Asia in the Making of Europe Volume III Book One

主題 Topic	世紀發展：貿易、傳教、文獻紀錄 A Century of Advance: Trade, Mission, and Literature
書刊名 Title	《由亞洲建構歐洲》第三卷第一冊 Asia in the Making of Europe Volume III Book One
作者 Author	Donald F. Lach
出版社 Publisher	The University of Chicago Press
出版年 Year	1993
語言 Language	英文 English
裝訂 Binding	□ 平裝 Paperback　　　　■精裝 Hardcover
頁數 Pages	564 pages
ISBN (10 / 13)	ISBN-10: 0226-46753-8
Bibliography Reference	(STC, Duff, GW . . .)
來源網址 Web Link
劇本簡介撰稿者	李祁芳、林柏豪
撰寫日期 Date	8 July 2015

A.   簡介 Introduction (within 100 words, Chinese or English)

    此書《世紀發展》是《由亞洲建構歐洲》之第一卷第一冊《世紀大發現》之延續。
    約西元1700年時，歐洲與亞洲各國與帝國間的武力與影響力達到最高峰。此時最引人值得注意的是來自歐洲各國的商業與教會將其勢力伸入亞洲大陸以及亞洲海域上的島嶼。從沿海地帶，各國深入內陸，比如印度、中國，日本等地。然而一開始這樣的進入卻無法使歐洲列國增強在海外世界的力量及政治發展。這樣的失效歸因於地理環境的受限，因為島嶼眾多，勢力無法集中。歐洲各國便理解到，如欲在海外拓展其勢力，與當地住民合作為必需的手段。此後，列強在亞洲有了深度的基礎，有效地經營歐洲與亞洲間的貿易供給市場。
    教會力量的延伸也在航海世代扮演了重要的角色。當時的基督宗教分裂為新教與舊教，在歐洲內陸裡，彼此關係互相角力。然而，無論新教或舊教，亞洲都因為歐洲各國傳教士的進駐，而有了新的面向。同時，傳教士對於亞洲的觀察與紀錄，也為歐洲人眼中的亞洲增添不一樣的風采。
    十七世時的歐洲人，藉由通商、宗教傳播、冒險、以及由東方引入歐洲的物品認識亞洲。當時候大多數的印刷來自於荷蘭的出版業，接著是西班牙和葡萄牙出版了對於亞洲的見聞錄。雕刻家與製圖師也爭相學習由亞洲傳進的描繪，進而提升自身的技術。耶穌會的信件往來及其他紀錄促使羅馬和其他天主教國家設立出版中心，用以發行及修改其刊物。
    貿易發達使歐洲各國得以累積財力；宗教上的傳播促使歐洲人學習亞洲各地人民的文化，進而帶回影響歐洲文明；文字紀錄使歐洲人得以更加了解這片未知的土地。經商、傳教、文字紀錄所構成的亞洲提供了更加深層及多元的觀點於現今歐洲文明及歷史的研究。

B.   文本摘錄 Extracts (4-6 Pages)

For a survey of the general objectives of Asia in the Making of Europe see the introduction to Volume I. Volume III, the present work, entitled A century of Discovery. It deals with the seventeenth century in much the same way that Volume I covers the sixteenth century. The significance of 1600 as transitional date is discussed in the Introduction to Volume I.
For the present volume the terminal date of 1700 us at best approximate. In both northern Europe and Asia the great nations and empires were then at the apogee of their power and influence. HE Dutch and English East India Companies had come to dominate the trade between Asia and Europe at the expense of Portugal. Independent Portugal, like its neighbor Spain, had begun by 1700 to concentrate upon its relations with the Americas rather than with Aisa. France, the newest actor on the Asian stage, made a late but spectacular entry which was quickly followed by a series f military and political setbacks. The other European powers, including the Holy Romans dominated the sea-lanes ad trade between Europe and Asia.
Most notable in the seventeen century was the advance of European merchant and missionaries into the continental states and archipelagoes of Asia. From coastal footholds won in the previous century, the penetrated the interiors of the Asian states and even the courts of Mughul India, Siam, Arakan, Mataram, China, and Japan. This deeper penetration, while it produced more and better information, did not lead to European political or territorial aggrandizement in the great continental states. Empire-building was generally limited to the archipelagoes (Insulindia and the Philipines), to isolated islands (Formosa, Guam, and perhaps Ceylon), and to separated city-states (Cochin, Malaccam and Makassar). When the French attempted to suborn the kingdom of Siam, they were summarily ejected in 1688by native action. The Europeans were most successful in working with one another and with cooperative natives in building new, or expanding old, coastal commercial cities: Manila, Nagasaki, Macao, Batavia, Colombo, Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. From these strategically located entrepôts they became increasingly more effective in controlling inter-Asian trade and in supplying European market.
Northern Europe dominated the trade except for that which traversed the Pacific. Catholic missionaries, increasingly drawn from all over Europe, continued to enjoy a virtual monopoly of evangelizing in areas nor ruled by the Dutch or by the Muslims. The Jesuits, once the predominant mission order, were forced more and more to share the mission fields with the other orders and with secular priests sent out by the Propaganda fide in Rome and Society of Foreign Missions in Paris. Debates over ecclesiastical jurisdictions and mission policies produced bitter controversies within the Catholic Church and between it and the nation-states. The Dutch Reformed pastors confined their missionary work to places dominated by their compatriots, especially in Insulindia and Formosa. Without the support of religious orders, the Dutch pastors in the East concentrated upon ministering to spiritual needs of those their faith. Both the Catholic priests and the protestant pastors added cultural and intellectual dimensions to the European perception of the East.
Beginning around 1600, Russians had begun to penetrate eastern Siberia as part of an unofficial drive toward the Pacific by merchant and adventurers. Shortly after the triumph of the Manchus in China in 1644, some of these pioneering Russians began to push southward toward the Amur River. When clashes between Russians and Chinese resulted, it became evident to both powers that an understanding over a frontier would have to be concluded. With the aid of the Jesuits, the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) was worked out and the boundary set at a mountain range just to the north of the Amur. Tsar Peter I thereafter tried unsuccessfully to work out trade arrangement with Peking. So at century’s end the Russian Eurasiatic state existed more as a hope than as a reality. Its Asiatic portion remained unimportant to western Russia except as a source of revenue; Peter and his advisers continued to be more interested in Western technology than in the development of eastern Siberia. Nothing was published in Russian before the 1700’s about the eastern part of the empire or about Russian experiences with Asians. What contemporaries knew about Russia’s eastward advance came from western European publications. As a consequence, in this volume as in the preceding ones, we have no Russian publications to include in our construction of the Western images of Asia.
The public of western Europe, on the other hand, learned in detail of the European progress in Asia from the reports of merchants, missionaries, and adventurers, as well as from the products of the East which poured into Europe in a never-ending stream. Most of the seventeenth-century printed reports came off the presses of northern Europe─more form Dutch presses than from all the rest. Spain and Portugal continued to publish notices of victories in the East, though these were becoming rarer by the latter half of the century. Engravers and cartographers in the Low Countries and France continually sought to improve their depictions by consulting the printed reports as they came out. The Jesuit letters and letterbooks, as well as other mission reports, emanated from the presses of Rome and other Catholic publishing centers. Most og the important merchant and missionary reports were reprinted for wider distribution and some were republished in the great travel collections of De Bry, Purchas, Commelin, and Thévenot. Even the newly established learned societies of France and England got into the act by publishing articles on Asia of scholarly interest as well as reviews of some of the most important reports dealing with the botany, zoology, and medicine of the East.
From these numerous materials the “curious readers” of the seventeenth century certainly had no problem learning about the Asia and its various parts. The images relayed of the great continental states like China and India were much sharper, deeper, and more comprehensive than those of the previous century. The seventeenth-century Europeans had the advantage of using the works of their predecessors and of having better access to the society or culture under review. Through their understanding of many of the native languages, the Europeans, particularly the missionaries, were now better able than previously to penetrate the high culture of India, China, and Japan. In particular, they learned much more than their predecessors about the content of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism and of the hold these doctrines had upon their devotees. In the insular regions of Asia, and in smaller states where the Europeans were seen as a mounting threat to the existing order, setbacks as well as victories had to be recorded. All the Europeans except the Dutch were expelled from Japan by 1640; twenty years later the Dutch themselves were forced out of Formosa by the Chinese cohorts of Koxinga. In the Philippines, in Indonesia, and in some parts of India, the Muslims periodically checked the advances of the Christians and threatened their converts. In the religiously tolerant Buddhist states of Arakan and Siam, even the most zealous Christian missionaries were frustrated by what they saw as the religious indifference of the population. In Vietnam, with its mixed cultural and religious traditions, the Catholics were successful in making conversions than they were anywhere else except for the Philippines and the Marianas.
From the diverse images of the various parts of Asia it became manifestly clear that the Europeans in the field were engaged in a commercial and religious struggle. While progress was recorded for most places, it could readily be seen that the Europeans were not universally successfully imposing their will upon abject Asians. Many of the victories recorded by the Dutch and English were at the expense of the Iberians, as in India, Ceylon, Insulindia, and Japan. The new Asian places being revealed had been penetrated by individual missionaries, merchants, and adventurers, as in Central Asia, Tibet, Korea, Laos, Australia, and a few Pacific island. As the circle of knowledge was thus widened, previously unknown places were related to those with which most Europeans were already familiar. By 1700 it was only the fringes of continental Asia north of India and China, the interior of Australia (and information on the size and shape of Australia), and the insular reaches of the South Seas such New Zeeland which remained unknown to the Europeans.
In what follows, as in Volume I, an effort is made to check the seventeenth-century sources against the best of recent scholarship. Most troubling to modern scholars is the seventeenth-century authors’ practice of borrowing from their predecessors or contemporaries without attribution. We have tried, though not always with success, to indicate in the text or footnotes whenever such unacknowledged appropriations have taken place. An attempt is also made to determine whether the various authors are reporting personal experiences or merely relating hearsay or bazaar gossip. Seventeen-century travelers were usually far less insulated from local population than are most today. They traveled more slowly, had much more contact with local people, and generally stayed in one place longer. What they report, therefore frequently reflects not only their own observations and preconceptions, but also the impressions they received from talking and living with natives. We have sought to indicate the length and depth of the recorded personal experiences of the individual authors and whenever possible to point out their biases. In the process we learned that their biases were sometimes more apparent than real. For example, a Dutch pastor wrote with rare objectivity about Hinduism, an English adventurer described without serious prejudice the everyday life of Kandy in Ceylon, and some sincere Jesuits recorded without malice or rose-colored spectacles the Manchu takeover in China. We also discovered that modern scholars have sometimes used these seventeenth-century sources without sufficiently analyzing the individual texts or their authors. Such omissions are particularly troubling when the seventeenth-century European text is the only source available or when it is contradicted by others or equal veracity, whether native or European. It should be noted that where indigenous sources and learned information existed, some of the Europeans endeavored to use them. For the reconstruction of the past in many places, the Europeans are the only authorities or the only ones to provide specific dates or statistics, Because they usually picked up what was different form Europe, the European sources are also rich in mundane information about most Asian places and aspects of native life which native writers ignore or take for granted.
No effort is undertaken in this volume to assess the impact of this information on the arts, sciences, ideas, institutions, economy, and practices of the Europeans. This topic of audience response is reserved for Volume IV, the next projected work in this series.