- The Jesuit Mission to China:
Intellectual Exchange between China and Europe, 17th – 18th c. - Date: Saturday, November 8, 2025
- Time: 9:00 – 1:30 p.m.
- Format: Zoom. https://princeton.zoom.us/j/95533463350
- Cost: Free
Speaker: Dr. Söderblom Saarela will discuss European contact with China as mediated by Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. He will also highlight primary sources and other resources held at the Ricci Institute.
The Jesuits Make a Place for Themselves in China
First lecture: 9:00 – 10:15, includes 15-minute discussion.
European Maps in Ming-Qing China
Second lecture: 10:30 – 11:45, includes 15-minute discussion.
European Astronomy and Chinese Calendrical Reform
Third lecture: 12:15 – 1:30, includes 15-minute discussion.
Dr. Mårten Söderblom Saarela is a historian of early modern and modern China. His research sofar has focused on language in history, especially the Manchu language in the Qing empire butmore recently also Chinese missionary linguistics in the twentieth century. His books include The Early Modern Travels of Manchu: A Script and Its Study in East Asia and Europe (2020), The Manchu Language at Court and in the Bureaucracy under the Qianlong Emperor (2024), and, with He Bian, The Manchu Mirrors and the Knowledge of Plants and Animals in High Qing China (2025).
Resources:
https://education.asianart.org/resources/the-ricci-map-1602-interactive/ — here the cartouches on the Ricci world map are summarized, but not translated.
There is a link there to a similar page on the Verbiest map.
https://qingmaps.org/ — good-res scans (of the reduced-size facsimile reprint) of the Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong atlases.You can search the toponyms on the maps and zoom in to a fairly high level of detail.