Cross-Cultural Knowledge Transfer in the Early Modern Period: The Taixi shuifa 泰西水法 (Hydromethods of the Great West; 1612) and Its Limited Success in China

Abstract

This dissertation provides the first in-depth investigation of the content and history of the Taixi shuifa 泰西水法 (Hydromethods of the Great West), a treatise that was co-authored by the Jesuit missionary Sabatino de Ursis and the eminent scholar-official Xu Guangqi 徐光啟 in Beijing in 1612. As one of the early works of the ‘apostolate of the book’ – through which the Jesuits sought to spread their Christian faith in the Middle Kingdom under the guise of Western learning – the Taixi shuifa presented to its learned Chinese readership Renaissance-era useful and reliable knowledge about water. To this end, it combined, in a unique and hybridising manner, theoretical considerations about water within the framework of the Aristotelian theory of the Four Elements with the description of hydraulic technologies and practical artisanal skills. Yet, despite an initially keen interest – particularly in the spectacular water pumps – and a remarkable, albeit all too brief, openness towards Western ideas, these technologies did not gain a lasting foothold in China. The fate of the Taixi shuifa therefore sheds an illuminating light not only on the intricacies of trying to convey this kind of innovative knowledge across borders, but also on the influence of different societal patterns on early modern developments in effective water management in both China and the West. This doctoral thesis, which is one of the outcomes of the DFG funded project “Translating Western Science, Technology and Medicine to Late Ming China: Convergences and Divergences in the Light of the Kunyu gezhi 坤輿格致 (Investigations of the Earth’s Interior; 1640) and the Taixi shuifa,” thus also makes an important contribution to ongoing discussions on the emergence of global divergences and their economic implications.