Astronomical Chronology, the Jesuit China Mission, and Enlightenment History
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Authors
Journal Title
Journal of the History of Ideas: an international quarterly devoted to intellectual history
ISSN
0022-5037
Publisher
University of Pennsylvania Press (Penn Press)
Type
Article
This Version
AM
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Giovannetti-Singh, G. Astronomical Chronology, the Jesuit China Mission, and Enlightenment History. Journal of the History of Ideas: an international quarterly devoted to intellectual history https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.84218
Abstract
This article examines the use of astronomical chronology in Jesuit and secular works of history between the mid-seventeenth and mid- eighteenth centuries. It suggests that the highly-visible adoption astronomical records in historical scholarship in Enlightenment Europe by Nicolas Fréret and Voltaire was entangled with debates about Chinese chronology, translated by Jesuit missionaries. The article argues that the missionary Martino Martini’s experience of the Manchu conquest of China was crucial in shaping his conception of history as a discipline. Political events that unfolded in seventeenth-century China had a marked effect on discussions about emergent world history in eighteenth-century Europe.
Embargo Lift Date
2025-05-06
Identifiers
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.84218
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/336799
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