Joan-Pau Rubiés

Theology, Ethnography, and the Historicization of Idolatry

Early Christian writers defined idolatry around the monotheistic distinction between proper worship of the creator and vain worship of the creature, which they had inherited from Hellenistic Judaism. Despite the remarkable consensus about the validity of this theological analysis, the medieval synthesis was under severe strain throughout the early modern period, mainly because of the concepts extended range of application in the new contexts of religious controversy. In all these cases, deciding what practices constituted idolatry was open to debate. By the eighteenth century, libertine writers could retain the concept of superstition at the expense of that of idolatry, which Voltaire (himself an anti-Christian deist) denounced as meaningless.

Oriental despotism and European Orientalism: Botero to Montesquieu

The issue of how European images of the East were formed, used, and contested is far from simple. The concept of oriental despotism allowed early-modern Europeans to distinguish themselves from the most powerful and impressive non-European civilizations of the Ottoman Middle East, Persia, India, and China on grounds which were neither fundamentally religious nor linked to sheer scientific and technological progress, but political and moral. However, it would be incorrect to treat this as a pure European fantasy based on the uncritical application of a category inherited from Aristotle, because both the concept and its range of application were often hotly contested. By assessing the way travel accounts helped transform the concept from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, this article argues that oriental despotism was not a mental scheme that blinded Europeans to the perception of the true Orient, but rather a compelling tool for interpreting information gathered about the Orient, one which served a common intellectual purpose despite important differences of opinion in Europe about the nature of royal power.

Hugo Grotius's dissertation on the origin of the American peoples and the use of comparative methods

Late in his life and while ambassador of Queen Christina of Sweden in Richelieus Paris, the Dutch scholar Hugo Grotius (1583-1643) published a short Latin treatise on the origins of the American Indians. There is little in what is known of Grotiuss other writings or his concerns at that time that easily explains why he was interested in that question, or why he would elaborate his argument the way he did. There is, however, a general context of early modern European cultural life in which Grotiuss treatise is clearly relevant, namely, the use of comparative methods in ethnological thinking. In this article I will attempt to explore this dimension, while at the same time offering some hypotheses concerning Grotiuss more immediate motivations. In the seventeenth century Grotius was best known for his theological and political writings, especially his concern with the unification of Christianity and his contributions to the theory of natural law and natural rights. His participation in the Remonstrant controversy, his interest in a

Real and Imaginary Dialogues in the Jesuit Mission of Sixteenth-century Japan

Abstract This article takes as a starting point for a contextual exploration of the dialogue as a form of cross-cultural interaction the accounts of disputations between Francis Xavier and his companions and various Buddhist monks during the first years of the mission in Japan (1549-51). The essay considers the differences among a lay popular version of these disputations offered by Fernao Mendes Pinto, the account publicized by Francis Xavier in his letters to Europe, and the internal working documents produced by his companions Cosme de Torres and Juan Fernandez during these encounters. The latter reflected the complexity of the exchanges that took place in Yamaguchi in September 1551, offering many echoes of Buddhist arguments that stretched the Christian theological capacity. More interesting still is the process by which the Jesuits came to reject the possibilities for convergence through analogy and chose instead to emphasize doctrinal and moral differences, often employing arguments that echoed, unwittingly, the recent divisions within European Christendom.

The Comparative History of a Genre: The production and circulation of books on travel and ethnographies in early modern Europe and China

Contrary to the long-standing idea of a scientific failure in early modern China as compared to Europe, some recent work has emphasized the existence of a tradition of ‘evidential’ research in the natural sciences, antiquarianism, and geography, especially during the Sung, Ming, and Qing periods. This article seeks to develop this new perspective by offering a comparative history of the genres of travel writing and ethnography in early modern Europe and Ming/early Qing China. We argue that there were qualitative as well as quantitative differences in the way that these genres functioned in each cultural area. Even when we find apparent similarities, we note different chronological rhythms and a different position of these genres of travel writing within a wider cultural field—what we might term their ‘cultural relevance’. The specific nature of Chinese state imperialism—or, conversely, the particular nature of European overseas colonialism—played a role in determining the type of ethnographic approach that came to predominate in each cultural area. These parallels and differences suggest a fresh perspective on the cultural origins of the ‘great divergence’.

Were Early Modern Europeans Racist? 1

In early modern Europe and up to the mid-eighteenth century, cultural diversity was usually explained with reference to climate, religion and national genealogy, without any serious equivalent to the racist ideologies that rose to prominence throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. On the other hand, there were certainly some examples of religious persecutions, discriminatory colonial policies and philosophical attempts to classify the peoples of the world which involved some racialist principles, albeit usually within the framework of a monogenist understanding of the history of humankind. Although it is important not to blur any relevant distinctions, the possible connections between earlier ideas and the stronger theories of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries cannot be entirely dismissed. This chapter seeks to define the issue in relation to both ideas and practices, in order to come to an assessment of the contribution of early modern cultural encounters, and their conceptualization, to the origins of modern racism. It does so by considering climatic theories of national character, the persecution of religious minorities, the debate about the nature and origins of the American Indians, Jesuit missionary writings about the various peoples of the world, and some of the earliest formulations of racial classifications, from Francois Bernier to the Count of Buffon. It is argued that a confluence of various intellectual currents at the height of the Enlightenment contributed to the breakdown of the orthodox consensus created in the late Renaissance, transforming the plausibility of pseudoscientific racialist discourses.

Political Rationality and Cultural Distance in the European Embassies to Shah Abbas

The embassy of Don Garcia de Silva y Figueroa, sent in 1614 by Philip III of Castile and II of Portugal to negotiate an alliance with Shah Abbas against the Ottomans, was a fiasco. Not only did it fail to secure a deal, but within three years of the ambassador’s departure from Ispahan, in 1622, Persian troops, with the help of English ships, conquered the strategic island and fortress of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, marking a turning point in the decline of Portuguese power in Asia. For many historians the embassy was doomed from the start, notwithstanding the lavish gift offered to the Safavid ruler, because the Spanish ambassador could never offer Shah Abbas what he wanted. This analysis however assumes that the two sides understood each other perfectly well, and that the cultural distance between the ambassador and Shah Abbas was no obstacle to perfectly accurate political calculations. Taking advantage of the plurality of agendas and perspectives that can be documented during these exchanges, including English adventurers and commercial agents, various Carmelite and Augustinian friars, and the independent observer Pietro della Valle, this article seeks to test the degree of cultural commensurability in inter-cultural diplomacy, proposing a model that takes account of cultural distance without falling into a facile version of cultural relativism.

Tamil Voices in the Lutheran Mission of South India (1705-1714)

The English edition of the Bibliotheca Malabarica, a manuscript catalogue of the Tamil works collected by the young Lutheran missionary Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg during his first two years in India (1706-8), attests to his prodigious effort to acquire, read, and summarize all the works of the “heathens” of South India that he could possibly get hold of. Most of this literature seems to have originated from local Śaiva mattams. Besides epics and puranas, the collection included many popular works on ethics, divination and astrology, devotional poetry, or folk narratives and ballads. Ziegenbalg seems to have acquired these through his Tamil teacher in Tranquebar—an elderly schoolmaster—and his son. In this respect, a focus on the social and cultural dynamics by which local knowledge was transmitted to Europeans is no less important than identifying the literary sources for their interpretation of Hinduism. A fascinating work, the Tamil correspondence conducted between 1712 and 1714 by the Lutheran missionaries with a number of learned Hindus reveals their desire to embark on a kind of inter-religious dialogue as a foundation for their Christian apologetics. The replies received from his “heathen” correspondents would inform much of Ziegenbalg’s interpretation of Śaivism as a form of natural monotheism. Translated into German and published in Halle, they also became part of the Pietist propaganda concerning the mission, exerting a much wider impact than Ziegenbalg’s unpublished monographs about Hindu doctrines and theology. But how authentic were these Tamil voices? Close analysis suggests that even if we conclude with the editors that the letters were what they claim to be, that is a direct translation of the work of many independent Tamil correspondents, the extent to which there was a religious “dialogue” based on reciprocity is open to question.