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By the time Matteo Ricci arrived in 1583, these were distant events, and many doubted the veracity of the records concerning such huge ships until the discovery in the 1970s of two early Chinese shipwrecks and their subsequent archaeological excavation cast new light on early Chinese shipbuilding technology. The two ships noted are a Song Dynasty ship found at Hou Zhu, near Quanzhou in Fujian Province dating from about 1277; and a Yuan Dynasty ship found at Shinan, near Mokpo in South Korea, dating from about 1323. Both ships depart significantly from generally accepted theories of ancient Chinese shipbuilding techniques and the finds raise fundamental questions. The Quanzhou ship is 24 m. long, 9 m. wide and 2.2 m. deep. The interior of the ship is divided into thirteen compartments by a series of twelve bulkheads. There are two surviving masts. The ship was transom-sterned with an axial rudder. The keel is 20 m. long, made in three parts. The ship is “clinker” type, made up of double overlapped planking up to the turn of the bilge where it becomes triple planked. The method of joinery is extremely unusual, being made up of three strakes of lap-joined carvel and then a clinker joint. Additionally there is clear evidence that the ship was built shell first. Other artifacts have been discovered, including a huge rudder that, if scaled normally, indicate it might have belonged to one of the 400 ft. long treasure ships of the 1400’s.

Cartography and Maps

In China, the Jesuit role in the introduction of Western maps and cartographic techniques is well known and is the usual starting point for the study of Sino-European interchange. Jesuit astronomers and cartographers have a long history of service to the Chinese Empire and introduced many new technological and theoretical modifications to traditional Chinese maps. Fr. Matteo Ricci, S.J., pioneer of the first post-medieval Christian mission, was a skilled linguist, mathematician, and cartographer. As early as 1584 Ricci had copied a European map in his possession and translated the names into Chinese. This work, the Yudi shanhai quantu is now lost, though the outline is preserved in the Tushu bian by Ricci’s friend and associate Zhang Huang. In 1600 a revised version of this map was produced with the slightly altered title Shanhai yudi quantu. With the help of the eminent scholar and friend of the Jesuits, Li Zhizao, in 1603 and 1604 the 3rd and 4th editions titled Kunyu wan’guo quantu were produced [SLIDE 3], copies of which exist in the National Palace Museum in Beijing and in the Vatican Archives. Ricci introduced longitude and latitude (which was in general harmony with traditional Chinese mapping “grids”) and combined earlier European maps by Ortelius and Mercator as the basis for Europe, Africa [SLIDE 4], and the Americas. The sections on China and East Asia were based on a 1579 edition of the Guangyu tu by Luo Hongxian, and local maps culled from gazetteers and illustrated sources. The result provided Chinese scholars with a vastly expanded view of the world, including the first accurate representations of Europe, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and the Americas on a Chinese map. Ricci’s maps gave Chinese names for hundreds of foreign locales, and often included detailed physical or topographical information. Ricci’s maps were so influential that many of the Chinese place-names still in use today trace their origin to Ricci’s maps. Many Ming scholars immediately recognized these maps as important improvements on existing cartographic technology. Previously unknown regions were now charted in Chinese style. Strategic implications must have been obvious. [SLIDE 5, Michel Boym map of China, 1643]

Europeans benefited from this exchange as well, as the Jesuits returned observations, maps, and descriptions of Chinese society, culture, and political philosophy back to a fascinated Europe. Ricci’s fellow Jesuit Michele Ruggieri created a large collection of maps with detailed information on terrain, waterways, and cities. Dictionaries and lexicons were created and the first semi-standard romanizations for Chinese characters were developed. Books and published letters sent to Europe were highly popular and avidly studied by historians and philosophers. [SLIDE 6, Verbiest World Map with Mercator projection, 1674]

Ricci lived in China until his death in Beijing in 1610, during the late Ming dynasty under the Wanli Emperor. But unlike later Jesuits, he did not directly serve an emperor, but lived and worked as an independent scholar among Chinese scholars. As Dr. Menegon noted this morning, after the establishment of the Qing Dynasty in 1644 the role of the Jesuits in Beijing changed. Jesuit skill at cartography and astronomy (in addition to art, music, and mathematics) brought them to the attention of the Imperial Court. A Jesuit proposal to map the entire Empire was encouraged by the Kangxi emperor began in 1698 with local topographical maps, including the range of the Ming walls and defenses north of the capital and into the Ordos. A complete set was presented to the Emperor in 1717; copperplate engravings were made and a woodblock edition was published in1721 under the title Huangyu quanlan tu (or A Map of the Complete Imperial Realm). Sometimes called the Kangxi Atlas, (or Jesuit Atlas), this became the basis for many other maps: Huangyu shipai quantu (1726-29), Qianlong shisanpai ditu (1760), Huangyu quantu (1844), etc. The Huangyu quanlan tu was the basis for nearly all Western maps of China until the 20th century.
Astronomy and Mathematics.

Even more than cartography, astronomy and calendar studies became an important focus of Jesuit and Chinese scholars. The Jesuit introduction of European astronomical mathematics, calculating instruments, and plane and spherical geometry was highly applicable to the adaptable nature of Chinese astronomy, and enhanced by accurate Chinese observations of stellar phenomena, novae, comets, and so on, dating back a millennium. The pace with which these importations were accepted was not only due to their immediate and apparent usefulness, but also to the existence of common astronomical techniques based on a “kernel” of common conceptions of space and time. Jean-Claude Martzloff lists four mutually acceptable propositions:

1. Space and time were both deemed quantifiable on the basis of measurement and cataloging of celestial positions. [SLIDE 7 Galileo “all things are measurable”]

2. Eclipses of the sun and moon, ephemeredes of the sun, moon, and planets, solstices and equinoxes, and other celestial phenomena, were considered mathematically predictable from computational techniques, using ready-made computations (tables) and particular algorithmic prescriptions free from the hold of astrology.

3. Criterion of validation of predictions hinged on the agreement between the result of predictive computations and observation.

4. The perfectibility of predictive systems, i.e. the possibility of reducing the margin of error between theoretical predictions and real observations was generally granted by the most influential astronomers.

In fact, “predictive competitions” between Chinese, Muslim, and European systems were organized by Chinese authorities during the early 17th century to uncover which methods gave the most consistently correct results. By 1645 Jesuit success in these “competitions” led to widespread reform and modification of traditional Chinese methods, such as the promulgation in the same year of the Shixian li, a calendar based on the computations published by the Bavarian Jesuit Johann Adam Schall von Bell in his Xinfa suanshu. Despite conservative opposition, Western stellar mathematics became the basis for Imperial astronomical calculations, and began a tradition of appointing Jesuits such as Schall and Ferdinand Verbiest to head the Imperial Bureau of Astronomy. [SLIDE 8 Verbiest’s prediction of solar eclipse April 29, 1669]

Jesuit importation of European scientific techniques not only contributed to the revision of Chinese methods, but it also stimulated Chinese scholars to look to their own scientific tradition, and to tackle the difficult task of reconstructing ancient mathematical works and scientific apparatus described in the historical record. New interest in Han and Song era technology in particular resulted in reconstructions of armillaries, sighting tubes, clocks, clepsydras, transmissions, and automata of various types. [SLIDE 9 Su Hong’s astronomical clock, ca. 1088] For example, the works of Guo Shoujing, a Yuan dynasty astronomer, mathematician, and engineer were reexamined. Guo was also a hydrographer, in charge of irrigation and watercourse regulation, but also developed a new calendar and designed astronomical instruments. As Lauren Arnold pointed out, the Mongols admired technicians and craftsmen wherever they came from, and scientists like Guo benefited from contact with Islamic scholars from Persia in his work. Unfortunately the lesson that there had often been external influences on Chinese technology was lost. Many scholars produced works with the idea that ancient Chinese inventiveness not only prefigured later European modifications, but actually that European science was in fact based on Chinese discoveries. The Qianlong Emperor himself says as much in his letters, believing that Western methods merely reflected refinement of earlier Chinese techniques.