Libraries of Western learning for China: Circulation of Western books between Europe and China in the Jesuit Mission (ca. 1650 - ca. 1750)

摘要

In the sixteenth to eighteenth Centuries AD, China was of great interest to Europeans. The arrival of the Jesuit (Catholic) missionaries opened a cultural window that permitted Europeans the first truly accurate accounts of the Chinese empire, and introduced to the Chinese things that were new, and things that were not really new, but had been forgotten. As an area of mutual Chinese-European interest, science and scholarship-combined with a shared interest in knowledge and books-became important tools for evangelisation in China.