Yixin Alfred Wang-Gu

What did the Ming literati and the Jesuits in the Ming Empire write about each other? An older generation of scholars would answer as such: to the Jesuits, the Ming literati were heathen gentiles who possessed near-peer “civilization” yet in need of total evangelization; to the Ming literati, the Jesuits were Confucian scholars who possessed correct knowledge yet in need of further tutelage. This response, however, fails to acknowledge that both portrayals were imperialistic propaganda to solve each side’s existential threat in the time of political tension in the Ming Empire and the imperative of confessionalization in Latin Europe. The current study treats the Sino-Jesuit encounters as the confluence of two imperialisms, with Han universalism on the one hand and Catholic universalism on the other. In analyzing the portrayal of the “noble foreigner” in the writings of some Ming literati and Jesuits, "Portraying Cathay and Daqin" examines how human variation was theorized and framed to corroborate the endeavors of the reform faction at the Ming court, and the evangelization strategy of the Society of Jesus in East Asia. Jettisoning the traditional institution-centered stories of Sino-European exchange, the current study proposes a shift towards the agency of individuals in Late Ming China.