{"content":[{"text":"individual, but as a rule they acted as an “intermediaries” between West and \n East, despite the sincere interest of several Jesuit missionaries in some aspects of \n Chinese culture and society.","bbox":{"left":0.151261,"top":0.085365,"width":0.695376,"height":0.05005800000000002}},{"text":"Based on this premise, Noël Golvers set out to explore the intellectual and \n spiritual interests of the Jesuits in pre-­‐1770s China, based on their extensive \n libraries and frequent requests for new and additional books to be sent from the \n European book markets to China. I recently had the opportunity to meet with Dr. \n Golvers in person, on a visit to Leuven University (Belgium) in the context of my \n own interest in the life, work and personality traits of Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J. (南 \n 懷仁), one of the earliest Jesuit missionaries to settle in China. I was duly \n impressed by his carefully voiced opinions on Verbiest as a person, and his \n clearly extensive background research into the Jesuit mission in the 16th, 17th \n and 18th Centuries AD. These scholarly qualities are reflected in the care that \n must have gone into compiling and writing these two heavy volumes. The focus \n is not so much (or, perhaps I should say, not only) on the collections of European \n books in China and their provenance, but also—and particularly so—on the \n people that acquired and/or desired them, the European context and the routes \n by which the books reached their final destination.","bbox":{"left":0.151261,"top":0.152064,"width":0.693344,"height":0.25186200000000003}},{"text":"Golvers has clearly gone to great lengths to compile an overview of the spread \n and penetration of Western books in late-­‐Ming-­‐/early-­‐Qing-­‐dynasty China by \n means of Jesuit missionaries. This is not an easy feat: although there are good \n current catalogues of books that were at some point acquired by the order in \n China, including the so-­‐called “Beitang (北堂) collection” (1949) of extant books, \n their provenance is not always immediately clear. As such, the author based his \n study mainly on archival sources (letters, manuscripts, treatises), supplemented \n with the Beitang collection, especially those books containing an inscription. The \n historical records are often incomplete and fragmentary, but Golvers has done a \n careful job at piecing a complex puzzle together—an effort that took him the \n better part of seven years. The first of this two-­‐volume work contains Chapters 1 \n through 3 and focuses on the logistics of book acquisition, from the selections \n made in China, through the role of book agents and donors in Europe, to the \n delivery routes. His detailed study of the names mentioned in the book \n inscriptions does not only reveal the identity of the original owners and donors \n (and thus also of their social circles), but also highlights the mission’s numerous \n regional support networks, spanning much of contemporary Catholic Europe.","bbox":{"left":0.151261,"top":0.420852,"width":0.692342,"height":0.28464200000000006}},{"text":"Golvers’ original intent was to provide a comprehensive overview of all titles, \n both historically referenced and extant in the Beitang collection, but he admits \n that this proved too much of a task to be feasible. His focus is, therefore, on the \n sources underlying Verbiest’s work, and he digresses from there systematically. \n The aspect of his approach that appeals to me most is his emphasis on the \n “readers” and their personal stories in relation to their work in China. Both \n volumes provide comprehensive accounts of the context in which both the \n Jesuits’ books were acquired and their libraries established, but they also cover \n numerous anecdotes which make both volumes highly readable yet serious \n scholarly texts. As a physical scientist, I am not used to reading scholarly texts \n from the humanities, which are usually accompanied by extensive footnotes.","bbox":{"left":0.151261,"top":0.722135,"width":0.684398,"height":0.1837390000000001}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}