A Micro-historical Approach to Global China: the daily life of Europeans in Beijing in the long 18th century

Duration: 1 hour 41 mins

Share this media item:

Embed this media item:

<iframe width="_width_" height="_height_" src="https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/2008626/embed" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Choose size:

About this item

Available Formats

About this item

A Micro-historical Approach to Global China: the daily life of Europeans in Beijing in the long 18th century's image

Description:	Lecture in the series "Global China: New Approaches" given by Prof. Eugenio Menegon, Boston University, on Thursday 11th June, 2015 at the Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge


Created:	2015-07-13 12:52
Collection:	AMES Website Videos
Publisher:	University of Cambridge
Copyright:	University of Cambridge
Language:	eng (English)
Keywords:	China; Beijing; History; 18th Century;


Abstract:	One of the challenges of the new global history is to bridge the particularities of individual lives and trajectories with the macro-historical patterns developing over space and time. The approach of Italian micro-history, particularly popular in the 1980s and 1990s, has been to excavate the life of small communities or individuals to test the findings of serial history and macro-historical approaches. Micro-history in the Anglophone world has instead focused more on narrative itself, and shown less interest for ampler historiographical conclusions. F. Trivellato recently suggested a need to ‘blend together social scientific analysis and narration… on the global stage’ (‘Is there a future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global History?’ California Italian Studies, 2011). Sino-Western interactions offer a particularly fruitful field of investigation of phenomena that are traceable in economic and statistical series, thanks to the survival of detailed records of East India Companies and missionary agencies regarding their activities in China. Recent scholarship has started to offer new conclusions, based on such Western records, and matching recods in the Chinese historical archive. In my contribution I plan to focus on the economic and socio-religious activities of the Roman Catholic mission in Beijing in the long 18th century (1670s – 1820s), in an attempt to reconstruct local and global networks supporting the mission, and their workings. By maintaining a balance between analysis and narration, I aim to uncover unexplored facets of Chinese life in global contexts from the point of view of the ‘end users’ of the global networks of commerce and religion bridging Europe, Asia, Africa, and South and Central America, i.e. the European missionaries and the Chinese Christians in the Qing capital. Eugenio Menegon is Director of the Boston University Center for the Study of Asia and Associate Professor of History at Boston University. Author of Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China (Harvard University Press, 2009).

Abstract:

One of the challenges of the new global history is to bridge the particularities of individual lives and trajectories with the macro-historical patterns developing over space and time. The approach of Italian micro-history, particularly popular in the 1980s and 1990s, has been to excavate the life of small communities or individuals to test the findings of serial history and macro-historical approaches. Micro-history in the Anglophone world has instead focused more on narrative itself, and shown less interest for ampler historiographical conclusions. F. Trivellato recently suggested a need to ‘blend together social scientific analysis and narration… on the global stage’ (‘Is there a future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global History?’ California Italian Studies, 2011). Sino-Western interactions offer a particularly fruitful field of investigation of phenomena that are traceable in economic and statistical series, thanks to the survival of detailed records of East India Companies and missionary agencies regarding their activities in China. Recent scholarship has started to offer new conclusions, based on such Western records, and matching recods in the Chinese historical archive. In my contribution I plan to focus on the economic and socio-religious activities of the Roman Catholic mission in Beijing in the long 18th century (1670s – 1820s), in an attempt to reconstruct local and global networks supporting the mission, and their workings. By maintaining a balance between analysis and narration, I aim to uncover unexplored facets of Chinese life in global contexts from the point of view of the ‘end users’ of the global networks of commerce and religion bridging Europe, Asia, Africa, and South and Central America, i.e. the European missionaries and the Chinese Christians in the Qing capital.

Eugenio Menegon is Director of the Boston University Center for the Study of Asia and Associate Professor of History at Boston University. Author of Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China (Harvard University Press, 2009).

Available Formats

Format	Quality	Bitrate	Size
MPEG-4 Video	960x720	3.0 Mbits/sec	2.22 GB	View	Download
MPEG-4 Video	480x360	1.39 Mbits/sec	1.03 GB	View	Download
WebM	960x720	725.92 kbits/sec	537.00 MB	View	Download
WebM	480x360	246.53 kbits/sec	182.37 MB	View	Download
iPod Video	480x360	522.27 kbits/sec	386.35 MB	View	Download
MP3	44100 Hz	250.99 kbits/sec	185.67 MB	Listen	Download
Auto *	(Allows browser to choose a format it supports)