The Local Version of Global Entanglements
ABOUT
The Religious Transformation refers to the trend started by some Chinese scholars in the seventeenth and eighteenth century seeking to transform Confucianism into a religious system, in order to make Confucianism adapt to societal and intellectual changes.
This website tries to re-contextualize Dominic Sachsenmaier’s new study, Global entanglements of a man who never traveled: a seventeenth-century Chinese Christian and his conflicted worlds. Besides presenting the global perspective in Sachsenmaier’s book, the website further explores the Chinese context—the religious transformation of Confucianism—that underpinned Christianity’s spread in China. It also provides examples of other Chinese scholars who adopted local and foreign religions, like Zhu Zongyuan in Sachsenmaier’s story, as useful resources in transforming Confucianism.
Confucianism’s religious transformation is only one example of the unexplored local versions of “global entanglements”. India, Malaysia, Japan, Americas, and Africa—all of the places entangled by European travelers are also the agents who decided to entangle European travelers in their local histories out of their own reasons. Thus, local histories and the global history acts as two weights on the two sides of a balance, giving us more balanced ideas about the history.
The Religious Transformation
How did the religious transformation of Confucianism enable Christianity 's diffusion in China
The Religious Transformation refers to the trend started by some Chinese scholars to transform Confucianism into a religious system in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, in order to make Confucianism adapt to societal and intellectual changes. Although they served the same goal, there is no evidence that could show their interconnections. What’s more, they saw the new changes Confucianism was facing and the proper way to react differently.
Some scholars, such as Wen Xiangfeng (? -1642) 文祥鳳, a local official of Jinshi 進士degree, Wang Qiyuan (1559- ?) 王啟元, an official in Hanlinyuan 翰林院of the Ming central government, Xie Wenjian (1616-1682) 謝文洊, a Yangming scholar in Jiangxi, and Wei Yijie (1616-1686) 魏裔介, a high official in Qing central government, resorted to the power of the ancient transcending benigs, Shangdi 上帝 and the Heaven 天, to orient Confucianism from self-cultivation to mass moral education. This is due to two changes in politics and intellectual trend. First, Ming emperors’ withdrawal from state affairs and the manipulation of power by eunuchs made the traditional self-realizing way of “serving the moral emperor” impossible, and thus scholars were forced to realize the Confucian ideal in the folk. Second, Confucianism was under the transformation from Song mode back to Han mode during the Ming-Qing transition, which was characterized by the return from philosophical Confucianism to Classics studies 經學, and from inward focus to outward focus. [10]
Other scholars like Xu Sanli (1625-91) 許三禮, a county magistrate of Jinshi degree, found Buddhism and Taoism as useful resources to transform Confucianism even though he regarded the two religions as rivals of Confucianism. In the late Ming period, the rationalized Confucianism had lost the attraction to the populace because it cannot promise a paying back in “this life” nor “next life” by performing Confucian code of conduct as Buddhism, Taoism, and popular religions did. Without promised benefits, people gradually lost faith to it and turned to popular religions which was built on the promised happiness resulted from doing goodness. Although the four scholars mentioned above, Wen, Wang, Xie, and Wei, also had the conception of retribution in their beliefs, their retribution thoughts had a different origin—Han mode Confucianism—while that of Xu was directly borrowed from Buddhism, Taoism, and popular religions. However, the differences between them were overshadowed by their conformity in transforming Confucianism into a religious system by adding personalized transcending beings and the conception of retribution to it, and in the counter-Buddhism and counter-Taoism attitude. [11]
All of the five scholars mentioned above were looking inwards, searching for useful local religious resources to transform Confucianism. While they all held, more or less, antithetical positions to local religions like Buddhism and Taoism, not all of them were hostile towards Catholicism. Among them, only Wei Yijie, who was close to Schall von Bell, the core Jesuit in Qing China, was clearly supporting Catholicism’s spread in China and found it consistent with Confucius’ teaching. Similar to Wei, there were also many other Chinese scholars in the seventeenth and eighteenth century trying to use Catholicism as an enrichment to Confucianism and as the way to return to its pristine origins. Zhu Zongyuan (1616- ?), a local elite in Ningbo, was a perfect example, who thought the Christian teaching—tianxue 天學 –was not only compatible with Confucian tradition but also would help it return to Confucius’ teaching by setting an ultimate authority of the Lord of Heaven who would distribute rewards and punishments after life. Yang Shen (1699-1794) 楊屾, an agronomist in Shanxi 陝西, performed an even more interesting belief system. He saw Shangdi as the creator and the lord of the world. Emperors were Shangdi’s representative in the mundane world. Family and teacher was also endowed with Shangdi’s authority, guiding people to immortality. His belief was both Catholic and Islamic since the two religion shares lots of commons.[12]
In the seventeenth and eighteenth century when the Ming-Qing transition took place, Chinese scholars were faced with several societal and intellectual changes as well as challenges. When the traditional ideal of “serving the moral emperor” fell apart, Chinese scholars were forced to find another way to realize the Confucian values. Influenced by the widespread of private academies in Jiangnan area, they turned to the mass moral education. Consequently, Confucianism need to change its rational and philosophical style to a more popular and attractive one—it had to promise that good deeds will be rewarded, and bad deeds will be punished. But Confucianism still found it hard to survive when faced with religions like Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Islam, and popular religions. Facing competitions, different Confucian scholars adopted different approaches. Some refused to reconcile with any of the religions and decided to retrieved powers from the ancient belief of Shangdi. Some were willing to learn from them. They either meld Confucianism with local religions like Buddhism and Taoism, or resort to foreign religions like Catholicism and Islam. By looking deeply into Chinese history of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, it provides a local version of the “global entanglements”, which acts as a supplement to the global perspective and makes history more diverse and complete.
Social Crisis in Ming China
How did social crisis facilitate China's acceptance of Cristianity
From the late sixteenth century and onward, Ming empire has experienced a series of political decline, natural disasters, cruel wars, and economic depressions. Such social crisis peaked during the Ming-Qing transition, which is the time at which some of the people explored on the next page lived.
During the last decades of the sixteenth century, the imperial court atop the Great Ming’s institutional edifice was corroded by opposing factions, corruption, and intrigues. The opposing factions were partly caused by the division of political institution into inner and outer court. Inner court 内朝, mainly referring to the Cabinet, controls the decision-making power, directly responsible to the emperor. Outer court 外朝, on the other hand, cannot participate in the decision-making process and hardly has the opportunities to meet the emperor.[13] Therefore, inner court acts as the medium between the emperor and officials of outer court and consequently monopolized political power. Such political institution provided a space for power abuse of the inner court officials and thus rendered critiques from the outer court. The most serious conflict was caused by Dongllin Faction 東林黨 in 1584. In this year, several core leaders of Donglin Faction were downgraded out of the central government, which was considered as the Cabinet’s abuse of power by officials of Donglin Faction. Advocates thus strongly blamed the leader of the Cabinet, Wang Xijue 王錫爵, and all of them were downgraded afterwards. However, Donglin Faction became even more active in the folk and government. They criticized the autocracy of the eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568-1627) 魏忠賢, and tragically made most of the Donglin members executed by Wei. The political prosecutions and some emperors’ indifference to state affairs, finally made some official-scholars desperate to politics, and turned to mass education, which underpinned the religious transformation of classical Confucian education.
Worsening the situation, a series of natural disasters happened in 1630s. Bad harvests, which were caused by a combination of droughts, floods, and locusts, struck large swaths of the country, and destroyed the livelihood of a large number of people. Due to the bad finance situation, Ming government had to raise the tax revenue in order to relieve the disasters, but only made pennants and craftsmen’s lives harder.[14]
Because of the deteriorating living conditions and Ming government’s inability to exert effective controls, rebel armies several hundred thousand men strong soon became active in parts of China. Consistent wars caused a sharp reduction in Chinese population. Especially, Zhang Xianzhong (1606-47) 張獻忠, one leader of the rebellion armies, massacred millions of people in Sichuan. The later massacres of Yangzhou 揚州 and Jiading 嘉定 by Manchu armies also caused a great number of death.
In the turmoil, most people at the mid-seventeenth century were not aware that the crisis has its global dimension. Thirty Years’ War in Europe, the nearly depleted silver mines in the Americas, and the political crisis in Japan caused a rising silver demand, leading to a shortage in China. Turmoil in the world deteriorated the social crisis in Ming China. It worsened Ming government’s financial status and weakened China’s silk export.[15]
All of the crisis created an age of anxiety and uncertainty that made many individuals look for new sources of confidence and hope.[16] Foreign religions like Christianity and Islam, transferred through the global trade network, appeared to be good choices.
GLOBAL CONTEXTS
OF THE GLOBAL ENTANGLEMENTS
The Global Transfer of Goods and People
How did the global trade network work as a vehicle for the global spread of religions
In the seventeenth century, China was linked to the world through two networks—the overland Silk Road and the maritime trading route. The overland routes linked China to the Central Asia and further to Europe, while the overseas routes enabled flows of goods and people between China and Southeast Asia, India, Arab, and west and south Europe, through the Pacific or the Indian Ocean. The overland Silk Road emerged and thrived during the Han dynasty (BC 206-AD 220) and fell into parts as the united Han empire collapsed. Not until Tang dynasty (AD 618-907)’s reunification of China did the overland Silk Road revived. But it is the four centuries between Han and Tang when China geographically shrank that forced China to rely on overseas routes for trade. Therefore, China was more and more closely tied to the maritime routes through the fourth to the nineteenth century.[1]
The establishment of the global trade network was not only composed by China’s westward move, but also Europeans’ global expansion. As Portuguese’s conquest of Melaka in 1511, Europeans marched into the ancient trade network of Malay, Arab, and Chinese in South and Southeast Asia which has already came into being centuries ago. Then came the Dutch and English, craving for spices, sugar, cotton from South and Southeast Asia, and tea from China.[2] From the eastward, Spanish sailed through the Pacific to Manila in the Philippines, and traded for commodities from China and elsewhere. By this global trade network, many individuals in the seventeenth-century China experienced the transcontinental transfer of a wide range of goods—maize, tobacco, sweet potato, foreign textiles, furniture, etc.[3]
Together with these products came the foreign people. In the urban economic centers of Yangtze delta, sizeable communities of Muslims, European traders, and missionaries were commonly seen. They brought new flows of knowledge and expertise—technologies, geographical knowledge, information about markets and prices in distant places, and, of course, religions.[4] Along with Christianity, Islam enjoyed a clear presence in Chinese cities ranging from Beijing to Hangzhou, and a longer and uninterrupted history in China thanks to the long history of overland Silk Road linking China and Central Asia.[5]
The Spread of Christianity in the World and Ming China
How did Christianity start its worldwide expansion and its sinicization
The worldwide spread of Christianity started with Jesuit Missions. Founded by Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish nobleman, and approved by Pope Paul III in 1540, Society of Jesus expanded rapidly from the half-dozen original followers in 1535 to more than 1,500 by 1556. Jesuits were mainly dedicated to three works: education, counteracting Protestants, and missionary expansion. By 1556, Society of Jesus has developed members in Japan, Brazil, Ethiopia, countries in Europe, and the coast of central Africa. They later travelled to America and Asia in search for converts. Travelling by Spanish and Portuguese ships and helped by imperial powers, Jesuits sailed around the world and spread Catholicism in distant places. In Asia, the greatest stories of Jesuit heroism came from Francis Xavier (1506-52), who successfully spread Catholicism to Malaysia, Vietnam, and Japan. The Christian community established by Xavier in Japan even survived to this day. In China, where our stories took place, it is the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) who founded modern mission work here and adapted the gospel to Chinese traditions.[6]
The successful diffusion of Christianity in China was largely attributed to the “accommodation method” adopted by Jesuits. The “accommodation method”, as the result of intensive interaction between European missionaries and Chinese scholars, rested upon the assumption that the true principles of Confucianism were ultimately compatible with the Christian message. The latter, presented as the Learning of Heaven 天學, would help retrieve an original wisdom contained in the Confucian classics, which supposedly had been lost in the centuries after Confucius’s death.[7] Many Christian publications not only adapted to the form of Chinese writings but also resorted to Chinese classics, such as the Five Classics and its commentaries, for authority.[8] Through “accommodation method”, Jesuits and Chinese scholars together forged a new synthetic belief of Christianity and Confucianism.
The accommodation method in China was actually part of the broader proselytizing approach taken by the Society of Jesus as a global religious network. Such localization strategy was being practiced in many other Jesuit missions. In India, Roberto de Nobili (1577–1656) studied Sanskrit texts and lived much like the Brahman caste. Other fathers also moved toward the Indian caste system hoping to gain acceptance from the upper echelons of Hindu society. But, of course, the degree to which Jesuits believed that it was desirable to combine Christian contents with local elements varied from context to context.[9]
Later joined by Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinians, Jesuits led the Church of Rome into a new period of rapid overseas expansion between 1550 and 1650.[10]