TY - JOUR
AU - Noël Golvers
BT - The Library
IS - 4
LA - English
N1 - The Jesuit model of the ‘apostolate of the press’ in Counter-Reformation Europe chimed with the central position of books and learning in Late-Ming, Qing China, such that the Jesuit Catholic missionaries, from the very beginning of their mission (the early 17th-century) devised a ‘master-plan’ for a network of libraries with Western books to cover (part of) China. The intention was to support their own research, to propagate ‘Western learning’ (xi xue), and to attract—in this ‘top-down’ mission view—Chinese literati to Western culture and religion, in a way that reinforced the missionary enterprise, which was the real (hidden) agenda of the entire strategy. As such, the main libraries, especially the three in Peking, with their (often monumental and splendid) books, became true turning-points of contact and interchange, warranting at the same time for its members social prestige and access to the Court.
PY - 2015
SP - 429
EP - 445
T2 - The Library
TI - The Pre-1773 Jesuit Libraries in Peking as a Medium for Western Learning in Seventeenth- and Early Eighteenth-Century China
VL - 16
ER -