Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled

The seventeenth-century Chinese Christian convert Zhu Zongyuan likely never left his home province, yet led a remarkably global life through scholarly activities and globalizing Catholicism. Dominic Sachsenmaier explores the mid-seventeenth-century world through the lens of Zhu’s life, combining the local, regional, and global.

Dominic Sachsenmaier is Chair Professor of Modern China with an Emphasis on Global Historical Perspectives at the Department of East Asian Studies and History at the University of Göttingen. He is the author of Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and Approaches in a Connected World (2011) and an editor of the Columbia University Press series Columbia Studies in International and Global History.

Wang Hui, Tsinghua University, Beijing:
This is a fascinating global analysis of a Chinese Catholic/Confucian literatus living in the seventeenth century in Ningbo, a port city in southeast China. The life and thoughts of Zhu Zongyuan, who never traveled to distant places and who was not the most prominent Catholic in his lifetime, nevertheless evince the converging of Catholic knowledge and ideas, Confucian tradition, and the cultural complexity and diversity of Ningbo. Sachsenmaier analyzes the internal tensions, contradictions, and unique strategies inherent in a man entangled in global history and local tradition. This book contributes substantially to both Chinese intellectual history and the rising field of global history.

Timothy Brook, University of British Columbia:
This book offers an engaging portrait of an "ordinary" Chinese of the seventeenth century who called himself Cosmas, and whose curiosity about the world beyond China drew him to Christianity. His Jesuit instructors may have thought they were accommodating Christian beliefs to Confucian China, but it was Cosmas and his Chinese friends who did the real work of making sense of Christianity from where they stood.

Prasenjit Duara, Duke University:
Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled is a mature work by a scholar who has reflected not only on the history of Christianity in China but also on the problem of cultural interactions in the early modern era. Sachsenmaier offers a significant departure from the tradition of Christian studies in China even while dealing with the question of Christianity as a faith. He explores the historical problem of self-formation and trans-formation—both individual and collective—and the organizational machinery of the Catholic Church during a period of momentous global encounters.