A New History of China, Containing a Description of Most Considerable Particulars of that Vast Empire. Done out of French.

About this Item

First edition in English, in an unrestored contemporary binding, of this account by a Jesuit missionary present in China during the crucial Ming-Qing transition. The folding plan shows Beijing's Inner City idealized as a neat grid-pattern of blocks. As the centre of imperial power, the Forbidden City is shown to an exaggerated scale. Born into the same family as Magellan, the author (also known as "de Magalhães", 1610-1677) travelled through China between 1640 and 1648, an eventful period straddling the demise of the Ming dynasty in 1644. Under the Qing, he spent his remaining decades living in the Chinese capital as a highly respected technical advisor to the court, and the Emperor Kangxi perhaps helped to pay for the costs of his funeral. The manuscript of his History, completed in 1668, was carried to Europe by Phillipe Couplet, a contributor to Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687), and published in French in 1688 under the patronage of Cardinal Caesar d'Estrees. The preface to the French edition "emphasized the originality of Magalhães' relation and its importance as a genuine contribution to the improvement of Europe's knowledge. Others must have recognized its quality, for it was almost immediately translated into English by John Ogilby" (Lack & Van Klay, p. 362). Magaillans strikes a lighter, more popular tone than the scholarly Confucius Sinarum. Chapters cover economics and governance, language, public works, social hierarchies, literary culture and Confucianism, and the imperial architecture of Beijing. He repeatedly stresses China's antiquity and accomplishments: "they understand with ease when they read the Books which the Fathers of our Society have written, the most subtil and difficult. Questions as well in Mathematicks, and Philosophy, as in Theology. The Chronicles of the Chineses are almost as Ancient as the Deluge" (pp. 88-9). He is often struck by Chinese advancements in such disciplines as engineering, observing that the Grand Canal "surpasses all other Works of this Nature which are upon the Earth" (p. 114). In 1688, the first French Jesuits arrived in the Chinese capital, and a flurry of accounts built on the foundation established by Magaillans. "Around the mid-eighteenth century, the public in France or Germany was better informed about China than about many countries on Europe's periphery" (Osterhammel, p. 115). ESTC notes copies of the first edition with a variant title page distinguished by the presence of a comma after the author's name. Provenance: Henry Somerset, 2nd Duke of Beaufort (1684-1714), with his ornate 1705 armorial bookplate and the Badminton pressmark (M6=14) below. "As a 'thorough-going tory' Beaufort removed himself from mainstream court politics during the years of the whig junto, establishing instead a high-tory drinking society, the Honourable Board of Loyal Brotherhood, in 1709" (ODNB). Cordier 36-37; ESTC R12530; Löwendahl 1584 & 189 (for first edition in French); Lust 58 (for 1689 edition). Donald Frederick Lach & Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, volume III, 1965; Jürgen Osterhammel, Unfabling the East: the Enlightenment's Encounter with Asia, 2018. Octavo (179 x 110 mm). Contemporary speckled calf, spine with 4 raised bands with scrolling foliate roll in gilt, red spine label lettered in gilt, compartments with paired elaborate foliate tools in gilt enclosing hollow gilt diamonds, boards panelled in blind, board edges dotted in gilt, edges sprinkled red. Folding plan of Beijing by Claude Bernou, Chinese characters and vignette plan in text. With the usual pagination jump from K2 to N1. Loss at spine ends, extremities worn in places, front joint cracking but holding firm, old paper repair to map stub, map with 120mm closed tear, expertly repaired with Japanese tissue, small closed tear on F2 (touching a few letters but legibility unaffected), loss to lower margin L2: a very good copy. Seller Inventory # 163837

Contact seller

Report this item

Bibliographic Details