This book discusses how Chinese religion and philosophy were represented in printed works produced in the Dutch Republic between 1595 and 1700. By focusing on books, newspapers, learned journals, and pamphlets, Trude Dijkstra sheds new light on the cultural encounter between China and western Europe in the early modern period. Form, content, and material-technical aspects of different media in Dutch and French are analysed, providing novel insights into the ways in which readers could take note of Chinese religion and philosophy. This study thereby demonstrates that there was no singular image of China and its religion and philosophy, but rather a varied array of notions on the subject.
Trude Dijkstra, Ph.D. (University of Amsterdam, 2019) is a visiting postdoctoral scholar at the Warburg Institute, London on a Niels Stensen Fellowship. She has published on cultural encounters between China and Europe, early modern learned journals, and Confucianism in the Dutch Republic.
Acknowledgements List of Figures Colour Illustrations
Introduction
1 China’s Religion and Philosophy in Dutch-Made Books, 1595–1687
1 Early Contacts between China and the Dutch Republic
2 The Devil in Calicut
3 Jesuits and Calvinists on Chinese Religion and Philosophy
2 The Dutch Commodification of Confucius
1 Popular Works on China
2 Jacob van Meurs
3 Compilations of All Things China
3 The Vernacular and Latin Translations of Confucius
1 Athanasius Kircher
2 The First Latin Translations of Confucius
3 The 1675 Dutch Edition of Confucius
4 The 1687 Jesuit Edition of Confucius in Latin
5 Translating Confucius Sinarum Philosophus
4 Confucius in Dutch-Made Learned Journals
1 The Learned Journal in the European World of Print
2 The Erudite Press and China before 1687
3 The Antiquity of China
4 Critiquing Confucius
5 China and the Chinese Rites Controversy in Dutch Newspapers
1 Publishing News in the Dutch Republic
2 News from China
3 Reports on China in Dutch-Made Newspapers
4 The Middle Kingdom in French-Language Newspapers
5 The Chinese Rites Controversy in the Public Eye
Epilogue Bibliography Index
All interested in early modern encounters between Asia and Europe, and anyone concerned with printing and publishing in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic.