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In the Time of ... Matteo Ricci (1552 - 1610) other pages Matteo Ricci maps

I haven't lived chronologically. No one does. Each moment reaches backward and forward to all other moments. The interweaving of elements from my life's work -- out of chronology, as echoes and forshadowings -- is true, I think, to the inner shape of any life.

Richard Avedon, Autobiography

What else was going on around 1600?

In Asia ...

China had the most powerful and advanced state.
Islam was the most dynamic religion.

In Africa ...     Africa timeline

Large kingdoms like Zimbabwe were beginning to dominate the interior.
The slave trade from western Africa to the Carribean and South America was going full-force.
Art: Ife terracotta and Benin bronzes.

In Europe ...

Hamlet was first produced.
The telescope was invented.
Heels were first used on shoes.
The first water-closet was installed.

In North America ...

The first British colony was established at Jamestown, Virginia.

In South America ...

The native populations, 10% of what they had been a century before, were replaced by Spaniards, Africans, and mestizos.

What were Jesuit missionaries doing in China?

In 1993, the Library of Congress had an exhibit about the Vatican. The ninth and final part was called "A Wider World II: How Rome Went to China."

From the Preface (emphasis mine):

From the 1540s, Jesuit missionaries in East Asia tried to convert the Chinese and Japanese to Christianity, as part of the Counter-Reformation drive to win the world back to Rome. The Japanese mission failed quickly, but the Chinese one seemed immensely promising.

Jesuits like Matteo Ricci learned Chinese, mastered the canon of classic Confucian texts, dressed as mandarins, and joined the imperial court. They showed the Chinese intellectuals that the west had superior skills in some areas that the Chinese recognized as vital, like cartography and astronomy, and they translated accounts of western ideas and Christian doctrine into Chinese for their converts.