China in books: major publications in the modern period

The publications on China that flooded Europe in the modern period offered a fairly complete image of the country, which in turn was complemented by the objects that arrived from the Far East, including porcelain, paintings, musical instruments, silk and Chinese books. It is precisely on the books written about China by Spanish authors that this paper will focus, providing an overview of the main works published on the subject in Spanish in recent history.

China in the 16th century

The first major work on China in the modern period, and undoubtedly one of the most relevant contributions to the European image of China, was written by the Augustinian Juan González de Mendoza: Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reino de la China (translated in English as The History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China and the Situation Thereof), published in Rome in 1585 and commissioned by the Pope. The success of this History was resounding: before the end of the 16th century there were 46 editions –11 of them in Spain– and it was translated into 7 languages [1]1 — Lach, D. (1965). Asia in the making of Europe, vol. I, book II. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 744. .

The truth is that Mendoza never set foot in China. Although Philip II had chosen him to lead an embassy to China in 1580, the embassy only went as far as Mexico and never reached its destination. On his return to Europe and after the papal commission, Mendoza put together the first great synthesis on China based on the available sources, to which he had privileged access. On the one hand, he was familiar with the information provided by the Portuguese –who had been settled in Macao since 1557– and although Mendoza did not use the book by the Portuguese Dominican Gaspar da Cruz, Tratado das cousas da China (Évora, 1569), he was familiar with the Discurso de la navegación (Seville, 1577) by Bernardino de Escalante, which is a gloss on the Tratado by Cruz. On the other hand, Mendoza was familiar with the accounts written on China by the Castilian settlers living in Manila from 1571 onwards. He also gathered information during his stay in Mexico, where there were already Chinese residents, and in Rome. Mendoza is a great admirer of China: The wealth and productivity of the Middle Kingdom –where agricultural land was exploited to the full and the abundance of natural resources made everything available at very low prices– as well as the existence of a political system whose ruler was the epitome of ethics and courtesy, were good and solid reasons for it. Mendoza also describes Buddhists and Taoists, and although he identifies ancestor worship and the importance of studying the classics, he does not mention Confucius or Confucianism, first discussed in Europe by the Jesuits [2]2 — Folch, D. (2021). “La selección de González de Mendoza: lo que ensalzó, retocó o suprimió”. In: Barlés, E. (coord). Ex Oriente.  Zaragoza: PUZ (in press). .

The 17th century: the Ming-Qing transition

In the 17th century, interest in China continued and, with a few exceptions, the bulk of publications on the subject came from religious orders. In 1601, the Jesuit Luis de Guzmán’s Historia de las misiones, the Franciscan Marcelo de Ribadeneira’s Historia del archipiélago filipino y reinos de la gran China and the printing of the Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos by Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, court chronicler to Philip II and Philip III, were published. Two years later, the Historia de la India Oriental by Fray Antonio San Román was published, and in 1609 the Conquista de las islas Malucas by Bartolomé de Argensola. 1614 saw the publication of the Viaje del mundo by Pedro Ordóñez Ceballos –soon translated into Dutch, French and Latin, and partially into English– and then, in 1621 and 1625 respectively, the Epitome historial del reino de la China by Francisco Herrera Maldonado and the Viaje a la China by the Jesuit Adriano de las Cortes, which also included some illustrations made in Manila by a Chinese draughtsman [4]4 — Busquets, A. (2010). “Un siglo de noticias españolas sobre China”. Granada: UGR. Available online. .

But it was in the second half of the 17th century that the two most important works on China written in Spanish in that century were published: the Historia de la conquista de China por el Tártaro by Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza and the Tratados históricos, políticos éticos y religiosos de la monarquía de China by the Dominican Domingo Fernández de Navarrete.

Palafox’s Historia, published posthumously in 1670, brought a new subject matter to the nascent sinology with the addition of the Manchu conquest of China, the first Chinese event with repercussions beyond China. Although the Manchu conquest and the Ming-Qing dynastic change was known in Europe mainly through the information provided by the Jesuits –those who were caught up in the civil strife in the country that accompanied the fall of the Ming as well as those who wrote a coherent account of the subject, as was the case of Martino Martini and his De Bello Tartarico (1655)– Bishop Palafox’s Historia must also be taken into account.

Although he had never been to China, the bishop of Puebla de los Ángeles obtained his information from the Chinese living in Mexico and also from the manuscript and printed texts that arrived there, including a manuscript account from 1647, according to Palafox’s own account. In his extensive Historia, the bishop –an experienced analyst of conflicts in Mexico and the Iberian Peninsula– chronicles the events that took place in China between 1640 and 1647, focusing on the Ming imperial court, the advance of the Manchus in China and Ming resistance in the southern provinces, providing news mainly about the rise of the Zheng family of merchants and pirates, led at that time by Zheng Zhilong, whose economic and military power came to rival that of the emperor himself. In the last hundred pages Bishop Palafox provides an extremely gentle, even idealised portrait of the Manchu people. Neither the atheism of the Manchus –which he overlooks because of the good treatment given to the Christian missionaries– nor the vices he attributes to them –such as cruelty in war or a taste for human blood and flesh– or some other vices to which he seems to attach little importance –Palafox maintains that the Manchus are neither as sensual nor as prone to the sins of the flesh as the Chinese, especially to the nefarious sin, homosexuality– tarnish the highly positive image of the Manchus, with whom Palafox undoubtedly sympathised far more than with the Chinese.

But it was particularly with the publication in 1676 of Navarrete’s Tratados that China regained centre stage in a work in Spanish. The Tratados, which consist of seven treatises that can be read as independent books, were intended as a reference manual for future missionaries and as a preamble Navarrete’s Controversias, which focused on religious matters. The Tratados provide a broad synthesis of the main aspects of the Chinese empire and show Navarrete’s deep knowledge of China, where he had lived for more than a decade. Navarrete used a wide range of sources, both European and Chinese, to support his account or to refute what had been written by others. The sources included some of the main works written by the Jesuits –Ricci-Trigault, Colin, Semedo, Kircher, Colin and Martino Martini– the manuscript of the Dominican Vittorio Riccio –which he essentially follows for the information on the Manchu conquest of China– and a varied collection of Chinese materials, including some Confucian classics, printed books, memoirs, Chinese histories, dictionaries, some maps and some works on the Chinese language.

Navarrete included Chinese texts in translation in his book, such as the Mingxin Baojian –which he translated as Espejo precioso del alma (Precious Mirror of the Soul)– and some Confucian sentences. He also rescued and translated into Spanish a treatise by the Italian Jesuit Longobardo, De Confucio ejusque doctrina tractatus, banned by the Jesuits. This placed Fernández de Navarrete squarely in the middle of the “Chinese Rites controversy”, the dispute between the Jesuits and the Dominicans over the status that should be given to Chinese rites, which was at its most heated when the Tratados went to press [5]5 — Longobardo’s treatise, which made a deep impression on Leibniz, expounded for the first time in a Western language the philosophical concepts most prevalent in China, and collected the opinions of the scholars of the time, whether Christian or non-Christian. Gernet, J. (1982). Chine et christianisme. Action et réaction. Paris: Gallimard, 19. . The Dominican Navarrete included in his work his opinion of some books written by the Jesuits: Letona’s Descripción de las Filipinas, Francisco Colin’s Historia de los Jesuitas en Filipinas or De Bello Tartarico on the Manchu conquest by Martino Martini.

Navarrete’s image of China is positive to the extent that, on more than one occasion, he presents Chinese civilisation as a model for Europe to follow –thus anticipating what would happen with the Enlightenment– although his account does not leave out crude descriptions of such Chinese customs as the killing of newborn girls by drowning.

Initially, the publication of the Tratados was well received: the book was translated into Italian, English, German and French between the end of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century. Moreover, the Tratados brought China closer to some physiocrats such as Quesnay or to philosophers such as Voltaire, who in 1769 claimed that China was better known than some provinces in Europe itself [6]6 — Cummins, J.S. (1959). “Fray Domingo Navarrete: A source for Quesnay”. Bulletin of Hispanic studies. Vol. 36, nº 1, 37-51; Cummins, J.S. (1962). The Travels and Controversies of Friar Domingo Navarrete. Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, ci. . However, the fact that the work was linked to Inquisitorial Spain, the “Chinese Rites” controversy (in which the Dominican Navarrete played a key role), the various anonymous writings condemning the Tratados and the fact that it was not part of the Jesuit corpus, which at that time dominated the European cultural stage, undermined its impact.

From books to porcelain: 18th century chinoiseries

In the 18th century, Spanish interest and publications on China all but disappeared, in the aftermath of the expulsion of all missionaries from China in 1709 –only a few Dominicans returned at the end of the century, settling in Fujian, on the southern coast of the country. In Europe, on the other hand, news on China continued to arouse interest and led to the dispatch of several embassies, and the Enlightenment hailed Confucius as a rationalist philosopher [8]8 — It also prefigured the secularised Confucius of the Chinese modernists of the early 20th century. Cheng, A. “Confucius revisité: textes anciens, nouveaux discours”. Histoire intellectuelle de la Chine. Available online. .

However, in 1703, the Arte de la lengua mandarina by the Dominican Francisco Varo was published posthumously in Canton by the Franciscan Pedro de la Piñuela. Two manuscripts of this Chinese grammar have survived, one in Spanish (1682) and the other in Latin (1684). Varo, who studied Chinese for thirty years, wrote a grammar of the Guanhua language, which was the lingua franca used by Chinese scholars, merchants and foreign missionaries, and which was widespread in China from the 16th to the 18th centuries [9]9 — Coblin. W.S. (2000). Francisco Varo’s Grammar of the Mandarin Language (1703). Philadephia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., xxii. . The Arte de la lengua mandarina was the culmination of a series of grammars and dictionaries written by Spanish missionaries in the previous decades, including the Arte y vocabulario de la lengua china by Martín de Rada and the Arte de la lengua china by the Dominican Juan Cobo –although both works are now lost [10]10 — Paternicò, L. M., When Europeans Began to Study Chinese, Leuven, Ferdinand Verbiest Institute, 2013, pp. 43-44. – and the manuscript Arte de la lengua chio chiu, compiled around 1620 probably by the Dominican Melchior de Mançano, with Chinese characters and its transcription into Spanish, being one of the oldest grammars that has been preserved [11]11 — There is one copy in the library of the Universitat de Barcelona. D. (1995). “Sinological materials in some Spanish libraries”. Caley, J. & Ming, W. (eds.), Europe Studies China. London: Han-shan Tang Books, 149-160. For further details, see Klöter, H. (2011). The Language of the Sangleys. A Chinese Vernacular in Missionary Sources of the Seventeenth Century, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 56-57. .

In the 18th century, China became a completely exotic and distant subject, a peripheral place whose main export was porcelain. Much Chinese porcelain continued to arrive in the form of vessels and figurines made to order and decorated by the Chinese to European tastes. Philip V’s royal collection included Chinese famille rose porcelain tableware –for tea, chocolate and coffee, three of the most highly valued foods in European courts, decorated with the insignia of the Golden Fleece and of the Order of the Holy Spirit with the royal crown [12]12 — Sánchez, M.L. (2003). “La vajilla de Felipe V”. Oriente en Palacio. Asian treasures in the Spanish royal collections. Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 203-209. –, and we know that Philip’s second wife, Isabella of Farnese, had a large collection of Chinese objects. The Real Fábrica del Buen Retiro in Madrid (1760), popularly known as “La China”, was created under Charles III. Among other things, it produced the Porcelain Room at Aranjuez, one of the finest examples of European chinoiserie, whose walls and ceilings were entirely covered in porcelain, and the whole room was filled with French rococo motifs. Charles III not only sought to provide the Spanish court with good porcelain –thus imitating other European courts– but he also sought to avoid the excessive expense of foreign porcelain, essentially from China [13]13 — García-Ormaechea, C. (2003). “La porcelana del Palacio Real”. Oriente en Palacio. Asian treasures in the Spanish royal collections. Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 226-239. . In fact, European courts adopted the early chinoiserie for both interior decoration and furniture, and the use of lacquer panels in decoration became an unmistakable symbol of elegance and luxury.

The textual re-emergence of China in the 19th and 20th centuries

It was in the second half of the 19th century that China reappeared in Spanish texts, mostly written by travellers and diplomats who would echo the internal turmoil the country was going through with multiple rebellions, as well as the conflicts with foreign powers in the form of the Opium Wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860). Some examples of such works would be Juan Mencarini’s contributions to the journal Vida marítima: Revista de navegación y comercio, Luis Prudencio Álvarez y Tejero’s Reseña histórica del Gran Imperio de China (1857) and José de Aguilar’s El intérprete chino (1861) –a collection of phrases in Chinese, with their transliteration and translation into Spanish, designed for future merchants– and Adolfo Mentaberry’s Impresiones de un viaje a la China (1876).

But there can be no doubt that the main Spanish expert on China in this period was Sinibald de Mas (1808-1868), whose numerous writings include L’Angleterre et le Céleste Empire (1857), L’Angleterre, la Chine et l’Inde (1858) and La Chine et les puissances chrétiennes (1861), all in French, probably because of the lack of interest in Spain in China at that time. Sinibald de Mas, regarded as the first Spanish diplomat in China, offered a lucid portrait of 19th-century China, paying attention both to the country’s history and culture and to the main internal events –with first-hand information on the Taiping rebellion (1850-1864)– and the role of the European powers. While admiring China’s past, he blames the Manchu dynasty for the country’s crisis, justifying European colonial rule [14]14 — Permanyer, A. (2006). “Sinibaldo de Mas, un observador español de la realidad china del siglo XIX”. San Ginés, P. (ed.). La investigación sobre Asia Pacífico en España. Granada: UGR. Available online. . After several failed attempts, Sinibald de Mas managed to sign the first treaty regulating diplomatic relations between Spain and China (1864), a commission he had received from the Spanish Ministry of State, although it was of little use due to the scarce presence of Spaniards in China.

As for the works written by religious authors, the books by two Augustinians stand out: Páginas de la última revolución china (1914) by Agustín Melcón, a testimony of the transition from the Manchu empire to the Chinese Republic, and El comercio en el Extremo Oriente (1918) by Gaudencio Castrillo. Mention must also be made of some dictionaries such as the Diccionario chino-español del dialecto de Amoy (1937) by the Dominican Francisco or the Diccionario manual Castellano-Chino, chino-español (1933) by the Jesuit Luis María Nieto [16]16 — Borao, J. E. (2017). Las miradas entre España y China. Un siglo de relaciones entre los dos países (1864-1973). Madrid: Miraguano, 135 & 186. .

But contacts between China and Spain were made through other channels. These included collections of photographs –such as those by Mencarini or those preserved in the archives of religious orders– as well as an increasingly important presence in literature. In 1925, the Catalan illustrator and writer Apel·les Mestres published a short anthology of Catalan translations of Chinese lyrical poetry, Poesia xinesa, a first in its kind; three years later, the Catalan poet Marià Manent published a book of translations of Chinese poetry, L’aire daurat; and in 1935 another Catalan poet, Josep Carner, published his own versions of Chinese poems in Lluna i llanterna. In the second half of the 20th century, Manent returned to China with the publication of Com un núvol lleuger. Més interpretacions de lírica xinesa (1967). On the whole, the three Catalan poets translated more than three hundred Chinese poems into Catalan, although not directly from the Chinese originals, but from English and French translations [17]17 — Folch. D. (2010). “Una aproximació lenta: Catalunya i el món xinès”. Barcelona: Direcció General de Difusió Corporativa, Generalitat de Catalunya. .

The Spanish Civil War took place a few years before the Chinese Civil War, and Franco’s sympathies and recognition of the Taiwanese regime kept Franco’s Spain away from everything that Mao’s China was doing and publishing. What did continue to be published about China were the existing accounts and texts written by religious authors. In this respect, the Catholic publishers of the religious orders were very active in publishing the materials they already had –such as the 1944 edition of Juan González de Mendoza’s Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reino de la China– although they remained very much on the fringes of the country’s cultural mainstream. And it was not until the end of Franco’s regime that university studies on China began to reappear in Spain, together with a growing volume of publications on China.

• References

  1 —

  Lach, D. (1965). Asia in the making of Europe, vol. I, book II. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 744.

  2 —

  Folch, D. (2021). “La selección de González de Mendoza: lo que ensalzó, retocó o suprimió”. In: Barlés, E. (coord). Ex Oriente.  Zaragoza: PUZ (in press).

  3 —

  Krahe, C. (2017). “La globalización de la porcelana Ming”. In: El patrimonio intangible del arte chino. Maestros de la creación, Madrid: CCACO, 144-151.

  4 —

  Busquets, A. (2010). “Un siglo de noticias españolas sobre China”. Granada: UGR. Available online.

  5 —

  Longobardo’s treatise, which made a deep impression on Leibniz, expounded for the first time in a Western language the philosophical concepts most prevalent in China, and collected the opinions of the scholars of the time, whether Christian or non-Christian. Gernet, J. (1982). Chine et christianisme. Action et réaction. Paris: Gallimard, 19.

  6 —

  Cummins, J.S. (1959). “Fray Domingo Navarrete: A source for Quesnay”. Bulletin of Hispanic studies. Vol. 36, nº 1, 37-51; Cummins, J.S. (1962). The Travels and Controversies of Friar Domingo Navarrete. Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, ci.

  7 —

  Krahe, C. (2016). Chinese porcelain in Habsburg Spain. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica, 55.

  8 —

  It also prefigured the secularised Confucius of the Chinese modernists of the early 20th century. Cheng, A. “Confucius revisité: textes anciens, nouveaux discours”. Histoire intellectuelle de la Chine. Available online.

  9 —

  Coblin. W.S. (2000). Francisco Varo’s Grammar of the Mandarin Language (1703). Philadephia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., xxii.

  10 —

  Paternicò, L. M., When Europeans Began to Study Chinese, Leuven, Ferdinand Verbiest Institute, 2013, pp. 43-44.

  11 —

  There is one copy in the library of the Universitat de Barcelona. D. (1995). “Sinological materials in some Spanish libraries”. Caley, J. & Ming, W. (eds.), Europe Studies China. London: Han-shan Tang Books, 149-160. For further details, see Klöter, H. (2011). The Language of the Sangleys. A Chinese Vernacular in Missionary Sources of the Seventeenth Century, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 56-57.

  12 —

  Sánchez, M.L. (2003). “La vajilla de Felipe V”. Oriente en Palacio. Asian treasures in the Spanish royal collections. Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 203-209.

  13 —

  García-Ormaechea, C. (2003). “La porcelana del Palacio Real”. Oriente en Palacio. Asian treasures in the Spanish royal collections. Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 226-239.

  14 —

  Permanyer, A. (2006). “Sinibaldo de Mas, un observador español de la realidad china del siglo XIX”. San Ginés, P. (ed.). La investigación sobre Asia Pacífico en España. Granada: UGR. Available online.

  15 —

  Ginés, M. (2013). El col·leccionisme entre Catalunya i la Xina (1876-1895). Universitat de Barcelona: PhD thesis, 28.

  16 —

  Borao, J. E. (2017). Las miradas entre España y China. Un siglo de relaciones entre los dos países (1864-1973). Madrid: Miraguano, 135 & 186.

  17 —

  Folch. D. (2010). “Una aproximació lenta: Catalunya i el món xinès”. Barcelona: Direcció General de Difusió Corporativa, Generalitat de Catalunya.