Embassies and Illusions: Dutch and Portuguese Envoys to K’ang-hsi, 1666-1687

316 Pages·1984·46.939 MB·English

by  John E. Wills Jr.

Embassies and Illusions
Haroard East Asian Monographs 113
JohnE. Wills,Jr.
Distributed by the HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS, Cambridge (Massachusetts)
and London 1984
Embassies and Illusions
Dutch and Portuguese Envoys to K'ang-hsi, 1666-1687
Published by the COUNCIL ON EAST ASIAN STUDIES, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
©Copyright 1984 by the President and Fellows
of Harvard College
The Council on East Asian Studies at Harvard University pub-
lishes a monograph series and, through the Fairbank Center for
East Asian Research and the Japan Institute, administers re-
search projects designed to further scholarly understanding of
China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Inner Asia, and adjacent areas.
Publication of this volume has been assisted by a grant from
The National Endowment for the Humanities. The findings and
conclusions herein do not necessarily represent the view of the
Endowment.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Wills, John E. Oohn Elliot), 1936-
Embassies and illusions.
(Harvard East Asian Monographs ; 113)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Netherlands-Foreign relations-China. 2. China-
Foreign relations-Netherlands. 3. Portugal-Foreign
relations-China. 4. China-Foreign relations-Portugal.
5. China-Foreign relations-To 1912. I. Title.
II. Series.
DJ149.C5W55 1984 327.510469 84-9505
ISBN 0-674-24776-0
To Connie, with love
BLANK PAGE
Contents
Acknowledgments
1x
1 Continuities and Routines 1
The Audience 1
Tribute: A Sketch for a History 5
The Embassy Routine 25
2 Pieter van Hoorn, 1666-1668 38
Shun-chih Beginnings and Regency Conflicts 39
Difficulties in Foochow 47
To Peking and Back 64
3 Manoel de Saldanha, 1667-1670 82
Macao in Peril 83
A Long Stay in Canton 101
Favor and a Funeral 114
4 Bento Pereira de Faria, 1678 127
Macao: Precarious Survival 127
A Lion for the Emperor 13 0
Surprising Results 138
5 Vincent Paats, 1685-1687 145
The System Shelved 146
vii
Contents
Foochow Again 150
Strange Encounters in Peking 159
6 The Survival of Ch'ing Illusions 170
Appendixes 193
A. Francisco Pimentel, S.J ., "Brief Account of the Journey Made to the Court
of Peking by Lord Manoel de Saldanha" 193
B. Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J ., on the Embassy of Bento Pereira de Faria, 16 78 23 7
C. Three Poems on the Lion Brought by the Portuguese 243
D .. Gifts and Food Allotments from the Ch 'ing .Court 24 7
E. Gifts Brought by the Embassies 251
Notes 255
Bibliography 285
Glossary 297
Index 299
Photographs on the dust jacket and page 121 are from Olfert Dapper,
Gedenkwaerd£g Bedryf der Nederlandsche Oost-lndische Maetschappye op
de Kuste en in het Keizerrijk van Taising of Sina (Amsterdam, Jacob van
Meurs, 1671). English translation by John Ogilby, Atlas Ch£nensis .... by
Arnoldus Montanus (London, 1671). By permission of the Houghton
Library, Harvard University.
Photographs are based on drawings done on the Van Hoom Embassy.
Jacket-Reception of Imperial Presents
Page 121-Imperial Banquet
viii
Acknowledgments
It is most fitting that in work on a series of such improbable
and contingent diplomatic connections I have engaged in a good
deal of cultural diplomacy of my own, occasionally mildly exas-
perating but never as completely frustrating as the experiences
of my seventeenth-century ambassadors, and have benefited
from the help, advice, and encouragement of scholars and archi-
vists in six countries. My most important scholarly debts are to
John King Fairbank, father of us all in worrying about the trib-
ute system, who encouraged my work in this area since its be-
ginning in 1959, and to Charles Ralph Boxer, who has been
generous with encouragement and bibliographic advice in Portu-
guese and Dutch colonial history. Jonathan D. Spence and John
L. Cranmer-Byng read part or all of the draft at various stages
and made useful comments. I profited from many hours of dis-
cussion of Ch'ing state ceremonies with Christian] ochim. Others
who have helped me to find sources, correct translations, and
think through various points are: Celeste Anderson, Bobby
Chamberlain, Joseph Chen, Dominic C.N. Cheung, Katharine S.
Diehl, Bailey W. Diffie, Joseph Fletcher, Fu Lo-shu,James Lee,
James J.Y. Liu, Lee Reams, Francis M. Rogers, Francis A. Rou-
leau, S.J., Shan Shih-yuan, George, B. Souza, Teotonio R. de
Souza, S.J., Ts'ui Chien-chiin, Frederic Wakeman, John W. Wi-
tek, S.J ., and Herman Wong.
I also am extremely grateful to the authorities of a number of
archives for opening their treasures to me, arranging for micro-
filming or transcription, and helping me with problems of
source-location and paleography. My greatest debt is, as usual,
to the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague. The hospitality and
ix
Acknowledgments
helpfulness of the staff of the Archivum Romanum Societatis
Jesu are truly remarkable. I also am very grateful to Francis A.
Rouleau, S.J., for loaning me microfilms from this archive. Also
important for this study were the Historical Archives, Panjim,
Goa, India, the Biblioteca da Ajuda and the Arquivo Hist6rico
Ultramarino, Lisbon, and the Houghton Library of Harvard
University. Scraps of information also were drawn from the India
Office Library and Records, London, and the Arsip Nasional
Republik Indonesia, Jakarta. If I do not list names of all those
who helped me, it is not because I do not remember many of
them by name and with gratitude, but because one is always
aware in an archive how much depends on the efforts of devoted
staff people whose names one never knows.
At various points in its ridiculously long evolution, the work
leading to this book has been supported by a Sheldon Traveling
Fellowship from Harvard University, small grants from the John
H. and Dora B. Haynes Foundation of Los Angeles, from the
National Defense Education Act Research and Publication Fund
of the University of Southern California, and from the American
Philosophical Society, and major fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Humanities and from the American Council
of Learned Societies. The Committee on Scholarly Communica-
tion with the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Acad-
emy of Social Sciences made it possible for me to see the palaces
of Peking and clear up some puzzles about the location of em-
bassy ceremonies in the summer of 1979. I am very grateful to
all of these agencies for their generous support.
At the University of Southern California, the efficient help of
the Interlibrary Loans staff of the University Library was crucial
to this work. Clara Harada, J oEllen Pope, Vivian Smith, and
others provided efficient typing services. Florence Trefethen of
the Council on East Asian Studies at Harvard was a most careful
and helpful editor.
For permission to publish a translation of the Breve
of Francisco Pimentel, S.J. (Appendix A), I am grateful to C. R.
Boxer and to the authorities of the Houghton Library, Harvard
University, and of the Biblioteca da Ajuda, Lisbon. For permis-
sion to publish and translate the passage from the Jesuit annual
X