In the Eye(s) of the Storm(s): Álvaro Semedo, an Observer of Two Dynastic Transitions in the Global Crisis of the 17th Century
In: Ming Qing YanjiuSearch for other papers by Isabel Murta Pina in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
It is certainly uncommon for a seventeenth-century observer to have borne witness to two dynastic transitions in places as far apart as the opposite corners of Eurasia – the Iberian Peninsula and China. Álvaro Semedo, a Portuguese Jesuit, is one such case. He was in Madrid, when news arrived that the Portuguese had proclaimed a national king in 1640, bringing sixty years of Iberian Union to an end. Semedo returned to China in 1645, one year after the Qing had taken Peking. In 1650, he witnessed first-hand the siege and reconquest of Canton by the Qing. This article aims to explore the political transition in China through the eyes of a European missionary who had already been caught by the breakup of the Habsburg empire. How did he position himself in both dynastic transitions? What comparisons did he make? Was he aware of the “global crisis”? These are some of the questions that will be addressed.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
Japonica-Sinica: 114; 161 I–II.
-
Jesuítas na Ásia: 49-IV-61.
-
Cod. 115, doc. 7.
-
Almeida, Gregório, Restauração de Portugal Prodigiosa, Lisbon: Antonio Alvarez, 1643.
-
Cardim, António Francisco, Batalhas da Companhia de Jesus na sua gloriosa província do Japão, ed. by Luciano Cordeiro, Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1894:30–47.
-
Mandelslo, Johann Albrecht Von, Mandelslo’s Travels in Western India (A.D. 1638–1639), ed. M. S. Commissariat, London-Bombay-Calcutta-Madras: Oxford University Press, 1931.
-
Mandelslo, Johann Albrecht Von, Voyage en Perse & en Inde (1637–1640), ed. by François de Valence, Paris: Éditions Chandeigne, 2008.
-
Memorial Histórico Español: Coleccion de Documentos, Opúsculos y Antigüedades que publica la Real Academia de la Historia, Tome XVI, Madrid: En la Imprenta Nacional, 1862.
-
Semedo, Álvaro, Imperio de la China i cultura evangelica en èl, Madrid: Juan Sanchez, 1642.
-
Semedo, Álvaro, The History of the Great and Renowned Monarchy of China, London: E. Tyler, 1655.
-
Alden, Dauril, The Making of an Enterprise. The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.
-
Andrade, Tonio, “A Chinese Farmer, Two African Boys, and a Warlord: Toward a Global Microhistory”, Journal of World History, Vol. 21, Nº 4 (December 2010):573–591.
-
Aston, Trevor (ed.), Crisis in Europe, 1560–1660, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965.
-
Atwell, William S., “Ming Observers of Ming Decline: Some Chinese Views on the ‘Seventeenth-Century Crisis’ in Comparative Perspective”, The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, nº2 (1988):316–348.
-
Bouza, Fernando, Pedro Cardim and Antonio Feros (eds.), The Iberian World, 1450–1820, London – New York: Routledge, 2020.
-
Brook, Timothy, The Confusions of Pleasure. Commerce and Culture in Ming China, Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press, 1999.
-
Brook, Timothy, The Troubled Empire. China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, Cambridge, Mass. – London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.
-
Busquets i Alemany, Anna, “Other voices for the conflict: three Spanish texts about the Manchus and their conquest of China”, Ming Qing Yanjiu XVII (2012):36–64.
-
Castelnau-L’estoile, Charlotte, “Élection et vocation. Le choix de la mission dans la province jésuite du Portugal à la fin du XVIe siècle”, in Pierre Antoine Fabre and Bernard Vincent (eds.), Missions religieuses modernes. ‘Notre lieu est le monde’, Rome: École française de Rome, 2007:21–43.
-
Chen Min-Sun, “China in the early seventeenth century: Alvarez Semedo’s history of the Great and Renowned Monarchy of China”, Annals of the Philippine Chinese Historical Association 8 (1978):20–79.
-
Costa, Leonor Freire and Mafalda Soares da Cunha, D. João IV, Mem-Martins: Círculo de Leitores-CEPCEP, 2006.
-
Curto, Diogo Ramada, Cultura Escrita: séculos XV a XVIII, Lisbon: ICS, 2007.
-
Feros, Antonio, “Twin souls: monarchs and favourites in early seventeenth-century Spain”, in Richard L. Kagan and Geoffrey Parker (eds.), Spain, Europe and the Atlantic world. Essays in honour of John H. Elliot, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002 (1st edition: 1995):28–47.
-
Frank, Andre Gunder, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
-
Ginzburg, Carlo, “Microhistory and world history”, in Jerry H. Bentley, Sanjay Subramanyam and Merry E. Weisner-Hanks (eds.), The Cambridge World History, Vol. 6, The Construction of a global world, 1400–1800 CE, Part I: Foundations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015:446–473.
-
Glaser, Edward, The “Fortuna” of Manuel de Faria e Sousa: an autobiography, Münster: Ascendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1975.
-
Goodrich, L. Carrington and Fang Chaoying (eds.), Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368–1644, 2 vols., New-York – London: Columbia University Press, 1976.
-
Guy, R. Kent, Qing governors and their provinces, the evolution of territorial administration in China, 1644–1796, Seatle – London: University of Washington Press, 2010.
-
Jami, Catherine, Peter Engelfriet and Gregory Blue, Statecraft & Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China. The Cross-Cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), Leiden – Boston – Köln: Brill, 2001.
-
Janku, Andrea, “‘Heaven-sent Disasters’ in Late Imperial China. The Scope of the State and Beyond”, in Christof Mauch and Christian Pfister (eds.), Natural Disasters, Cultural Responses. Case Studies toward a Global Environmental History, Lanham: Lexington Books, 2009:233–264.
-
Lach, Donald and Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the making of Europe, Vol. III: A Century of Advance, Chicago – London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993.
-
Marks, Robert, Tigers, Rice, Silk and Silt: Environment and Economy in late Imperial South China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
-
Menegon, Eugenio, “Desire, Truth and Propaganda: Lay and Ecclesiastical Travelers from Europe to China in the Long Eighteenth Century”, in Roberta Micallef (ed.), Illusions and disillusionment: travel writing in the modern age, Boston, Mass.: Ilex Foundation; Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2018:11–41.
-
Montcher, Fabien, “Politics, scholarship, and the Iberian routes of the Republic of Letters: The late Renaissance itinerary of Vicente Nogueira (1586–1654)”, Erudition and the Republic of Letters, 2 (2017):182–225.
-
O’Neill, Charles E. and Joaquín Mª Domínguez (eds.), Diccionario Histórico de la Compañía de Jesús, 4 Vols., Rome-Madrid: Institutum Historicum-Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2001.
-
Oliveira, António de, D. Filipe III, Casais de Mem Martins: Círculo de Leitores, 2005.
-
Parker, Geoffrey and Lesley M. Smith (eds.), The General Crisis of the seventeenth century, 2nd edition, London: Routledge, 1997.
-
Parker, Geoffrey, “Crisis and Catastrophe: The Global Crisis of the Seventeenth Century Reconsidered”, The American Historical Review, Vol. 113, 4(2008):1053–1079.
-
Parker, Geoffrey, Global crisis: war, climate change and catastrophe in the seventeenth century, New Haven – London: Yale University Press, 2014.
-
Peterson, Willard J. (ed.), The Cambridge History of China, vol. 9, Part One, The Ch’ing Dynasty to 1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
-
Pina, Isabel Murta, “Representations of China in Álvaro Semedo’s Work”, in Luís Saraiva and Catherine Jami (eds.), History of Mathematical Sciences: Portugal and East Asia V. Visual and Textual Representations in Exchange Between Europe and East Asia, 16th–18th Centuries, Singapure: World Scientific Publishing, 2018:31–53.
-
Pina, Isabel Murta, “The European circulation of Álvaro Semedo’s work”, in Luís Filipe Barreto and Wu Zhiliang (eds.), China-Macau and Globalizations: Past and Present, Lisbon: CCCM-Macao Foundation, 2017:90–103.
-
Rodrigues, Francisco, A Companhia de Jesus e a Restauração de Portugal (1640), Lisbon: Academia Portuguesa de História, 1942.
-
Sachdev, Rachana and Li Qingjun (eds.), Encountering China. Early Modern European Responses. Lewisburg: Bucknell Press, 2012.
-
Serrano Sánchez, Carmen, “L’écriture de l’événement dans les lettres des jésuites (1634–1648)”, in Christine Rivalan Guégo and Denis Rodrigues (eds.), L’Écho de l’événement: Du Moyen Âge à l’époque contemporaine, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2011:75–84.
-
Standaert, Nicolas (ed.), Handbook of Christianity in China, Vol. I, Leiden: Brill, 2001.
-
Struve, Lynn (ed.), Voices from the Ming-Qing Cataclysm: China in Tigers’ Jaws, New Haven – London: Yale University Press, 1993.
-
Struve, Lynn, The Southern Ming, 1644–1662, New Haven – London: Yale University Press, 1984.
-
Swope, Kenneth M., The Military Collapse of China’s Ming Dynasty, 1618–1644, London – New York: Routledge, 2014.
-
Ucerler, M. Antoni, “The Christian Missions in Japan in the Early Modern Period”, in Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia (ed.), A Companion to Early Modern Catholic Global Missions, Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2018:303–343.
-
Valadares, Rafael, Castilla y Portugal en Asia (1580–1680). Declive imperial y adaptación, Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2001.
-
Valadares, Rafael, Portugal y la Monarquía Hispánica, 1580–1668, Madrid: Arco Libros, 2000.
-
Van Kley, Edwin J., “An Alternative Muse: The Manchu Conquest of China in the Literature of Seventeenth-Century Northern Europe”, European Studies Review, 6 (1976):21–43.
-
Van Kley, Edwin J., “News from China; Seventeenth-Century European Notices of the Manchu Conquest”, The Journal of Modern History, vol. 45, nº 4 (Dec. 1973):561–582.
-
Von Glahn, Richard, The Economic History of China. From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
-
Wakeman Jr., Frederic, The Great Enterprise. The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China, 2 Vols., Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of California Press, 1985.
-
Županov, Ines G. and Pierre Antoine Fabre (eds.), The Rites Controversy in the Early Modern World, Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2018.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 446 | 177 | 11 |
| Full Text Views | 26 | 6 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 92 | 18 | 0 |
In the Eye(s) of the Storm(s): Álvaro Semedo, an Observer of Two Dynastic Transitions in the Global Crisis of the 17th Century
In: Ming Qing YanjiuSearch for other papers by Isabel Murta Pina in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
It is certainly uncommon for a seventeenth-century observer to have borne witness to two dynastic transitions in places as far apart as the opposite corners of Eurasia – the Iberian Peninsula and China. Álvaro Semedo, a Portuguese Jesuit, is one such case. He was in Madrid, when news arrived that the Portuguese had proclaimed a national king in 1640, bringing sixty years of Iberian Union to an end. Semedo returned to China in 1645, one year after the Qing had taken Peking. In 1650, he witnessed first-hand the siege and reconquest of Canton by the Qing. This article aims to explore the political transition in China through the eyes of a European missionary who had already been caught by the breakup of the Habsburg empire. How did he position himself in both dynastic transitions? What comparisons did he make? Was he aware of the “global crisis”? These are some of the questions that will be addressed.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 446 | 177 | 11 |
| Full Text Views | 26 | 6 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 92 | 18 | 0 |
