Leopold Leeb - Böcker

This book introduces the history of cultural exchanges between East Asia and the West through comparative biographical sketches of sixty personalities from China and Japan. These sketches illustrate how both countries, starting from a shared cultural heritage in script and Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist worldviews, took rather different approaches in their encounters with the European world since the 16th to 17th centuries. In particular in the 19th century under external and internal pressure, both nations strove to modernize their societies by introducing technology and new ideas from the Western world, turning them into political rivals and even enemies. Thus, these biographical sketches also shed some light on the general dynamics of cross-cultural interactions between China, Japan, and the West up to the early 20th century.The Chinese and Japanese men and women presented in this book are outstanding personalities who tried to open up the road to international relationships, pioneers in their respective domains who introduced Western culture to their nations, precursors who strove for modernization, e.g., in the fields of translation, education, medicine, media, and social welfare. They testify to individual agency in these cross-cultural exchanges. Many of those who tried to be “cultural bridge-builders” since the 16th century were Christians, simply because the missionaries, who worked hard to learn the native languages of China and Japan, were the first to introduce new cultural elements to these countries. The universal scope and vision of the Christian faith enabled both missionaries and native believers to overcome narrow nationalism or xenophobia and turned them into cross-cultural mediators.

This book introduces the history of cultural exchanges between East Asia and the West through comparative biographical sketches of sixty personalities from China and Japan. These sketches illustrate how both countries, starting from a shared cultural heritage in script and Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist worldviews, took rather different approaches in their encounters with the European world since the 16th to 17th centuries. In particular in the 19th century under external and internal pressure, both nations strove to modernize their societies by introducing technology and new ideas from the Western world, turning them into political rivals and even enemies. Thus, these biographical sketches also shed some light on the general dynamics of cross-cultural interactions between China, Japan, and the West up to the early 20th century.The Chinese and Japanese men and women presented in this book are outstanding personalities who tried to open up the road to international relationships, pioneers in their respective domains who introduced Western culture to their nations, precursors who strove for modernization, e.g., in the fields of translation, education, medicine, media, and social welfare. They testify to individual agency in these cross-cultural exchanges. Many of those who tried to be “cultural bridge-builders” since the 16th century were Christians, simply because the missionaries, who worked hard to learn the native languages of China and Japan, were the first to introduce new cultural elements to these countries. The universal scope and vision of the Christian faith enabled both missionaries and native believers to overcome narrow nationalism or xenophobia and turned them into cross-cultural mediators.

A comprehensive sourcebook for historians and sinologists, containing biographies of over 1000 Christian missionaries who served in China before 1955.In this monumental reference work, Leopold Leeb provides biographical accounts of over 1000 missionaries in China, beginning in the year 635 and continuing through the mid-twentieth century. Missionaries to China: A Historical Dictionary is distinctive for its wide historical range, its emphasis on Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox missions, and its many entries on women and lesser-known figures in the missionary history of China. Based on sources in several languages including Chinese, German, French, and Latin, Leeb’s dictionary is a wellspring of historical and cultural information. The book’s biographical entries are contextualized by an introduction to the history and historiography of China missionaries. Enhancing its functionality as a research tool, the dictionary provides the English and Chinese names of both the missionary figures and the titles of works that they published. The dictionary lists all place names in China in both English and Chinese, and it features a bilingual index of names and a topical index. Given the book’s scope of information and user-friendly design, Missionaries to China: A Historical Dictionary is an essential resource for scholars studying Christianity and missionary activity in China.

This comparative study of the history of the Catholic Church in China and Vietnam from the seventeenth to the twentieth century opens up new perspectives for the understanding of the presence of Christianity in Asia. The author narrates the biographies of a number of outstanding missionaries and Christians from China and Vietnam and tries to understand them in their respective historical backgrounds by applying the principle of mutual illumination: the experience of China may help to understand the Vietnamese reality and vice versa. In this way some interesting similarities between European missionaries and local Christians are revealed. At the same time the parallel biographies from China and Vietnam throw a light on the peculiar cultural and political contexts of Christianity in the two nations. The book, based on recent research in several languages, is a pioneering attempt at writing comparative ecclesiastical history in Asia and offers an insightful synopsis, occasionally even including observations on Japan and Korea. The study presents new questions and fields for further research, including native church leadership, Christian architecture, arts, and literature, and common theological vocabularies. The work discloses hitherto unnoticed spiritual links between China and Vietnam.