Printing and Publishing Chinese Religion and Philosophy in the Dutch Republic, 1595–1700

Front matter

Le

Series edited by Andrew Pettegree

Printing and Publishing Chinese Religion and Philosophy in the Dutch Republic, 1595-1700

Contents

Acknowledgements vii List of Figures 1x Colour Illustrations X1

1 China's Religion and Philosophy in Dutch-Made Books, 1595-1687 26 1 Early Contacts between China and the Dutch Republic 29 2 The Devil in Calicut 37 3 Jesuits and Calvinists on Chinese Religion and Philosophy 47

2 The Dutch Commodification of Confucius 93 1 Popular Works on China 95 2 Jacob van Meurs 103 3 Compilations of All Things China 17

Introduction

On 27 June 1667, the publisher Jacob van Meurs was summoned before the Amsterdam notary Hendrick Westfrisius for his illegal publication of Athanasius's Kircher’s monumental description of China, China illustrata (1667). Fellow Amsterdam publisher, Johannes Janssonius van Waesberge, had instigated the summons, as he was the holder of a privilege issued by the States of Holland to publish the book.! Much was at stake here: a publication such as China illustrata could do much to further a publisher’s career. China held a great appeal to the Dutch public, and printers and publishers were quick to recognise the commercial possibilities. As a result, what started out as a trickle of works on China at the end of the sixteenth century soon swelled to a deluge of publications. Over the course of the seventeenth century, many books, journals, newspapers, and pamphlets would devote their attention to this so-called Middle Kingdom (Zhongguo El).

Van Waesberge had good reason to worry over the illegal publishing antics of his competitor, Van Meurs. For, even among the hundreds of works on China published in the Dutch Republic, Kircher's China illustrata stood out. Not only was it a veritable encyclopaedia of the Chinese Empire, ranging from religious practises, social customs, and languages to China's natural wonders, it was also a beautifully produced book: illustrated with many fine engravings, charts, and maps. Due to its alluring form and compelling content, the work promised to be a commercial success from the outset. The publication also came at the right moment as the 1660s were an opportune time for printed works on the Middle Kingdom. In 1667, Dutch readers could turn to the now-regarded ‘classics’: Jan Huygen van Linschoten's Itinerario (1595), Juan González de Mendoza's D’historie ofte beschryvinghe van het groote rijck van China (1595), or Willem Lodewijcksz's and Cornelis Matelief's reports on the earliest Dutch expeditions to Asia. If readers wished, perhaps, for something more current, they could always consult Jesuit accounts of China, which were also regularly published in Holland: Matteo Ricci and Martino Martini proved exceptionally popular. On top of that, a growing number of overviews of the Chinese Empire had been published: Johan Nieuhof's Het gezantschap der Neérlandtsche Oost-Indische Compagnie, aan den grooten Tartarischen Cham, den tegenwoordige keizer van China (1665) being one of the most eye-catching.

1 LH. van Eeghen, ‘Arnoldus Montanus's book on Japan’, Quaerendo, 2.4 (1972), pp. 150-272; John Fletcher, ‘Athanasius Kircher and the distribution of his books’, The Library, 13.2 (1968), pp. 108-117.

© TRUDE DIJKSTRA, 2022 | DOI:10.1163/9789004473294_002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the cc BY-NC 4.0 license.

Moreover, newspapers, journals, and news digests with further reports were widely available. This steady flow of information coming from the Middle Kingdom fuelled public debates in print on the implications of intercultural contacts between China and Europe, and readers always seemed to be clamouring for more.

Chinese religion and philosophy, especially the teachings of Confucius, played a particularly important role in these books and printed works. Missionaries of the Society of Jesus in China had transformed Confucius into the protagonist of Europe’s interactions with the Middle Kingdom, presenting the sage and his teachings as essentially compatible with Christianity. This position was influential and not without success. For instance, in 1667, the same year Kircher’s China illustrata was published, the Dutch playwright Joost van den Vondel could even exclaim that: ‘Confucius, known throughout China, ... twenty centuries ago planted golden morals on the land, and in the cities’? However, the last quarter of the seventeenth century saw the first stirrings of what came to be known as the Chinese Rites Controversy. Not happy with the Jesuit interpretation of China and its religion and philosophy, Roman Catholic authorities began to push back against this accommodating approach towards Confucianism. Polemics and justifications were written back and forth and, as a result, the volume of works on China increased further still.

No wonder Van Meurs wanted a piece of the action in 1667, much to the chagrin of Van Waesberge. The latter had paid Kircher the considerable amount of 2,200 scudi, entitling him to the sole rights to all his books. Additionally, the publication of a book like China illustrata was an expensive venture on account of its large folio size, high quality of paper, and numerous copper engravings and maps. It comes as no surprise that, when Jacob van Meurs issued a pirated edition, Van Waesberge started legal action. Nonetheless, it did not get out of hand: notary Westfrisius ordered Van Meurs to hand over all remaining copies to Van Waesberge, together with the copperplates and woodcuts. In return, Van Waesberge paid Van Meurs 3,400 guilders for his losses.

However, the damage was done and the relations between the two publishers remained frosty. When a contract was drafted in 1672 between Van Waesberge and the engraver Coenraet Decker, the latter was explicitly prohibited from working with Van Meurs: ‘That also the same Coenraet Decker, as long as he is working on any drawings or designs of the aforementioned Van Waesberge that belong to the aforementioned books, he cannot etch or cut any

2 ‘Konfutius, gansch Sina door bekent [...] plante goude zeden, voor twintigh eeuwen op het lant, en in de steden, Joost van den Vondel, Zungchin of ondergang der Sineesche Heerschappye. Treurspel (Amsterdam: Widow Abraham de Wees, 1667), p. 21.

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FIGURE 2 Frontispiece of Athanasius Kircher, China illustrata (Amsterdam: Jacob van Meurs, 1667) Allard Pierson Amsterdam (OM 63-728)

plates or such alike for any other person, whether they are bookseller, plate cutter, printers of plates or others, whoever they are, and he especially may not etch or cut for Jacob van Meurs, nor provide any advice, help and assistance or instructions to the same Jacob van Meurs or to anyone else’?

In the decades to come, Van Meurs and Van Waesberge would both go on to publish books on China. In 1670, Van Meurs issued Olfert Dapper's monumental Beschryving der keizerryks van Taising of Sina (Description of the empire of China or Taising). Reissues of Johan Nieuhof's embassy of the East India Company to China and other travelogues and geographies by authors like Jan Jacobsz Struys and Arnoldus Montanus also emerged at this time. Van Waesberge, in turn, made good use of his privilege by publishing another ten of Kircher’s books, which included translations of China illustrata in Dutch and French. Together with newspapers, journals, news digests, and pamphlets, these books brought the Middle Kingdom to readers in the Dutch Republic, opening up the way for extensive and far-reaching discussions and polemic debate. Numerous Dutch authors, translators, editors, printers, binders, and publishers earned their living in this segment of the book market.

This study discusses how Chinese religion and philosophy were represented in printed works created in the Dutch Republic between 1595 and 1700. Focusing on a variety of printed media, the aim is to shed new light on the representation of an often-contentious subject matter to readers and the publishing strategies of the producers. To this end, an analysis of form, content and material-technical aspects of various text types, mainly in Dutch and French, will provide insight into the ways an early modern public of readers (very much divided on religious, political, economic, and linguistic fronts) could take note of Chinese religion and philosophy. Furthermore, this analysis hopes to reveal the ways this knowledge was embedded into seventeenth-century Dutch perceptions of themselves and the foreign world.

Over the course of the following chapters, the notion is put forward that the interpretations and understandings of Chinese religion and philosophy were the result of processes of textual transmission in which producers played a fundamental role. The transmission of texts and images never follows a

3 ‘Dat oock deselve Coenraet Decker, soo lange hij eenige teeckeningen ofte ontwerp van de voorsz. Waesberge ... tot het voorsz. werck ofte boecken, behorende, sal onder hem hebben, niet en sal vermogen eenige platen ofte diergelijcken voor andere personen ende 't zij boeck-vercopers, plaetsnijder, printdruckers ofte anderen wie het oock soude mogen wesen ende veel min nochte geensints voor Jacob van Meurs te etsen ofte snijden noch te eenige raedt, hulpe ende adsistentie ofte instructie daertoe aen denselven van Meurs ofte aen anderen te verlenen’, in M.M. Kleerkooper and W.P. van Stockum, De boekhandel te Amsterdam. Voornamelijk in de 17e eeuw (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1914-1916), p. 1341.

straightforward course and much can be learned by tracing processes of transtextuality from creator to consumer, by accounting for publishing strategies and marketing structures, and by studying the reciprocal effects of print on the intended audiences.^ In other words: this study assesses the importance of authors (including translators), printers, publishers, editors, illustrators, and booksellers in shaping the cultural consumption of China. Accordingly, the focus is on text type and content and the analysis assigns equal importance to both. As such, this examination will show that there was no singular image of Chinese religion and philosophy during the seventeenth century, but rather a varied array of notions on the subject. Perceptions often differed according to type and aim of publication, in addition to a variety of motives and considerations related to the cultural, political, religious, or economic background of the producers.5 Scholarship on the Middle Kingdom and Europe during the early modern period has been increasingly inclusive in its approach towards the Western interpretation and appreciation of Chinese religion and philosophy.® Researchers are becoming aware of the intricacies involved in the various processes of textual transmission; however, there remains a gap in knowledge of how the printing press influenced and facilitated the dissemination of early modern perceptions of the Middle Kingdom. And while the field of book history has shown itself mindful of concepts related to textual transmission through print, there are few studies that combine these subjects. As such, this study examines which images of Chinese religion and philosophy were put forward through text, paratext, and illustration of printed works produced in the Dutch Republic between 1595 and 1700. It further explores how these images reflected

4 David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery, An introduction to book history (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 1-5.

5 D.F. McKenzie, ‘Typography and meaning. The case of William Congreve, rep. in Peter D. McDonald and Michael F. Suarez (eds.), Making the meaning. ‘Printers of the mind’ and other essays (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), pp. 198-236; D.F. McKenzie, ‘The sociology of texts. Orality, literacy and print in early New Zealand’, The Library, 6.4 (1984), Pp. 333-365; Jerome J. McGann, The textual condition (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991); Adrian Johns, The nature of the book. Print and knowledge in the making (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998).

6 Fora brief overview of interactions between the Middle Kingdom and Europe from the perspective of the Chinese see Lennert Gesterkamp, ‘Red-haired barbarians. The Dongxi Yangkao (1617) and its portrayal of the Dutch in China’, in Thijs Weststeijn (ed.), Foreign devils and philosophers. Cultural encounters between the Chinese, the Dutch, and other Europeans, 1590-1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 57-81; Michael Yahuda, ‘The Sino-European encounter. Historical influences on contemporary relations’, in David Shambaugh etc. (eds.), China-Europe relations. Perceptions, policies, and prospects (New York and London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 1-31. For the study of Europe in Asia, see Georg Wiessala, European studies in Asia. Contours of a discipline (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2014).

contemporary Dutch artistic, literary, religious, and philosophical discussions in order to ask the following questions: to what extend did the type of publication influence the manner in which China was discussed, and to what degree were these viewpoints enabled, shaped, and limited by processes of textual and visual transmission?

To answer these cultural-historical questions, this study turns to tools and methods provided by the interdisciplinary field of book history. The study of the history of the book as a physical object carrying some form of text, be it in the form of a scroll, codex, or digital file, dates back to well before the invention of print, indeed, to the invention of the written word itself.” Texts and their physical presence were often regarded not only as carriers of knowledge, but as objects of aesthetic pleasure as well. This estimation of textual carriers has made the book an object of study, where the physical form in which texts are contained takes centre stage.® By studying, codifying, and classifying books and manuscripts, scholars tried to make sense of them.

This research implements a qualitative case-study approach, meaning that each chapter deals with one particular carrier of printed text: books, journals, newspapers, and pamphlets, which is a practical means to illuminate the impact of the physicality of the printed material on its content and on the dissemination of information. Additionally, and in keeping with the methodology

7 Finkelstein, Introduction to book history, p. 7.

8 Michael F. Suarez and H.R. Woudhuysen, The Oxford companion to the book (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); G. Thomas Tanselle, The history of the book as a field of study (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981); Paul Hoftijzer and O.S. Lankhorst, Drukkers, boekverkopers en lezers in de Republiek. Een historiografische en bibliografische handleiding (The Hague: Sdu Uitgevers, 2000).

9 Many of the books, journals, newspapers, and pamphlets perused for this research are available through the comprehensive collection of the Allard Pierson Amsterdam. They have been supplemented by works present in the collections of Leiden University, The Royal Library in The Hague, the Radboud University of Nijmegen, Utrecht University, the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, and the British Library in London. In addition, various digital tools and databases have tremendously facilitated this research. In fact, the emergence of the new electronic revolution may prove the latest frontier for the study of the history of the book, perhaps rivalling the print revolution of old in its scope. Research tools have been made available through such illustrious institutions as the Royal Library in The Hague, the Bibliotheque nationale de France, the Bibliotheca Sinica 2.0, and the Catholic University of Leuven, to name but a few: Delpher Newspapers via Delpher.nl; Royal Library, The Hague via KB.nl; Gallica Bibliothèque National de France via Gallica.BnF.fr; Bibliotheca Sinica 2.0 via Univie. ac.at/Geschichte/China-Bibliographie/blog; Chinese Christian Texts Cathalic University of Leuven via Arts.KuLeuven.be/sinology/CCT; Le Gazetier Universel via gazetier.universel. gazettesi8e.fr; ePistolarium Huygens Institute via: CKCC.Huygens.KNAW.nl; Encyclopedie Nederlandstalige Tijdschriften via: Ent1815.wordpress.com; La bibliothèque numérique sur la Chine ancienne via: Chineancienne.fr.

of book history, the specific thematic cases have been selected based on the hypothesis that they showcase differing degrees of transtextuality; for instance, books reference other texts in a different fashion than newspapers do. The advantage of this approach is that it provides insights into the extent of representativity, or conversely, atypicality, of a given textual discourse. Put more concretely: this study not only explores various ‘versions’ of Chinese religion and philosophy in Dutch representations, it also reveals how widespread specific perceptions may have been. In sum, this type of assessment based on a combination of content, production, and materiality has the potential to disclose to us the complexities of the early modern representation of Chinese religion and philosophy.

Today, as in the seventeenth century, China holds a special place in the scholar's imagination.!? The country exudes an air of intellectual possibilities, making images of China the subject of a great number of scholarly publications over the last decades." As the humanities become increasingly focused on a global perspective towards history, these publications often emphasise the interconnectedness between cultures in Asia and Europe. A wide range of topics has been covered by scholars, from (for instance) Sinology and art history to economic history and philosophy: often with a focus on the interactions facilitating the transmission of goods, such as porcelain, lacquerware, silks and spices as well as knowledge about medicine, philosophy, writing systems, and how this dissemination of goods and knowledge impacted upon the respective societies in which they were introduced. European interactions with Chinese religion and philosophy were of especial importance for the formation of

10 James Belich etc. (eds.), The prospects of global history (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Charles R. Boxer, South China in the sixteenth century. Being the narratives of Galeote Pereira, Fr. Gaspar da ruz, O.P. [and] Martin de Rada, O.E.S.A. (1550-1575) (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1953).

11 Donald F. Lach, China in the eyes of Europe. The sixteenth century (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1965); Jonathan Spence, The Chan’s great continent. China in Western minds (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998).

12 Craig Clunas, Pictures and visuality in early modern China (London: Reaktion Books, 1997); Christiaan J.A. Jörg, Porcelain and the Dutch China trade (The Hague: Springer, 1982); T. Volker, Porcelain and the Dutch East India Company as recorded in the Dagh-Registers of Batavia Castle, those of Hirado and Deshima and other contemporary papers, 1602-1682 (Leiden: Brill 1954); Jan van Campen and Titus Elién (eds.), Chinese and Japanese porcelain for the Dutch Golden Age (Zwolle: Waanders, 2014); William Bernstein, A splendid exchange. How trade shaped the world (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008); J. Bruijn etc. (ed.) Dutch-Asiatic shipping in the 17th and 18th centuries (3 vols., Houten: Springer Media, 1979).

representations of the Middle Kingdom and will be discussed in a later paragraph of this introduction, after we have considered some more general points.

Of special note are the comprehensive overviews of Dutch and Portuguese interactions with China by colonial historian Charles R. Boxer, and the monumental and indispensable Asia in the making of Europe (1965-1993) by historians Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. van Kley.? These and subsequent studies have been invaluable in establishing the interconnectedness between Asia and Europe during the early modern period. These contacts primarily came about through trade and conquest, and missionary efforts by the Society of Jesus: both which have been the subject of extensive research. The role of commerce has, notably, been studied by maritime historian John E. Wills and sinologist Leonard Blussé.!^ Wills was the first to publish a work solely devoted to the interactions between the Dutch East India Company (voc) and China, while Blussé made invaluable contributions to the field by expanding the geographic focus beyond the Netherlands to include Batavia (then, the capital of the Dutch East Indies) into the research perspective.5 The Jesuits were Europe's principal intermediaries with China during the seventeenth century.!® After

13 Charles R. Boxer The Dutch seaborne empire, 1600-1800 (New York: Knopf, 1965); Charles R. Boxer, The Portuguese seaborne empire, 1415-1825 (London: Hutchinson, 1969); Donald F. Lach and Edwin van Kley, Asia in the making of Europe (4 vols., Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1965-1993).

14 Leonard Blussé and Floris-Jan van Luyn, China en de Nederlanders (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2008); John E. Wills, Pepper, guns and parleys. The Dutch East India Company and China, 1622-1681 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1974).

15 Inrecent years, the scope has been widened to include studies of Formosa (present day Taiwan) as a Dutch trading outpost, and the Dutch embassies to the Chinese emperor in the second half of the seventeenth century: Charles R. Boxer, ‘The siege of Fort Zeelandia and the capture of Formosa from the Dutch, 1661-1662’, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 2.7 (1930), pp. 15-48; Tonio Andrade, Lost colony. The untold story of China's first great victory over the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); Tonio Andrade, The gunpowder age. China, military innovation, and the rise of the West in world history (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016); Jing Sun, ‘The illusion of verisimilitude. Johan Nieuhof's images of China’, PhD thesis, Leiden University, 2013; Michael Keevak, Embassies to China. Diplomacy and cultural encounters before the Opium Wars (Singapore: Palgrave McMillan, 2016). For a bibliography on the subject of the Dutch East India Trading Company see John Landwehr, VOC. A bibliography of publications relating to the Dutch East India Company, 1602-1800 (Leiden and Utrecht: Brill and Hes Publishing, 1991); Gerrit Knaap, Grote atlas van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (Voorburg: Asia Maior, 2007); Kees Zandvliet (ed.), De Nederlandse ontmoeting met Azié, 1600-1950 (Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, 2002); Tristan Mostert, 'Economisch onmisbaar maar politiek kop van jut. Chinezen in Batavia, Geschiedenis Magazine (2018), pp. 17-22.

16 Liam Matthew Brockey, Journey to the East. The Jesuit mission in China, 1579-1724 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); Michela Fontana, Matteo Ricci. A Jesuit arriving in the area at the end of the sixteenth century, they began the process of writing histories of their mission. As such, they were fundamental to the early study of China, which could be considered a form of ‘proto-Sinology’!” David Mungello has carried out fundamental research on the intellectual consequences of these interactions, and Nicolas Standaert and Thierry Meynard have made many indispensable primary sources available, appending them with extensive commentary and analysis.

In recent years, scholars studying interactions between China and Europe have increasingly approached the exchange of culture and knowledge in terms of mutual influence and circulation.? Historians and sinologists have also begun to implement ideas and methods about the physical transfer at the Ming court (New York and Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011), Frasie Hertroijs, ‘Hoe kennis van China naar Europe kwam. De rol van Jezuïten en VO C-dienaren, circa 1680-1795, PhD thesis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2014; Paul Rule, 'K'ung-tzu or Confucius? The Jesuit interpretation of Confucius, PhD thesis, Australian National University, 1972; Jonathan Spence, The memory palace of Matteo Ricci (New York: Elisabeth Sifton Books, 1984); Qiong Zhang, Making the new world their own. Chinese encounters with Jesuit science in the age of discovery (Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2015).

17 The Boston College Jesuit bibliography. The new Sommervogel Online, Brill Online Bibliographies, https://jesuitonlinebibliography.bc.edu/, last accessed 16 August 2021; Benoit Vermander, ‘Jesuits and China, Oxford handbook online; Francisco Leäo, Jesuítas na Asia. Catálogo e guida (Macao: Instituto Cultural de Macau, 1998); R.G. Tiedemann, Reference guide to Christian missionary societies in China. From the sixteenth to the twentieth century (London and Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2009); P. Louis Pfister, Notices biographique et bibliographique sur les jésuits de l'ancienne mission de China, 1552-1773 (Shanghai: Imprimerie de la Mision catalogue, 1932); Joseph Dehergne, Répertoire des Jésuites de Chine de 1552 à 1800 (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1973).

18 Nicolas Standaert (ed.), Handbook of Christianity in China (2 vols., Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001-2010); Ad Dudink and Nicolas Standaert, Chinese Christian texts database, www.arts.kuleuven.be/sinology/cct, last accessed 16 August 2021; David E. Mungello, Curious land. Jesuit accommodation and the origins of sinology (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985); David E. Mungello, Leibniz and Confucianism. The search for accord (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1977); David E. Mungello, 'Confucianism and the Enlightenment. Antagonism and collaboration between the Jesuits and the philosophes, in Thomas H.C. Lee (ed.), China and Europe. Images and influences in sixteenth to eighteenth centuries (Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 1991), pp. 99-128; Thierry Meynard (ed.), Confucius Sinarum philosophus (1687). The first translation of the Confucian Classics (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2011); Thierry Meynard, The Jesuit reading of Confucius. The first translation of the Lunyu published in the West (Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2015).

19 Simon Schaffer etc., The brokered world. Go-betweens and global intelligence, 1770-1820 (Sagamore Beach: Sagamore Publishing, 2009); Kapil Raj, Relocating modern science. Circulation and the construction of knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650-1990 (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

of goods into a broader perspective of cultural and intellectual change.?° Furthermore, scholars are increasingly aware of the major influence of social, economic, religious, and political factors in the transmission of cultural information from China to Europe.*! Meanwhile, historians of the early or ‘radical’ Enlightenment have considered the way in which the intellectual world of early modern Europe assessed and classified the Chinese ‘other’.2? Recently, it has been noted how Chinese thought became an important instrument within early modern intellectual discourse in Europe. For instance, Thijs Weststeijn, Jonathan Israel, and Joan-Pau Rubiés have all underlined the influence of China on the broad spectrum of European intellectual thought.?3

20 Mj. Bok, ‘European artists in the service of the Dutch East India Company’, in Thomas Da Costa Kaufmann and Michael North (eds.), Mediating Netherlandish art and material culture in Asia (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014); Ann Bermingham, 'The consumption of culture. Image, object, text’, in Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (eds.), The consumption of culture, 1600—1800. Image, object, and text (London: Routledge, 1995); Maxine Berg, 'In pursuit of luxury. Global history and British consumer goods in the eighteenth century’, Past and Present, 182 (2004), pp. 85-142; Siegfried Huigen, Jan L. de Jong, and Elmer Kolfin, The Dutch trading companies as knowledge networks (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010); Timothy Brook, Vermeer's hat. The seventeenth century and the dawn ofthe global world (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2009); Timothy Brook, Mr. Selden's map of China. Decoding the secrets of a vanished cartographer (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2013); Michael Keevak, Becoming yellow. A short history of racial thinking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); Michael Keevak, The story of a stele. China's Nestorian monument and its reception in the West, 1625-1916 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008).

21 Simon Shapin and Stephen Schaffer, Leviathan and the air-pump. Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental Life (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1985); Peter Burke, A social history of knowledge. From Gutenberg to Diderot (Cambridge, Polity Press, 2000); Joseph Needham, Science and civilisation in China (7 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954-[2019]); Benjamin A. Elman, On their own terms. Science in China, 1550-1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005); Joanna Waley-Cohen, Sextants of Beijing. Global currents in Chinese history (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000).

22 Jonathan Israel, Enlightenment contested. Philosophy, modernity, and the emancipation of man, 1670-1752 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); T.L. Mazurk, ‘Buddhism and idolatry’ in R. Sachdev and Q. Li (eds.), Encountering China. Early modern European responses (Lanham: Bucknell University Press, 2012), pp. 161-196; Nicolas Standaert, The interweaving of rituals. Funerals in the cultural exchange between China and Europe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008); T.H. Barrett, ‘Chinese religion in English guise. The history of an illusion’, Modern Asian Studies, 39.3 (2005), pp. 509-533.

23 Virgile Pinot, La Chine et la formation de l'esprit philosophique en France (1640-1740) (Paris: Geuthner, 1932); Jonathan Israel, ‘The battle over Confucius and classical Chinese philosophy in European early Enlightenment thought (1670-1730), Frontiers of philosophy in China, 8.2 (2013), pp. 183-198; Thijs Weststeijn, ‘Spinoza Sinicus. An Asian paragraph in the history of the Radical Enlightenment’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 68.4 (2007), pp. 537-561; Thijs Weststeijn, ‘From hieroglyphs to universal characters. Pictography in the early modern Netherlands; in Eric Jorkink and Bert Ramakers (eds.) Art and science

Of particular interest to this study is how these varied notions of China trickled down from a narrow circle of merchants, missionaries, and radical thinkers into printed publications intended for a more general audience. Indeed, if the seventeenth century marked a defining moment in the history of intercultural contacts between China and the Dutch Republic, it was also a distinguishing moment in the history of print.?^ First of all, Chinese religion and philosophy could never have become such an integral part of the intellectual discussion before this moment, as neither the content nor the medium of distribution had been in such an abundance before.25 Second, the emergence of cheaper print in this period, combined with the increased literacy among the Dutch, facilitated the dissemination of knowledge across a more varied audience. However, as we will discover, various physical elements of the printed works concerned had a strong bearing on this process of dissemination, with important ramifications for how the intended audience could perceive China and Chinese thought.

The complicated processes of textual transmission and intercultural exchange in print have recently been studied by Benjamin Schmidt. His Inventing exoticism (2015) assesses how Europeans came into contact with the foreign worlds of Asia, Africa, and the Americas through books printed in the Dutch Republic. He argues that the success of Dutch books came about through the ‘neutrality' of their descriptions in print of the overseas world. According to Schmidt, Dutch printers and publishers, first among them the aforementioned defendant Jacob van Meurs, took a more universal perspective when representing the ‘exotic’ world, thereby foregoing mere ‘local’ interests. Schmidt also argues that in the early modern Netherlands. Yearbook for History of Art (2011), pp. 238-281; Thijs Weststeijn, ‘Vossius’s Chinese utopia’ in Eric Jorink and Dirk van Miert (eds.), Isaac Vossius (1618-1689). Between science and scholarship (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), pp. 207-242; David E. Mungello, 'European philosophical responses to non-European culture, in Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers, The Cambridge history of seventeenth-century philosophy (2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 87-100; Walter W. Davis, ‘China, the Confucian ideal, and the European Enlightenment, Journal of the History of Ideas, 44.4 (1983), pp. 521-548; Joan-Pau Rubiés and Manel Ollé, 'The comparative history of a genre. The production and circulation of books on travel and ethnographies in early modern Europe and China, Modern Asian Studies 50.1 (2016), pp. 259-369; Joan-Pau Rubiés, ‘From Christian apologetics to deism. Libertine readings of Hinduism, 1650-1730’, in William J. Bulman and Robert G. Ingram (eds.), God in the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 107-135.

24 Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen, The bookshop of the world. Making and trading books in the Dutch Golden Age (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), pp. 1-28.