The Portuguese first reached East Asia in the early 16th century, establishing trading posts in India, China, and Japan. They traded spices from Southeast Asia to China in exchange for Chinese silk and Japanese silver. The Portuguese profits from this trade financed their spice purchases for European markets. Jesuit missionaries also arrived in East Asia in the mid-16th century, establishing churches in Goa and converting rulers in Kyushu, Japan, which led to the initial spread of Christianity. However, Japan's rulers grew wary of European influence and expelled missionaries in the early 17th century, leading to the suppression of Christianity and death of thousands of converts. Jesuit missionaries had some success converting rulers and spreading Christianity in Vietnam and among

1. East Asia and Modern
Europe: First Encounter

5. The Portuguese in East Asia
 The Portuguese reached India in 1498, China in 1514, and
Japan in 1543.
 They established their Asian headquarter in 1510 at Goa
and 1511 they captured Malacca.
 Spices: to make meat palatable, medicine and religious
ceremonies.
 Superior ships, weaponry and seamanship, they derived
income from transporting goods like SEA spices to
China, Chinese silk to Japan, and Japanese silver to
China.

6. The Portuguese in East Asia
 They used their profits from this trade to purchase spices
and other products for European markets.
 What they had to do was to secure entry into China and
Japan.
 Not waiting for official permission to trade, they
engaged in illegal commerce and even built a fort in
Lintin Island.
 In 1557 an arrangement was reached permitting the
Portuguese to establish themselves in Macao, ceded to
Portugal in 1887.

7. The Jesuits in Japan
 Missionary work was also important: mid-16th century
Goa boasted some 80 churches and convents.
 The great pioneers were the Jesuits, members of the
Society of Jesus.
 In 1549, St. Francis Xavier, one of the original members
of the Society, landed on Kyushu.
 Donald Lach has summarized the qualities that the
Jesuits found to admire in the Japanese: “their
courtesy, dignity, endurance, frugality, equanimity, indu
striousness, sagaciousness, cleanliness…….”

8. The Jesuits in Japan (cont.)
 They criticized the Japanese propensity for suicide and also found
fault with the “disloyalty of vassal to master,….,their inhuman
treatment of enemies,…., their failure to respect rule of law, and
their unwillingness to give up the system of concubinage.”
 The Jesuits tried to win acceptance by adapting themselves to
local manners and customs.
 The Jesuits father’s strategy was to work from the top by
converting the rulers and then allowing the faith to seep down to
the populace at large.
 This approach met with considerable success in Kyushu, but not
long lasting.
 The Jesuits themselves became involved in this trade and in
politics and later they realized that real progress of their mission
depended on the will of the central government.

10. The Impact of other Europeans
 The Dutch arrived in 1571 with imperialist
ambitions
 The English Protestants arrived in the early 1600s
 The Spanish commanded the precious metals-the
silver

11. Hideyoshi Tokugawa Ieyasu

12. The Closing of Japan
 In 1606 Christianity was declared illegal, and in 1614 he undertook
a serious campaign to expel the missionaries.
 By 1614 there were over 300,000 converts in Japa.
 The destruction of Christianity was long and painful. Tortures
such as hanging a man upside down with his head in a pit filled
with excrement…
 In its suppression, some 37,000 Christians lost their lives.
 The Japanese saw Christianity as potentially subversive of the
political order and basic social structure.
 The Spaniards were expelled in 1624, one year after the English
had left voluntarily. The Portuguese were also expelled.

14. The Jesuits in Vietnam
 The first Europeans to arrive in Vietnam were
Portuguese adventurers and traders. In 1525 they
established a trading center at Hoi An.
 Father Alexander de Rdodes arrived in Vietnam in
1624, a church had already existed in Danang.
 Although the Jesuits sought to work from the top
down, and did convert a Nguyen princess, government
policy under both Nguyen and Tinh vacillated from
tolerance.
 By 1640 there were a reported 39,000 converts in central
Vietnam and 82,000 in the north.

15. The Jesuits in China
 Then Valognano established a special training center in
Macao so that missionaries could study the Chinese
language and culture in preparation for worn in China.
 The outstanding pioneer was Matteo Ricci (1551-1619).
 They were particularly successful in demonstrating the
superior accuracy of European astronomical
predictions, chiefly Adam Schall von Bell (1591-1666)
and Ferdinand Verbiest (1633-1688).
 The emperor accepted the Jesuits’ science with alacrity
and took their quinine for the sake of his health. But they
were less successful in spreading the religion.

16. The Jesuits in China (cont.)
 “ I had asked Verbiest why God had not forgiven
his son without making him die, but thought he had
tried hard to answer I had not understood him”
 The high point for early Catholicism in China came
in the middle years of Kangi’s reign, but by 1700
there were no more than 300,000 Christian Chinese.

17. The Rites Controversy
 It revolved around the question of the proper
attitude a Christian should adopt toward Confucian
doctrines and practices.
 The Jesuits turned Confucius into a religious
teacher, while the Dominicans held that the ancient
Chinese were atheists.
 The Jesuits claimed that some ceremonies were
nonreligious and therefore permissible, but the
Dominicans disagreed.

18. The Decline of Christianity in China
 In 1704 the pope condemned Chinese rituals, and in
1742 a decree was issued to settle all points against
the Jesuits.
 Powerful emperors like Kangxi, however, resented
Rome’s claim of authority over their subjects, and
they saw no reason to abide by the papal judgment.
 Christianity was forbidden in 1724
 By the end of 18th century, the number of converts
had been reduced to about half.

19. Trade with the West and the Canton System
 Qianlong opened a special area in Canton to set aside for the
warehouses (factories) of foreign traders.
 Foreign traders were required to deal with a group of Chinese
merchants who had been granted a monopoly on foreign
trade.
 The foreigners were not granted direct access to Chinese
officials, nor government-to-government relations.
 Foreign maritime trade were taxed higher that Chinese one
 The system continued to operate until China faced a Europe
that could no longer be contained.

21. Portrait of a
Japanese Girl
experimenting
with Western
Dress

25. Group discussion
 Opium War,
 The Mongol’s Occupation of the World,
 Great Wall of China,
 The Closing of Japan,
 Japanese War in China and Korea
 South China Sea Dispute
 Marco Polo (1254-1324)
 Tubeplus.me