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BestsellerE-book
Author Hsia, Florence C.

Title Sojourners in a strange land : Jesuits and their scientific missions in late imperial China / Florence C. Hsia.

Publication Info. Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (xv, 273 pages) : illustrations.
Physical Medium polychrome
Description text file
Series Science and Its Conceptual Foundations S
Science and Its Conceptual Foundations S.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-260) and index.
Contents Who was that masked man? -- Writing missions -- Telling missionary lives -- Making Jesuit science travel -- Reading Jesuit voyages -- Jesuit academicians -- Observational fortunes -- Familiar letters and familiar faces.
Summary Though Jesuits assumed a variety of roles as missionaries in late imperial China, their most memorable guise was that of scientific expert, whose maps, clocks, astrolabes, and armillaries reportedly astonished the Chinese. But the icon of the missionary-scientist is itself a complex myth. Masterfully correcting the standard story of China Jesuits as simple conduits for Western science, Florence C. Hsia shows how these missionary-scientists remade themselves as they negotiated the place of the profane sciences in a religious enterprise. Sojourners in a Strange Land develops a genealogy of Jesuit conceptions of scientific life within the Chinese mission field from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Analyzing the printed record of their endeavors in natural philosophy and mathematics, Hsia identifies three models of the missionary man of science by their genres of writing: mission history, travelogue, and academic collection. Drawing on the history of early modern Europe's scientific, religious, and print culture, she uses the elaboration and reception of these scientific personae to construct the first collective biography of the Jesuit missionary-scientist's many incarnations in late imperial China. --From publisher's description.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject Jesuits -- Missions -- China -- History.
Jesuits.
Missions.
China.
History.
Ricci, Matteo, 1552-1610.
Ricci, Matteo, 1552-1610.
Jesuits -- China -- History -- 16th century.
Chronological Term 16th century
Subject Jesuits -- China -- History -- 17th century.
Chronological Term 17th century
Subject Jesuits -- Missions -- China -- History.
Jesuiten.
Jesuit scientists -- China.
Jesuit scientists.
Science -- China -- History.
Science.
Chronological Term Geschichte 1500-1800
1500-1699
Genre/Form Electronic books.
History.
Cover Title Sojourners in a strange land : Jesuits & their scientific missions in late imperial China
Other Form: Print version: Hsia, Florence C. Sojourners in a strange land. Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2009 9780226355597 (DLC) 2009010016 (OCoLC)315239309
ISBN 9780226355610 (electronic book)
0226355616 (electronic book)
9780226355597
0226355594