The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (review)

In this well-researched monograph, Joanna Waley-Cohen provides a breadth of insight into China's sometimes passive, generally benevolent involvement with often imperialistic sovereign states. Also, she resolves some of the questions regarding some of the periods of complacency in Chinese commercial and technological history.

Waley-Cohen's intent in this monograph is to provide evidence that much of China's historical experience has involved the complicated interplay of indigenous developments and foreign influences of many kinds. Beginning with China's early contacts with other civilizations and concluding with the takeover of Hong Kong in 1997, the author shows how China has been energetically and enthusiastically engaged with the outside world, permitting, encouraging, and seeking the circulation of foreign goods and ideas—contrary to the often-stated Western view of a xenophobic China (pp. 4-5). She has provided a plethora of details for insight into important subtopics that include the importance of geography, education, culture, and science policy to China's development.¹ Throughout the book, she offers additional insights beyond what has been previously published.

Early in the book, Waley-Cohen quickly but pointedly moves from the early Qin empire (200 B.C.) to the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), providing evidence of exploration and knowledge-seeking involving modifications of many foreign concepts and technologies. This tradition of adopting with modifications has been called "cultural transposition"² and has previously been used to illuminate the process by which the Japanese adopted foreign ideas during the Meiji period (1866-1912).

The Chinese were not always open to outside traditions even during the "multicultural ambiance" of the Tang dynasty (618-907). However, the curiosity of the Chinese people and their rulers led China to become one of the most powerful maritime nations during the Song (960-1276) and Ming (1368-1644) periods. The Chinese maritime construction program began with the building of three-hundred-foot junks and culminated with a fleet of three hundred vessels, sixty of which were more than four hundred feet long. This maritime prominence was facilitated by the Chinese invention of the compass and the extensive practice of charting and maintaining records of islands, currents, and reefs. Furthermore, during the maritime expeditions that were conducted for the purpose of expanding China's commerce, ethnographic records were kept that documented the customs, faces, and costumes of foreign peoples—all this preceding the Portuguese by a number of decades.³

The decline of Chinese maritime dominance may very possibly have had something to do with the collapse of paper money as the medium of exchange in international trade. It has also been argued that discord in the imperial court led to the cessation of voyages by commercial fleets, which were primarily under the control of the palace eunuchs. Eventually, the shipyards where the fleets had been built were dismantled, and oceangoing shipping was forbidden.⁴ Consequently, expeditions to foreign lands declined, and the Portuguese became a maritime power in the region due to their virtual monopoly of the silver trade. Much of the world's silver at the time was being shipped from Mexico to the Philippines, where the Chinese had been obtaining the silver in exchange for silk and porcelain.

The great profits from the silver trade funded the entry into China of the Jesuits, who, not surprisingly, have been referred to as the shock troops of the Counter-Reformation because of their stated mission of converting the "infidels" overseas (p. 63). In the openness of the late Ming and Qing periods, Catholicism was able to establish a presence in China during the "Catholic centuries" of 1600-1800. There were estimated to have been 200,000 to 250,000 Christian conversions across China during this time, including about 40,000 conversions to the Catholic faith in Sichuan Province.

The Jesuits were quite successful in their early efforts at proselytizing the elite in China through their teaching of secular topics...