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Chapter 6 Xu Guangqi, Grand Guardian XU GUANGQI  (1562–1633) rose from presented scholar (jin shi ) to one of the more distinguished positions in the official bureaucracy of the Ming dynasty, Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent and Grand Secretary of the Hall of Literary Profundity (Taizi taibao, Wenyuange da xueshi )  ). I will argue in this chapter that Xu was not—as he has been anachronistically portrayed—a scientist or mathematician, but rather an official in the Ming court who indiscriminately promoted Western Learning (Xixue  ) in pursuit of imperial patronage. Yet to say that his promotion of Western Learning was indiscriminate is not to say that he was neither shrewd nor highly skilled. As we will see, he was expert in the Confucian arts: he had spent his youth memorizing the Confucian classics and then passed the civil service examinations with distinction, becoming one in perhaps ten thousand to achieve the coveted status of a presented scholar. He was then further trained at the imperial Hanlin Academy to write propaganda for the Empire, on a wide variety of issues— ranging from agriculture to military proposals and astronomy—in all of which he had little or no expertise. As Ray Huang aptly notes, “because [the Ming] empire was created to be controlled from the center by documents, field experience or lack of it made very little difference.”1 To understand the propaganda that Xu crafted to promote Western Learning, we will examine some of his early writings.2 We will focus here on the following 1 Ray Huang, 1587, a Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 50. 2 Ascertaining the authorship of the Chinese writings attributed to the Jesuits and their collaborators is often difficult if not impossible. The authorship of works on religion conventionally attributed to Xu is particularly controversial: see Xiaochao Wang, Christianity and Imperial Culture : Chinese Christian Apologetics in the Seventeenth Century and Their Latin Patristic Equivalent (Leiden: Brill, 1998); and Ad Dudink, “The Image of Xu Guangqi as Author of Christian Texts,” in Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China: The Cross-Cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), ed. Catherine Jami, Gregory Blue, and Peter M. Engelfriet (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 99–154. In general, for all these writings, and especially for works in Chinese attributed to the Jesuits, it would be more accurate to speak of corporate authorship, over which the Chinese patrons, and Xu in particular, exercised considerable control; authorship was then strategically assigned to legitimate these works by attributing them to particular individuals. 195 196 6 Xu Guangqi, Grand Guardian sources, which includes a wide range of representative writings—examinations, letters, poetry, and official documents: 1. A civil examination essay, the earliest extant writing by Xu. This is one of the most important essays he ever composed. I will argue that it bears evidence of a textual practice (sometimes vaguely described as syncretism) wherein one set of writings is explained through another. It is through this approach that Xu later argues that Western Learning recovers the lost meanings of the Chinese Confucian classics. 2. A second examination essay—a policy essay—that may be the work of Xu, or at least expresses viewpoints similar to those we see in his later writings. I will argue that this essay and the preceding examination essay offer examples through which we can better understand the textualist approach—the recovery of meanings from the writings of the ancients—employed by Xu. 3. Xu’s earliest extant patronage letter, written to the famous scholar Jiao Hong (1541–1620), who had awarded Xu first place on his provincial examination . 4. An early work on Western Learning explaining the importance of Tianzhu   [Lord of Heaven], prefiguring claims Xu makes in his later writings. 5. One of the few religious works attributed to Xu, an ode to Jesus [Yesu ]. 6. A work that although asserted to be Xu’s earliest work related to mathematics turns out to be a patronage letter with little mathematical content. 7. Xu’s preface to the translation of Euclid’s Elements into Chinese. 8. Xu’s memorial in defense of Western Learning. In this memorial, Xu reiterates views similar to those presented in the earlier letter (above), claiming that Western Learning is the basis for the perfect moral order in a unified Europe that has not seen wars or changes in dynasty for thousands of years. But before we...

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