<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>It has often been argued that the introduction of early modern European cosmology at the turn of the seventeenth century by Jesuit missionaries—subsumed under the generic term “Western learning” (<italic>xixue</italic> 西學)—signalled the demise of traditional <italic>fenye</italic> (分野, or “field allocation”) theory, as the concept of Earth’s sphericity and the widened sense of world geography are fundamentally at odds with the Sinocentric worldview underpinning <italic>fenye</italic>. However, the <italic>fenye</italic> chapters in Qing dynasty local gazetteers tell a different story: in comparison with earlier Ming gazetteers their proportion increased. These chapters rarely take a stance against Western learning. Rather, they invoke Western learning as part and parcel of the imperially sanctioned astronomy to be reckoned with, or even suggest it as a remedy for flaws in traditional <italic>fenye</italic> techniques, leading to a plurality of discourses in which Sino-Western relationships become entangled with tension between the imperial and the local. This phenomenon is particularly visible in the peripheral regions of the empire, such as Guangxi, as these were traditionally marginalised in the Sinocentric cosmology of the <italic>fenye</italic> system. This paper explores cosmological discourses to answer the following questions: What were the agendas that Western learning was made to serve in these gazetteers? How did local endeavours relate to court-sponsored imperial projects? What were their sources of knowledge on matters of Western learning, and how can we map out the geography of Western learning based on these local sources?</p>
</abstract>

It has often been argued that the introduction of early modern European cosmology at the turn of the seventeenth century by Jesuit missionaries—subsumed under the generic term “Western learning” (xixue 西學)—signalled the demise of traditional fenye (分野, or “field allocation”) theory, as the concept of Earth’s sphericity and the widened sense of world geography are fundamentally at odds with the Sinocentric worldview underpinning fenye. However, the fenye chapters in Qing dynasty local gazetteers tell a different story: in comparison with earlier Ming gazetteers their proportion increased. These chapters rarely take a stance against Western learning. Rather, they invoke Western learning as part and parcel of the imperially sanctioned astronomy to be reckoned with, or even suggest it as a remedy for flaws in traditional fenye techniques, leading to a plurality of discourses in which Sino-Western relationships become entangled with tension between the imperial and the local. This phenomenon is particularly visible in the peripheral regions of the empire, such as Guangxi, as these were traditionally marginalised in the Sinocentric cosmology of the fenye system. This paper explores cosmological discourses to answer the following questions: What were the agendas that Western learning was made to serve in these gazetteers? How did local endeavours relate to court-sponsored imperial projects? What were their sources of knowledge on matters of Western learning, and how can we map out the geography of Western learning based on these local sources?

An Encounter of Incommensurables: European Cosmological Knowledge in the <italic>Fenye</italic> Chapters of Chinese Local Gazetteers (1660-1820)

HoST - Journal  of History of Science and Technology

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

An Encounter of Incommensurables: European Cosmological Knowledge in the  Chapters of Chinese Local Gazetteers (1660-1820)

It has often been argued that the introduction of early modern European cosmology at the turn of the seventeenth century by Jesuit missionaries—subsumed under...

An Encounter of Incommensurables: European Cosmological Knowledge in the Fenye Chapters of Chinese Local Gazetteers (1660-1820)

Published Online: Jun 27, 2024

Page range: 31 - 60

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/host-2024-0003

Keywords
field allocation (), Western learning, local gazetteers, geography of knowledge, scientific incommensurability

© 2024 Huiyi Wu et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

An Encounter of Incommensurables: European Cosmological Knowledge in the Fenye Chapters of Chinese Local Gazetteers (1660-1820)

Published Online: Jun 27, 2024

Page range: 31 - 60

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/host-2024-0003

Keywordsfield allocation (), Western learning, local gazetteers, geography of knowledge, scientific incommensurability

© 2024 Huiyi Wu et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
field allocation (), Western learning, local gazetteers, geography of knowledge, scientific incommensurability