000			01873cam a2200169 i 4500
020			_a9781421406060 (alk. paper)
020			_a1421406063 (alk. paper)
041			_aeng _achi
082			_a51(091) _bHAR
100	1		_aHart, Roger _9628
245	1	0	_aImagined civilizations : _bChina, the West, and their first encounter / _cRoger Hart.
260			_aBaltimore: _bJohn Hopkins University Press, _c2013
300			_avii, 374 pages : _billustrations ;
520			_a"Accounts of the seventeenth-century Jesuit Mission to China have often celebrated it as the great encounter of two civilizations. The Jesuits portrayed themselves as wise men from the West who used mathematics and science in service of their mission. Chinese literati-official Xu Guangqi (1562-1633), who collaborated with the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) to translate Euclid's Elements into Chinese, reportedly recognized the superiority of Western mathematics and science and converted to Christianity. Most narratives relegate Xu and the Chinese to subsidiary roles as the Jesuits' translators, followers, and converts. Imagined Civilizations tells the story from the Chinese point of view. Using Chinese primary sources, Roger Hart focuses in particular on Xu, who was in a position of considerable power over Ricci. The result is a perspective startlingly different from that found in previous studies. Hart analyzes Chinese mathematical treatises of the period, revealing that Xu and his collaborators could not have believed their declaration of the superiority of Western mathematics. Imagined Civilizations explains how Xu's West served as a crucial resource. While the Jesuits claimed Xu as a convert, he presented the Jesuits as men from afar who had traveled from the West to China to serve the emperor."--Publisher's website.
650			_aMathematics- History _9629
942			_cBK
999			_c167895 _d167895