The Negotiated Geography of the Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689) and the Role of the Jesuits

Datos Bibliográficos

ID15028075
AutoresHelena Jaskov (autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen40
Número2
Páginas45-88
Fecha de publicación2019-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLate imperial China (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0884-3236 • E-ISSN: 1086-3257
EditorialProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/late.2019.0007
OpenAlexW2998522370
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas21

The 1689 peace negotiations in Nerchinsk between Muscovite Russia and Qing China resulted in the first bilateral settlement of the territorial disputes between the two empires and led to extensive surveys in the frontier region. More importantly, the surviving textual and material evidence qualifies this encounter as a site of knowledge exchange that provides exemplary insights into the Jesuits' activities as knowledge brokers in late imperial China. By using Jesuit, Russian, and Qing sources, this article reconstructs the exchange of geographic information in Nerchinsk and traces the knowledge fragments that made up the Jesuits' new spatial imagination of these lands. In arguing that their European cartographic training ultimately prevented them from successfully integrating the fragments of local geographic knowledge that were exchanged at the negotiations, it presents the Jesuits as highly problematic go-betweens and their allegedly "superior" knowledge as essentially refracted

Archaeology · China · Diplomacy · Frontier · Geography · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Treaty · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History of Science and Medicine · History of Science and Natural History · Law