Technological and Military Exchanges in the Yuan Dynasty
The Yuan Dynasty, under Mongol rule, also saw technological advances from an economic perspective, with the first mass produc- tion of paper banknotes by Kublai Khan in the 13th century. Numerous contacts between Europe and the Mongols occurred in the 13th century, particularly through the unstable Franco-Mongol alliance. Chinese corps, expert in siege warfare, formed an integral part of the Mongol armies campaigning in the West. In 1259—1260, military alliance of the Franks knights of the ruler of Antioch Bohemond VI and his father-in-law Hethum I with the Mongols under Hulagu fought together for the conquest of Muslim Syria, taking together the city of Alep, and later Damascus. William of Rubruck, an ambassador to the Mongols in 1254—1255, a personal friend of Roger Bacon, is also often designated as a possible intermediary in the transmission of gunpowder know-how, between the East and the West. The compass is often said to have been introduced by the Master of the Knights Templar Pierre de Montaigu between 1219 and 1223, from one of his travels to visit the Mongols in Persia.
The Jesuit Missions: Bridging Eastern and Western Knowledge
The Jesuit China missions of the 16th and 17th centuries introduced Western science and technology to China. The Society of Jesus intro- duced, according to Thomas Woods, “a substantial body of scientific knowledge and a vast array of mental tools for understanding the phys- ical universe, including the Euclidean geometry that made planetary motion comprehensible”. Another expert quoted by Woods said the scientific revolution brought by the Jesuits coincided with a time when science was at a very low level in China.
Conversely, the Jesuits were very active in transmitting Chinese knowledge to Europe. Confucian works were translated into European languages through the agency of Jesuit scholars stationed in China. Matteo Ricci started to report on the thoughts of Confucius, and Father Prospero Intorcetta published the life and works of Confucius into Latin in 1687. It is thought that such works had considerable importance on European thinkers of the period, particularly among the deists and oth- er philosophical groups of the Enlightenment who were interested by the integration of the system of morality of Confucius into Christianity.
The French physiocrat Francois Quesnay, founder of modern eco- nomics, and a forerunner of Adam Smith was in his lifetime known as “the European Confucius”. The doctrine and even the name of “Lais- sez-faire” may have been inspired by the Chinese concept of Wuwei. Goethe, was known as “the Confucius of Weimar”.
Joseph Needham: A Life Dedicated to Understanding China
Joseph Needham (1900— 1995) will be remembered for his mas- sive achievement embodied in the continuing Science and Civilisation in China series, the successive parts of which have been published by Cambridge University Press since 1954. This great work is planned as a history of science, medicine and technology understood as part of the common cultural heritage of the human race. He was undoubtedly the greatest Western sinologist of last century, and is probably the British historian best-known on a world scale. He has rightly been called “the Erasmus of the twentieth century”.
He was born on December 9, 1900, as the only son of a Harley Street physician and a musically talented mother. After attending Oun- dle School he went up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and studied biochemistry. Caius College was to remain his academic home for the rest of his life; he was successively a research fellow, tutor, fel- low and finally (1966— 76) master. For most of the first half of his life Needham was engaged in establishing himself as a chemical embryologist of distinction. The major works of this period are his Chemical Embryology (1931) and Biology and Morphogenesis (1942). But by the time this second book appeared he was already moving in the direction which was to lead him towards his life’s work.
Needham's Quest: Unveiling China's Scientific Past and Its Implications
In the mid 1930’s he met three young Chinese researchers who had come to work in Cambridge. The interest these bright young people aroused moved him to begin learning Chinese, and when the war broke out in Europe and the East it was this connection that led him to pro- pose that he should be commissioned to establish a SinoBritish Science Cooperation Office in Chongqing, to where the Chinese government had withdrawn in the face of the Japanese onslaught. During this time he was ideally placed to study what had been accomplished by the Chi- nese people in the field of science and technology over their long histo- ry. What he began to learn astonished him. It became clear (for instance) that printing, the magnetic compass and gunpowder weapons were all Chinese in origin, despite the puzzlement that Francis Bacon had ex- pressed over their beginnings when in the 17th century he pointed to “the force and virtue and consequences of discoveries ” (Novum Orga- non , Book 1, aphorism 129).
After the war he worked with UNESCO in Paris for a while, but on his return to Cambridge he had already planned the years of work that lay ahead. He set out to answer a question that had been presenting it- self to him ever more clearly for some time: why was it that despite the immense achievements of traditional China it had been in Europe and not in China that the scientific and industrial revolutions occurred? He approached Cambridge University Press with a proposal for a one-vol- ume treatment of this subject, which they accepted, but as time went by this plan swelled to seven volumes, the fourth of which had to be split into three parts, and so it went on, until the fifth volume being at eight parts and still growing. Sixteen parts in all have so far been published, and about a dozen more are still on the way.
Most of the earlier volumes were written entirety by Needham himself, but as time went by he gathered an international team of collaborators, to whom the completion of the project is now entrusted. As the project has broadened, so has the range of questions under investigation. It is now clear that no simple answer to Needham’s original question will be possible. The quest has opened out into an investigation of the ways in which scientific and technical activity have been linked with the development of Chinese society over the last four millennia.
