became the basis of other books. Mendoza's work on China, for instance, written in Spanish and first published in 1585, was translated into Italian, French, and English." Halde's China, made up of extracts from the writings of missionaries, was first written in French and by 1741 had passed through two English editions." Antoine Gaubil, one of the French Jesuits, who was in China from 1722 until his death, 1759, was probably more expert in Chinese than was any European before the nineteenth century. He translated the life of Jenghiz Khan, some of the T'ang Annals, and the Shu Ching, he prepared a treatise on Chinese chronology, and left behind him many unpublished manuscripts." The largest history of China ever published in a European language is that to which is attached the name of Joseph Anne Maria de Moyriac de Mailla, who served in the Jesuit mission in Peking in the eighteenth century." The mis 53 51 sionaries prepared dictionaries, wrote descriptions of Chinese plants," sent or brought to Europe the first large collections of Chinese books, translated some of the classical writings, and introduced Europe to the Chinese philosophers." The very forms of the words by which two of the greatest of the sages, Confucius and Mencius, are known to the Occident are due to the missionaries and bear permanent witness to Europe's debt to them." Rococo art was influenced by Chinese models. Chinese gardens, pagodas, and pavilions were reproduced by the wealthy, largely from information derived from the missionaries, sedan chairs came into use, true porcelain was for the first time produced in Europe, lacquer, incense, tea, Chinese colors, and the Chinese style of painting were popular, and by a process of evolution, in an attempt to copy China, the first wall papers 47 Encyclopædia Sinica, p. 348. Halde, A Description of the Empire of China, etc., 2 vols., London, 1741. 49 Cordier in Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 6, p. 393. 50 Mailla, Histoire générale de la Chine, 13 vols., Paris, 1777-1780. 61 Cattaneo translated a Chinese dictionary, Verbiest prepared a Manchu grammar, Christian Herdtrich prepared a Chinese-Latin dictionary, there was a lexicon by Basilius of Clemona, and several others by other missionaries. Prémare's Notitia was well known to an earlier generation of sinologues.-Dahlmann, Sprachkunde und Missionen, pp. 30 et seq. 52 Michel Boym, Flora Sinensis, Vienna, 1656. 63 Cordier, La Chine en France au XVIIIe siècle, p. 113. 54 Couplet translated parts of Confucius' writings, Noël translated Mencius, and Amiot prepared a Vita Confucii.-Dahlmann, op. cit., pp. 23-55. 55 For books written by the missionaries, see Cordier, Bibliotheca Sinica, passim. 56 appeared. One enthusiastic writer declares that by the latter part of the seventeenth century the missionaries had succeeded in making China better known in France than were many of the provinces of Europe." They laid the foundations for the scientific study of China by Europeans and so of an intelligent appreciation of that country. 58 One interesting feature of this knowledge in Europe of China was the influence of the Middle Kingdom upon the liberal thought of the eighteenth century. For a time it was the fashion in the circles in which Voltaire and the encyclopædists moved to glorify Chinese culture. Particularly was this so in the realm of religion. Many of the educated Europeans of the eighteenth century were deists and so upholders of "natural" as against "revealed" and ecclesiastical religion. The Jesuits by their translations of the Chinese Classics and their endeavor to find in the honors to T'ien and Shang Ti a belief in God akin to that in Judaism and Christianity had opened to the "enlightened" intellectual of the Occident a civilization in which he saw a confirmation of his views. Here was, so he believed, a monotheism which had grown up apart from the Jewish and Christian revelations, was adhered to by the educated, and was free from the domination of clerical superstition. Naturally he was intensely interested and was loud in his praises. Deism did not owe its origin to Chinese influence nor was it much modified by it, but its adherents were often strengthened in their convictions by what they thought they saw in China. It is just possible that an increased use of the word Heaven for God in the literature of the time had its origin here. By the end of the eighteenth century the adulation of China had largely subsided, but the nineteenth century still heard occasional echoes of it." The missionaries had been largely responsible for initiating a cross-fertilization of cultures. 50 Cordier, La Chine en France au XVIIIe siècle, passim; Reichwein, China and Europe, passim. 57 P. 107. Martino, L'orient dans la litterature française au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle 58 Cordier, La Chine en France au XVIIIe siècle, pp. 114-126. 5° For an excellent treatment of this general topic see Söderblom, Das Werden des Gottesglaubens, pp. 324-360. For echoes of this admiration for China in America, see Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Lipscomb, ed., Vol. 5, p. 183. The salutatory of the first volume of the American Philosophical Society expressed the hope that the United States might be "so fortunate as to introduce the industry of the Chinese, their arts of living, and improvements in husbandry."-Oberholtzer, Robert Morris, p. 223. CHAPTER XI THE RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH IN CHINA IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES It was not alone by sea that in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries China came in touch with an expanding Europe. While the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Dutch, the English, and the French were establishing their traders in the ports on the south coast and Roman Catholic missionaries were gaining followers in practically all the provinces, Russians were occupying Siberia and were forming commercial, diplomatic, and religious contacts with the Middle Kingdom. The first Russian agents reached Peking in the latter part of the sixteenth century, but were not officially received. Russians continued to push their way eastward and by the middle of the seventeenth century had outposts in the portion of Siberia which drains into the Pacific. This activity on their northern borders alarmed the Manchus and they laid siege to Albazin, the principal Russian fort on the Amur River. Of the check to the Russian advance and of the treaty of Nerchinsk (1689)—the first formal agreement between China and a European power and negotiated in part with the aid of Roman Catholic missionaries -there is no need to go into detail here. What concerns us is that at the first siege of Albazin, in 1685, thirty-one prisoners were captured by K'ang Hsi's forces and were taken to Peking. They were given a residence in the northeast corner of the city and in time were incorporated into one of the "banners" and were given charge of the defense of their section of the capital. They were apparently members of the Russian Orthodox Church -so far as we know, the first of that communion to reside within the Eighteen Provinces-and with them had been taken captive a priest, Maxime Leontiev. Leontiev ministered to his flock according to the customs of his church, first in a temple assigned to him and then in a chapel built for that purpose. In the course of time the Metropolitan of Tobolsk recognized the community by sending it a communion cloth, and ordered that preaching among the Chinese be begun. The cloth was accepted but the command was not obeyed. Leontiev died in 1712, and in 1715 there were sent to carry on his work, probably by Peter the Great, the Archimandrite Hilarion, a priest, a deacon, and seven clerics. They, too, apparently confined their ministrations to the Albazinians. It is interesting that they called their church by a Chinese word for temple, miao, that they used the Buddhist term fo for God, and called their clergymen lama. Growing intercourse between the Chinese and Russians made necessary a suplementary treaty, that of Kiakhta, in 1727. This document, besides regulating trade, diplomatic relations, and the frontier, provided for the residence in Peking of four priests and of six students of Chinese and Manchu. As soon as they had completed their studies the latter were to return to Russia to aid in the conduct of the relations between the two countries. This ecclesiastical mission was supported at the expense of the Chinese and Russian governments. It was primarily for the purpose of giving spiritual care to the descendants of the Albazinians and to the Russians who visited or lived in the capital, and of providing a means for the study of Chinese. Its members carried on no activities among the Chinese, but in the twentieth century the group of Albazinians which they continued to nourish in the Faith became a center of evangelism among the Chinese, and the portion of the city assigned to the captives so long before remained for years the base of the mission's activities.' The authorities for this brief chapter are: Archimandrite Innocent in Chinese Recorder, Vol. 47, pp. 678 et seq.; Baddeley, Russia, Mongolia and China, Vol. 2, passim; Cordier, Hist. des rel. de la Chine avec les puis. occid., Vol. 1, p. 87; Cordier, Hist. générale de la Chine, Vol. 3, pp. 270-278, 340-342; Cordier in Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, p. 679; Prandi, Memoirs of Father Ripa, p. 89; Timkowski, Travels of the Russian Mission, Vol. 1, pp. 1-3; Smirnoff, A Short Account of the Historical Development and Present Position of Russian Orthodox Missions, p. 75; Chinese Recorder, Vol. 4, pp. 68, 96, Vol. 23, p. 151; Encyclopædia Sinica, pp. 10, 287, 490. CHAPTER XII THE RENEWED EXPANSION OF EUROPE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, THE REVIVAL OF CATHOLIC MISSIONS, AND THE RELIGIOUS AND MISSIONARY AWAKENING AMONG PROTESTANTS DURING the closing years of the eighteenth and the opening decades of the nineteenth century, missions in China, as we have seen, marked time. Advance had stopped and retreat seemed impending. When the outlook appeared darkest, however, new movements were beginning in the Occident which were to bring about a larger growth than the Church had yet known. The expansion of Europe which had commenced in the Middle Ages with the crusades, the commerce of the Italian cities, and the Franciscan and Dominican missions, and which had revived with the discoveries, commerce, conquests, and missions of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, was to receive an additional impulse in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the entire race was to feel the effects. The primary cause of this renewed expansion was the Industrial Revolution. Growing scientific knowledge brought increased mastery of man over his physical environment. Machinery, factories, railways, steamboats, and, later, telegraphs and telephones, airplanes and radios, worked startling changes. Populations multiplied, great migrations of peoples flowed into the vacant spaces of the earth, wealth accumulated, education became widespread, the globe was searched for raw materials and markets, commerce and travel increased to enormous proportions, the governments of the Occident controlled nearly all the planet, and every nonOccidental people began the reshaping of its culture under the influence of the civilization of Europe and America. Modern industry began in Great Britain in the eighteenth cen |