Catherine Jami – författare

In 1644 the Qing dynasty seized power in China. Its Manchu elite were at first seen by most of their subjects as foreigners from beyond the Great Wall, and the consolidation of Qing rule presented significant cultural and political problems, as well as military challenges. It was the Kangxi emperor (r. 1662-1722) who set the dynasty on a firm footing, and one of his main stratagems to achieve this was the appropriation for imperial purposes of the scientific knowledge brought to China by the Jesuit mission (1582-1773).For almost two centuries, the Jesuits put the sciences in the service of evangelization, teaching and practising what came to be known as 'Western learning' among Chinese scholars, many of whom took an active interest in it. After coming to the throne as a teenager, Kangxi began his life-long intervention in mathematical and scientific matters when he forced a return to the use of Western methods in official astronomy. In middle life, he studied astronomy, musical theory and mathematics, with Jesuits as his teachers. In his last years he sponsored a great compilation covering these three disciplines, and set several of his sons to work on this project. All of this activity formed a vital part of his plan to establish Manchu authority over the Chinese. This book explains why Kangxi made the sciences a tool for laying the foundations of empire, and to show how, as part of this process, mathematics was reconstructed as a branch of imperial learning.

A selection of papers from the International Colloquium "Sciences and Empires - Comparative History of Scientific Exchanges European Expansion and Scientific Development of Asia, Africa, America and Oceania", held in UNESCO, Paris, April 1990. It raises some historical and epistemological problems related to the integration between classical science and modern science in countries with ancient scientific traditions; to the way modern science crossed cultural borders and took roots outside Europe; to the political strategies followed by European powers for their scientific expansion; and to the possibility of drawing a fruitful general frame for scientific development under colonial and imperial domination. It raises crucial issues about science in its imperial context. Scientific expansion has been a dimension of the sharing of the new world undertaken by European countries since the 19th century after the industrial revolution: which consequences such a context had on the way science was organized and developed outside Europe and which constraints this imperial system laid upon scientific activities and exchanges.This work explores a wide diversity of national situations as well as a variety of disciplines and institutions. It aims to contribute to a better understanding of contemporary problems of scientific development in the light of history of science.

SCIENCE AND EMPIRES: FROM THE INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM TO THE BOOK Patrick PETITJEAN, Catherine JAMI and Anne Marie MOULIN The International Colloquium "Science and Empires - Historical Studies about Scientific De­ velopment and European Expansion" is the product of an International Colloquium, "Sciences and Empires - A Comparative History of Scien­ tific Exchanges: European Expansion and Scientific Development in Asian, African, American and Oceanian Countries". Organized by the REHSEIS group (Research on Epistemology and History of Exact Sciences and Scientific Institutions) of CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), the colloquium was held from 3 to 6 April 1990 in the UNESCO building in Paris. This colloquium was an idea of Professor Roshdi Rashed who initiated this field of studies in France some years ago, and proposed "Sciences and Empires" as one of the main research programmes for the The project to organize such a colloquium was a bit REHSEIS group. of a gamble. Its subject, reflected in the title "Sciences and Empires", is not a currently-accepted sub-discipline of the history of science; rather, it refers to a set of questions which found autonomy only recently. The terminology was strongly debated by the participants and, as is frequently suggested in this book, awaits fuller clarification.

At the end of the 15th century, Portugal was given the oversight (Padroado) of all Catholic missions in Asia. The Society of Jesus played a major role in this enterprise of evangelization, which in Jesuit hands led to the transmission of major elements of European mathematical sciences to East Asia. The essays in this volume present important new data and analysis on the extent to and ways in which Jesuit scientific culture and Portuguese policies regarding education, trade and mission shaped the reception of “Western learning” in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam in the early modern period.