to attack the northern marches of the empire. By 1644 the last of the Ming emperors had committed suicide and the Forbidden City was occupied by the Ch’ing dynasts.¹

The new Manchu rulers, insecure in their legitimacy and in their control over Chinese society, instituted a literary censorship that lasted until the end of the eighteenth century. The Ming shih, or the official history of the Ming dynasty, first appeared in print only in 1739. Study of Ming history by critical scholars remained suspect as surreptitious criticism of the Ch’ing until the nineteenth century. As a consequence, prudent Chinese scholars preferred until near the end of the nineteenth century to confine themselves to study of the Confucian classics or to the history of earlier dynasties. The Ch’ing rulers, perhaps because of their foreign origin, were inclined even more than the Ming to encourage Confucian studies. Late in the Ch’ing dynasty, scholars finally began the systematic collection of Ming documents and the reconstruction of Ming history. It was not until the middle years of the twentieth century that Chinese and foreign scholars were able to produce a rounded history of the Ming from domestic and alien sources. For the study of the second half of the Ming dynasty, the European accounts neatly supplement the Chinese documents, particularly because the observations of the European missionaries and merchants contain descriptions and comments on everyday matters taken for granted by the Chinese writers.²

Unlike India, China was a single integrated state and, although massive in size and complexity, permitted much more generalization on the part of seventeenth-century observers than did India. Throughout the century, the Jesuits provided the overwhelming bulk of information about China, in contrast to India where there was greater variety among the Europeans who visited there. The Jesuit reports, although voluminous and detailed, are also somewhat more repetitious than the more variegated European reports of India. Consequently, although by the end of the century China was probably better known to European readers than any other part of Asia, the image of China that emerges from the seventeenth-century reports can be described in somewhat less space than that of the several parts of India.

1

JESUIT LETTERBOOKS, ETHNOHISTORIES, AND TRAVELOGUES

Europe’s store of information about China increased very rapidly during the first half of the seventeenth century. The Jesuit missionaries, by the turn of the century securely ensconced in Peking, continued to provide the most perceptive as well as the most numerous reports. Their letters were regularly published, and reports from China occupied a large and growing place in them. Some were widely distributed. Niccolò Longobardo’s Breve relatione del regno della Cina, first published in 1601, for example, was translated into French, Latin, and German, was regularly cited in other descriptions of China, and included in collections of Jesuit letters.³ Longobardo’s letter optimistically describes the state of the Jesuit mission in China, translates a letter from a Chinese convert, Thaiso, to Matteo Ricci, and lists ten characteristics of China that he thinks will facilitate the spread of the gospel. Some description accompanies the ten characteristics, most of it laudatory.

Equally popular and far more perceptive is Diego de Pantoja’s letter of 1602, first published as the Relación de la entrade de algunos padres de la Compania de lesus en la China in 1605.⁴ Pantojas account is far less adulatory of China than Longobardo’s or than Juan Gonzáles de Mendoza’s sixteenth-century account;⁵ for example, he lashes out sharply against the immorality and covetousness of the emperor, the eunuchs, and the military. He gives good detail on the gifts presented by the Jesuits—clocks, books, maps, and oil paintings—and of the wonder they produced among the Chinese. He asserts repeatedly that the Cathay of Marco Polo is the same as China. He is disdainful of the Chinese ignorance of the outside world, of their architecture, of their mathematics, and of their religions. Like Ricci and other Europeans, he is impressed by China’s size, teeming population, immense cities, low food prices, high standards of civility, and moral learning.

China also figures prominently in the five volumes of Fernão Guerreiro’s Relaçam annual (1603–11) which was based on a very large collection of Jesuit missionary letters.⁶ A similar work, which drew from Guerreiro’s compilation as well as from other Jesuit publications and letters, was published in Bordeaux by Pierre Du Jarric between 1608 and 1614.⁷ Together these works provide a comprehensive account of the origin and progress of the Jesuit mission in China along with a substantial amount of descriptive material.

Jesuit authors also published several major descriptions of China during the first half of the seventeenth century which were probably even more influential in shaping Europe’s image of China than were their letterbooks. The most important of these, Nicolas Trigault’s De christiana expeditione apud Sinas (1615), Alvarez Semedo’s Imperio de la China (1642), and Martino Martini’s Novus atlas sinensis (1655), provided European readers with more comprehensive and better organized information about China than ever before.⁸

Trigault’s and Semedo’s works resemble Mendoza’s in format. Each contains a long comprehensive description of China divided into topical sections such as names, location, and size, fertility and products, mechanical arts, the liberal arts, sciences and academic degrees, administration, customs, and so forth. Part two of each work is a history of the Christian mission in China from its beginnings. Trigault brings the story down to the death of Matteo Ricci in 1610; Semedo to 1638. Much of the history of the mission as told by Trigault and Semedo would have been familiar to readers of the Annual Letters. Stories are retold, and many of the same events or incidents are reported.

The general description of China in Martini’s Atlas is similar to that of Trigault and Semedo, but much shorter. It is followed not by a history of the mission but by a detailed description of China’s provinces, each accompanied by a provincial map. These and the accompanying descriptions eliminated several erroneous notions about internal geography and clarified Europe’s cartographical image of China. The maps were not superseded during the remainder of the century. While better organized, these general descriptions produced a more static image of China than that based on the more haphazard reports of events and characteristics contained in the Jesuit letters. Readers who depended on the ethnohistories and on Mendoza’s sixteenth-century description would probably see China as relatively changeless and seemingly devoid of living dynamic leaders and changing events.

The image of China projected through both the ethnohistories and the Jesuit letters becomes progressively more adulatory. Trigault and Pantoja, while they admired much that they found in China, also described many aspects of Chinese life which they judged to be inferior to European practice. For all his admiration for Chinese philosophical attainments, Trigault remained convinced of Europe’s scientific and technological superiority. Nor did he excessively praise the natural morality of the Chinese. In his history of the mission one meets imposters from all ranks of society, and he frequently deplores the blind superstitions of the heathen Chinese. Semedo was somewhat more laudatory. He finds, for example, that the Chinese are naturally inclined to virtue—especially to humility, virginity, chastity, and filial piety—and he berates Europeans who consider the Chinese to be barbarians.⁹ Semedo, writing shortly before 1642, was concerned to defend the Jesuits’ position and practice in China against competition and criticism from rival orders—a concern which had arisen since Trigault and Pantoja wrote. It shows up most clearly in part two of Semedo’s book, where he tends to exaggerate the success of the mission and to defend the Jesuit policy of cultural accommodation by extolling the sincerity and constancy of Chinese Christians during the persecutions. Rites Controversy considerations show up even more clearly in Martini’s description. Whether because of this or because he relied more heavily than the others on Chinese sources, he appears to be more enthusiastic about China and occasionally to idealize and exaggerate Chinese virtues. Still, in contrast to some later Jesuit writings, none of these descriptions appears to be seriously distorted by the developing polemic in Europe and Asia over Jesuit practices in China.

Less important and for the most part secondary descriptions of China were produced by Don Francisco de Herrera Maldonado in 1621¹⁰ and by Michel Baudier in 1624.¹¹ Maldonado’s is another comprehensive description based on Jesuit letters, on Trigault, and on sixteenth-century authors such as Gaspar da Cruz, Martin de Rada, Bernardino de Escalante, and Mendoza. What he describes is available elsewhere in firsthand accounts. His Epitome, however, is important as the earliest printed description of the death and burial ceremonies of the empress dowager and for his large bibliography of books on China and Asia.¹² Semedo also describes the death of the empress—the Wan-li emperor’s mother—but his account appeared later. Baudier’s description of China also is entirely based on other printed accounts. He claims to have learned much from hearing Trigault tell Louis XIII about China in 1616, but his descriptions seem to be almost entirely based on Mendoza. Baudier is less critical and more enthusiastic about China than either Mendoza or Trigault.

Although not published until 1663, the volume devoted to China in Daniello Bartoli’s official history of the Jesuit mission is essentially an ethnohistory of the Ming dynasty.¹³ All of Bartoli’s descriptions, even his extensive account of Chinese government, relate to the Ming period. We can find only two brief and vague references to the Manchu Conquest.¹⁴ The one, for example, refers to it as the last inundation of Tartars when she [China] stood in great part at the mercy of a vile traitor.¹⁵ Bartoli’s La Cina appears to follow Trigault more closely than any other source, although parts of the volume obviously come from the works of other Jesuit writers; he cites Rho, Ruggiero, Schall, and Martini. Most likely some of what he reports came from the many unpublished letters and official Jesuit documents at his disposal. This makes Bartoli’s work somewhat more important as a source of information about China than if it were merely a compilation from already published accounts. Rites Controversy considerations also affect Bartoli’s description more seriously than they did Trigault’s or Semedo’s. His admiration for China is less restrained, he treats Confucianism as an ethical system compatible with Christianity, and he explicitly argues the Jesuit case for cultural accommodation and for the use of traditional Chinese terms for God.¹⁶

The chapters on China in Faria y Sousa’s Asia portuguesa, published in 1666, also form an ethnohistory of the Ming. They are in fact a condensation of Semedo’s description which Faria had earlier translated from the Portuguese.¹⁷ His history of the Portuguese in Asia ends in 1640, and no books on China published after Semedo’s are mentioned in his bibliography.

Far less perceptive than the information about China from Jesuit sources were the reports of European merchants and seamen who encountered the Chinese in the East Indies or along the China coast. Unlike the missionaries, the authors of the travelogues usually knew no Chinese language and nothing of Confucian ethics or Buddhist theology, saw only the haziest outlines of the empire’s grand political edifice, and had no notion of how it was supposed to work. They usually displayed little admiration for the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire, whom they tended to describe as avaricious, crafty, and deceitful at best. Their general lack of appreciation for China and the Chinese no doubt partly resulted from their unfamiliarity with Chinese language and culture. They were frequently describing phenomena which they did not understand and crudely evaluating what they saw, as travelers often do still, by the standards of their own land and people. On the other hand, their lack of appreciation also may have been engendered by the kind of Chinese they encountered. They usually met merchants and sailors, often the dregs of Chinese society. Of the officials they generally met only the lowest echelons. Quite often these people indeed were avaricious, did lie and cheat, and were simply not very good examples of Confucian morality. The crude idolatry of the Chinese frequently depicted by European travelers was probably a fairly accurate picture of the religious beliefs of the people with whom they came in contact—Chinese who themselves did not understand the subtleties of Confucian ethics or Buddhist theology. Consequently, despite their flaws, the travelogues contributed an important dimension to Europe’s image of China. They added the shadows to the frequently overidealized picture painted by the Jesuits. They frequently described the lower strata of Chinese society—if not peasants, at least merchants—people largely absent from the Jesuit accounts. They also provided some very useful materials on provincial government in action. Many of the travelers confronted the Chinese bureaucracy at the local level, negotiated with local and provincial officials, and waited long for responses from higher officials or from Peking. Some described formal receptions by provincial officials. Finally, the travel accounts also introduced European readers to the overseas Chinese communities and thus conveyed another dimension of the predominance of China in Asia.

Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola’s Conquista de las islas Malucas (1609), for example, includes a considerable discussion of China and the overseas Chinese.¹⁸ The Spanish in Manila continually worried about possible Chinese intervention in the Moluccas, and after the 1603 rebellion and massacre of the Chinese in Manila, they feared imperial reprisals. Argensola includes an exchange of letters between the Spanish governor in Manila and a Fukienese official whom he called the Visitor of Chincheo (Chang-chou) concerning the rebellion.¹⁹ Implicit in Argensola’s discussion is an appreciation of the size, extent, and influence of the Chinese overseas community in Southeast Asia and the Spaniards’ fear of what they mistakenly saw as a close relationship between the overseas Chinese and their homeland. Argensola also includes some general description of China, but this seems to come primarily from Mendoza and his other sixteenth-century Spanish sources.²⁰

Jean Mocquet never traveled to China, but he apparently met Chinese merchants in Goa and heard stories about China from the Portuguese there. His very popular Voyages, first published in 1617, contains some descriptions of Chinese people.²¹ Mocquet’s opinion of them was not very favorable. He describes them as clever, greedy, and superb cheats.²² As an example he tells the story of a Portuguese in Canton who bought a roast duck only to find its skin stuffed with paper and wood when he attempted to eat it.²³ Still, he reports that the Portuguese in Goa prefer Chinese servants because of their loyalty and industry.²⁴ Mocquet claims to have visited and eaten with Chinese in Goa. Their houses are sumptuous, he reports, but they are gluttons and eat with ill grace. They eat much rice and little bread, and they eat dog flesh. Mocquet also describes how they use chopsticks.²⁵

Sir Thomas Herbert’s A Relation of Some Yeares Travaile, first published in 1634, contains some remarks about China although he had never been there. Herbert was impressed by the reports of the size, wealth, and power of the empire. He mentions the Great Wall, printing, and gunpowder as major Chinese achievements. But the Chinese themselves he says are subtle and cowardly, worship idols, have very spare beards, are inveterate gamblers, and are given to Epicureanism.²⁶

Seyger van Rechteren never visited China, but his Journael (1635) contains a rather large description which shows no dependence on the standard Jesuit literature. He claims to have culled his information from shipboard conversations with some Dutch officials who had been imprisoned in China for five years.²⁷ More likely he took it from the official papers relating to the Reijersen expedition to the Pescadores in 1622–24. In any case, his is a sailors’ and merchants’ view of the Middle Kingdom, from the coastal periphery rather than from the capital. Van Rechteren, too, admires the empire for its wealth and power, but he regards it with hostility—a land whose pagan and superstitious people are clever and dishonest and despise all foreigners. Compared with Jesuit descriptions, Van Rechteren’s is superficial and in places misleading. His account of imperial government, for example, is confused and inadequate. He says nothing about the scholarly attainments of the officials nor, for that matter, about learning and education at all. Confucius is not mentioned. Furthermore, he makes some geographical blunders as, for example, when he describes the Chiu-lung River at Chang-chou as the largest and the most famous for navigation and commerce in the whole empire of China.²⁸ On the other hand, even Van Rechteren’s error regarding the Chiu-lung River illustrates the impressive commercial activity of the Chang-chou district, and his detailed descriptions of the provincial governor’s formal reception of a foreigner and of the difficulties encountered by foreigners in dealing with local or provincial officials are useful additions to Europe’s image of China’s periphery, where the ideals of the imperial system were most seriously compromised. Much more information of this sort is included in the detailed account of the Reijersen expedition appended to Van Rechteren’s Journael as it was published in the Begin ende voortgangh in 1646.²⁹ News about the Reijersen expedition and the establishment of the Dutch fort on Formosa had been reported earlier in Nicolaes van Wassenaer’s Amsterdam newsheet.³⁰

The Begin ende voortgangh also contains other descriptions of China and the Chinese. The Dutch travelers whose accounts are included in it frequently describe the overseas Chinese whom they met in Java and other places in Southeast Asia. Descriptions of China itself, or at least its coastal regions, are included in the journals of Cornelis Matelief, Roelof Roelofszoon, and Wybrand van Warwijck. Roelofszoon describes the misadventures of Jacob van Neck’s seamen off Macao in 1601.³¹ Van Warwijck’s journal contains an interesting description of his negotiations with local Chinese officials in the Pescadores in 1604.³² Matelief, too, tried to negotiate trade in 1607 with Chinese officials at Nan-ao and at Lan-tao islands on the Kwangtung coast. His account as published in the Begin ende voortgangh contains some very perceptive description of the negotiations and of the people, villages, and temples he visited on the islands. The editor, Isaac Commelin, appended a much larger description of China to Matelief’s account taken from Pierre d’Avity’s Les estats, empires, et principautez du monde, which in turn was a condensation of Mendoza.³³

Willem Ysbrantszoon Bontekoe’s immensely popular Journael was also first published in 1646, and it, too, contains descriptions of the Chinese and of their ships and villages which Bontekoe encountered along the Fukien coast in 1622 when he commanded one of the Reijersen’s warships.³⁴ To Bontekoe, also, the Chinese were a sinister and dangerous folk. He found little about them to admire. Fewer references to China are found in Vincent Le Blanc’s popular Les voyages fameux, first published in 1648.³⁵ He seems less hostile to the Chinese than some of the other travelers, although he, too, reports that the Chinese in Bantam worship the devil. He marvels at the arrogance of the Chinese who reportedly presume their empire to be at the center of the earth.³⁶

2

GEOGRAPHY, CLIMATE, AND NAMES

Europe’s knowledge of China’s geography improved considerably during the first half of the seventeenth century, primarily because the Jesuits who wrote the major descriptions during those years were no longer confined to the south coast, but traveled all over China along its roads, rivers, and canals, and lived in the capital as well as in provincial towns and villages. Furthermore, they had access to and were able to read Chinese descriptions of the empire which augmented their personal observations and provided a larger context for them.³⁷ Their accounts, therefore, contain geographic information about the northern provinces as well as the south, the interior as well as the coast; about the capital, other great inland cities, and small towns and villages; and about peripheral areas such as Tibet and Mongolia. By 1655, with the publication of Martini’s Atlas, Europe’s image of Chinese geography was quite complete, not to be appreciably altered during the next two centuries.

All European observers during the first half of the seventeenth century seem awed by China’s vast size and population. Trigault in 1615 quoted a 1579 Chinese Description of the Chinese Empire:

In the Chinese Empire there are two regal provinces [metropolitan provinces]—Nankin, the southern kingdom, and Pekin, the northern kingdom. Besides these two there are thirteen other provinces. These fifteen provinces—which might very well be called kingdoms—are further divided into one hundred fifty-eight departments or small provinces, which the Chinese call Fu and most of which contain twelve to fifteen large cities, besides smaller towns, fortresses, villages, and farms. "In these regions two hundred forty seven large cities are designated by the title, Cheu [chou], although for the most part these are differentiated from other large cities by their dignity and importance rather than by their size. Then there are eleven hundred and fifty-two common cities which are called Hien [hsien]."³⁸

Pantoja already in 1605 had referred to the same Chinese publication and regarding the size of China’s provinces and cities, added helplessly: to believe their greatness it is necessary to see them.³⁹ Most of Trigault’s successors repeat or summarize his description of the fifteen provinces and their subdivisions with minor variations. Many writers name the provinces, sometimes dividing them into northern and southern groups. Semedo includes a brief description of each province.⁴⁰ Martini’s provincial descriptions are, of course, the most detailed. (See pls. 286, 302, 318.) For each of the fifteen provinces his Atlas contains a double-spread, folio-sized map, a description of the province’s location and borders, its climate, population, and tax revenues. Following the general description of each province, Martini describes each of its major cities (fu) and names the towns, districts, and fortified places subordinate to it. Both for the province generally and for each fu he describes the rivers, mountains, roads, and bridges, as well as the unique features of the landscape, its fertility, products, and something of its history. These provincial descriptions range from six to twelve folio-sized pages as additions to the maps. It would have been difficult to find comparably detailed descriptions of many parts of Europe during the seventeenth century.

What amazed seventeenth-century Europeans even more than China’s vast size was its awesomely dense population. No one failed to comment on it. There were so many large cities. For your Worship will hardly believe, writes Pantoja about his journey to Peking, that wee spent two or three houres in sayling still by the walls of one Citie. After which there still followed many Townes and Villages, one within sight of another.⁴¹ Peking, he reports, had 200,000 houses—more populous than any four major European cities combined.⁴² After having lived in China for twenty-two years, Semedo claimed to be still as amazed by the throngs of people as when he had first arrived.⁴³ Martini writes that China was so heavily populated and so intensively cultivated that he often thought of it, surrounded as it was by the Great Wall and the seas, as one enormous city.⁴⁴ Several of the Jesuits made estimates of the population based on the tax rolls of the empire. The number of men registered is well over 58,000,000. Trigault says 58,550,801; Semedo says 58.055.180.⁴⁵ Martini, writing shortly after a new registration, records 58.914.284.⁴⁶ But these figures, as the writers point out, included only taxpayers; they did not include women, children, royal relatives, government officials, soldiers, eunuchs, and priests—an almost innumerable host, according to Martini. Estimates of China’s real population based on these figures went as high as 200,000,000.⁴⁷

Most early seventeenth-century writers describe China as being almost square in shape. Longobardo, in 1602, talked about its diameter of 550 leagues: 550 leagues from south to north (from 19° to 50° north latitude) and about the same from east to west.⁴⁸ Most subsequent writers disagree with Longobardo about the location of China’s northern border. Pantoja contends that Peking was at 40° north and the wall not further north than 42°. He also thought Hainan Island in the south was at 17° or 18°.⁴⁹ Trigault locates China between 19° and 42° north latitude and between 112° and 132° longitude.⁵⁰ Semedo places the northern frontier at 43° and has nothing to say about longitude.⁵¹ Martini places Peking at 39°59′ and the northern frontier at 42°.⁵² He locates the southern tip of Hainan Island, taken by most European writers to be China’s southern extremity, at 18°. From east to west China spans thirty degrees, according to Martini,⁵³ and his maps show Ningpo, the eastern extremity, at about 152°, which would place the western frontier at about 122°—considerably different from Trigault’s estimate, and from modern maps which locate the eastern tip of Chekiang Province at 122° and western Kansu at about 94°. Martini’s latitudinal calculations, however, are very close to those shown on modern maps. He also includes a table of longitudes and latitudes for each of the cities and towns mentioned in the Atlas. For these tables he calculated longitude in degrees east or west of Peking, whose longitude he took as his base meridian.⁵⁴

China also enjoys naturally protected frontiers, which most writers describe in very similar terms. To the east and south lies a sea whose treacherous coastline protects China’s maritime approaches; in the west, high mountains separate China from the rest of Asia, and in the north and northwest lie inhospitable deserts and the Great Wall, built to protect the empire where nature’s barriers seemed inadequate.⁵⁵ Several writers describe the various lands on China’s frontiers; none so thoroughly as Martini, whose Atlas contains fairly detailed descriptions of Manchuria, Hokkaido, Mongolia, Chinese Turkestan, Tibet, Laos, northern Cambodia, and Vietnam.⁵⁶

Most European writers report that China lies in the temperate zone and in general enjoys a temperate climate, but with much more variation than one would expect to find between 18° and 42° north latitude. Semedo, for example, complains that Peking winters are very cold for 40° north latitude; rivers and lakes freeze over and people use stoves to heat their homes.⁵⁷ Martini, too, thinks Peking surprisingly cold. Rivers are frozen over for four months at a stretch, with ice thick enough to support chariots and horses. Thaws do not set in before the month of March.⁵⁸ On the other hand, some parts of China lie in the torrid zone; Fukien he describes as warm, but healthy; it never snows in Kwangtung, where the trees are green all year, while Kwangsi and Yunnan are usually very hot.⁵⁹ In his description of Hangchow he tells of the prodigiously strong tides which occur each year on the eighteenth of October. The whole city turns out to watch them. Martini reports that tides