From Xu Chaojun to Xu Jiyu: The Transition of Old and New Western Learning during the Jiaqing and Daoguang Eras

Abstract

Scholars have usually regarded the late Ming and early Qing Western learning (old Western learning) and the late Qing Western learning (new Western learning) as two different research fields. However, the new Western learning had inherited the old tradition, and the Jiaqing and Daoguang eras were at the critical stage of the transition. Since the Kangxi era, the family of Xu Chaojun in Songjiang had pursued Western learning and made Western instruments for five generations, and owned a large collection of Chinese Western learning texts. Through bonds like bloodlines and texts, they contributed to the transmission and localization of the old Western learning. Written by Xu Chaojun and published sequentially between 1807 and 1829, the five-volume book Enlightenment on the Heaven and the Earth served both as a comprehensive summary of old Western learning and a key reference for the book A Short Account of the Maritime Circuit (1844) by Xu Jiyu, which was the manuscript for A Brief Description of the Ocean Circuit (1848). Interestingly, when A Brief Description of the Ocean Circuit was formally published, the Enlightenment on the Heaven and the Earth disappeared from its references. This paper proposes the dual concepts of “primary Chinese Western learning texts” and “secondary Chinese Western learning texts.” Represented by the Enlightenment on the Heaven and the Earth, the secondary Chinese Western learning texts served as a crucial local intellectual resource for late Qing literati to understand the new world, deal with new changes, and comprehend new Western learning, playing a transitional role in the trans-spatiotemporal connection between old and new Western learning.

Keywords

the eastward spread of Western learning / old Western learning / new Western learning / Xu Chaojun / history of knowledge

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Higher Education Press