The book uncovers the Jesuits’ master-slave relation with Emperor Kangxi. Against the backdrop of this relationship, the book narrates Kangxi-Pope negotiations (1705-1721) regarding Chinese Rites Controversy and redefines the rise and fall of the Christian mission in early Qing China.

This book integrates history, theology, and art and analyzes the Jesuits’ cross-cultural mission in late imperial China. Readers will find a rich collection of resources from historical sites, museums, manuscripts, and archival materials, including previous unpublished works of art. The production and circulation of art from different historical periods and categories show the artistic, theological, and missional values of Christian art. It highlights European Jesuits, Asian Christians, transnationalism, and gives voice to Chinese Christian women and their patronage of art in the seventeenth century. It offers a rare systematic study of the relation between art and mission history.

From Rome to Beijing: Sacred Spaces in Dialogue, edited by Daniel M. Greenberg and Mari Yoko Hara, explores the relationship between Jesuit enterprise and Ming-Qing China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Jesuit order’s global corporation grew increasingly influential within the Chinese court after 1582, in no small part due to the two institutions shared interests in artistic and scientific matters. The paintings, astronomical instruments, spiritual texts and sacred buildings engendered through this encounter tell fascinating stories of cross-cultural communication and miscommunication. This volume approaches early modern East-West exchange as a site of cultural (rather than commercial) negotiations, where two sets of traditions and values intersected and diverged.

This open access book provides an analysis of human actors and their capacity to explore and conceptualise their own agency by being curious, gathering knowledge, and shaping identities in their travel reflections on Asia. Thus, the actors open windows across time to present a profound overview of diverse descriptions and constructions of Asia. It is demonstrated that international and transnational history contributes to and benefits from analyses of national and local contexts that in turn enrich our understanding of transcultural encounters and experiences across time. The book proposes an actor-centred contextual approach to travel writing to recount meaningful constructions of Asia’s physical, political and spiritual landscapes. It offers comparative reflections on the patterns of encounter across Eurasia, where from the late medieval period an idea of civilisation was transculturally shared yet also constantly questioned and reframed. Tailored for academic and public discussions alike, this volume will be invaluable for both scholars of Global History and interested audiences to stimulate further discussions on the nature of global encounters in Asia.

This wide-ranging collection of essays reflects the manifold scholarly interests of legal historian Charles Donahue, whose former students engage here with questions related to foundational Roman law concepts, the impact of the law on women and families in medieval and early modern Europe, the intersection of law and religion, and the echoes of legal ideas on later developments in American law and in world literature and philosophy. From the monks of Metz to the book sellers of colonial Boston, from fourteenth-century English charters to the writings of Faust, these essays invite you to experience law at once learned and lived. Contributors are: Charles Bartlett, Anton Chaevitch, Wim Decock, Rowan Dorin, Sally E. Hadden, Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch, Nikitas E. Hatzimihail, Samantha Kahn Herrick, Daniel Jacobs, Elizabeth Papp Kamali, Amalia D. Kessler, Saskia Lettmaier, Sara McDougall, Stuart M. McManus, Elizabeth W. Mellyn, Bharath Palle, Ryan Rowberry, Carol Symes, James R. Townshend, and John Witte, Jr.

Although it is generally believed that the Manchus controlled the Mongols through their patronage of Tibetan Buddhism, scant attention has been paid to the Mongol view of the Qing imperial project. In contrast to other accounts of Manchu rule, Our Great Qing focuses not only on what images the metropole wished to project into Mongolia, but also on what images the Mongols acknowledged themselves. Rather than accepting the Manchu's use of Buddhism, Johan Elverskog begins by questioning the static, unhistorical, and hegemonic view of political life implicit in the Buddhist explanation. By stressing instead the fluidity of identity and Buddhist practice as processes continually developing in relation to state formations, this work explores how Qing policies were understood by Mongols and how they came to see themselves as Qing subjects.

Early modern European monarchies legitimized their rule through dynasty and religion where ideally the divine right of the ruler corresponded with the official confession of the territory. It has thus been assumed that at princely courts only a single confession was present. However, the reality of the confessionalization paradigm commonly involved more than one faith. Religious Plurality at Princely Courts explores the reverberations of bi-confessional or multi-confessional intra-Christian settings at courts on dynastic, symbolic, diplomatic, artistic, and theological levels addressing a significant neglected understanding of interreligious dialogue, religious change, and confessional blending. Incorporating perspectives across European studies such as domestic and international politics, dynastic strategies, the history of ideas, women’s and gender history, and material culture, the contributions to this volume highlight the intersections of religious plurality at court.

Was the primary focus of the Qing dynasty really civil rather than military matters? In this ground-breaking book, Joanna Waley-Cohen overturns conventional wisdom to put warfare at the heart of seventeenth and eighteenth century China. She argues that the civil and the military were understood as mutually complementary forces. Emperors underpinned military expansion with a wide-ranging cultural campaign intended to bring military success, and the martial values associated with it, into the mainstream of cultural life. The Culture of War in China is a striking revisionist history that brings new insight into the roots of Chinese nationalism and the modern militarized state.

For the Chinese, the drive toward growing political and economic power is part of an ongoing effort to restore China's past greatness and remove the lingering memories of history's humiliations. This widely praised book explores the 1500–1800 period before China's decline, when the country was viewed as a leading world culture and power. Europe, by contrast, was in the early stages of emerging from provincial to international status while the United States was still an uncharted wilderness. D. E. Mungello argues that this earlier era, ironically, may contain more relevance for today than the more recent past. Building on the author's decades of research and teaching, this compelling book illustrates the vital importance of history to readers trying to understand China’s renewed rise.

Historical actors are as central to the history of knowledge as to all historical scholarship. Every country, every era has its biographies of eminent scientists, intellectuals, and educational reformers. Yet the theoretical currents that have left their mark on the historical and sociological studies of knowledge since the 1960s have emphasized structures over actors, collectives over individuals. By contrast, Knowledge Actors stresses the importance of historical actors and re-engages with their actions from fresh perspectives. The objective of this volume is thus to foster a larger discussion among historians of knowledge about the role of knowledge actors. Do we want individuals and networks to take center stage in our research narratives? And if so, which ones do we want to highlight and how are we to conduct our research? What are the potential pitfalls of pursuing that actor-centric trajectory? This the third volume in a trilogy about the history of knowledge from the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge (LUCK).