The Journey to China in 1625
Introduction by Alan Macfarlane
In order to gain some estimate of the importance of the book you have before you can be seen from the following assessment. I will extract two paragraphs from the introduction, which is published below, by the Emeritus Reader in Chinese history at Cambridge University and Fellow of St. John’s College, an expert on Song and Ming China, Joseph McDermott.
‘Two profound concerns of A Voyage to China, the political and the economic life of China, merit particular attention from the reader, if only because few other foreign accounts of pre-1800 China rival it as a treasure trove for first-hand testimony and insight on these aspects of Chinese life (among the multitude of foreign accounts of China its main competitors are the travel account of Marco Polo, the writings of Ricci on late sixteenth century upper-class China, and the diaries of the Japanese Buddhist monks Ennin from the 840s and Jōjun from the 1070s. But these generally lack las Cortes’ detail and analysis).’
He also writes as follows.
Las Cortes may not have raised or answered all the issues that we today regard as essential to the study of China’s economy. But he had the wisdom to ask some of them, the strength to probe them despite all the discomforts and restrictions he suffered, and the intelligence to point the way to some penetrating answers. Surely, these achievements are more than enough to assure his A Journey to China an essential place in the reading of anyone wishing to understand late imperial China’s encounter with the global maritime economy and its modern emergence from rural backwater to commercial and industrial powerhouse. The passage of A Journey to China from the back stacks of the British Library to the shelves of ordinary readers is long overdue, and I for one am delighted that this latest voyage of las Cortes is now safely accomplished in a way that he never could have imagined. Read on with rare attention and pleasure.
The late Dr Joe McDermott, an eminent historian of China.
The story of how the British Library manuscript (Sloane MS. 1005), the only known copy of the manuscript, written in 1625 and unused and unknown for nearly three hundred and fifty years, came to be re-discovered and published, first in Spanish, then French and now in English for the first time and soon in Chinese, is told below in the introduction by Dr Beatriz Monto, and the most recent part of the story in an appendix.
What all of this story shows is that what lies before you is the result of team work between several countries and disciplines. The part that various people played is described in those two accounts and more generally in Dr McDermott’s introduction. All I would like to do here is to thank those who have been parts of the team. My role has been as conductor of the orchestra. The music has been played by them. They include the following.
The late Professor Carmelo Lisón Tolosana, re-discovered the manuscript and suggested it be published, which was made possible by Dr Beatriz Moncó who made the first, Spanish, published version of the work in 1991. Ten years later, in 2001, it was published in French based on a translation by Pascale Girard and Juliette Monbeig, with an introduction and notes by Girard. Dr. McDermott read this French version and wrote about the book and its importance, as described in his introduction. As described in the appendix, he told me about it in August 2017 and since then, with the support of my friend and the Director of the Cam Rivers Press, Zilan Wang, we have been planning English and Chinese editions.
With the support and encouragement of Professor Ricardo Sanmartín, the Spanish edition was translated into English by Iraida Blanco and Eliezer Aries, with the help of Javier Á. Nieto. The costs of the translation were covered by a generous grant from the El Patiaz Cultural Association through a Villa de Tauste 2018 Scholarship. The English text was greatly improved by the help of Sarah Harrison and Dr Fabienne Bonnet and further help from Dr Moncó. The design and cover were made by Qin Yuchen and Muye in Beijing. The book has now come out some thirty years after the first Spanish edition.
It has been a privilege and honour to have played a small part in making accessible to many scholars and more general readers around the world an account which is worthy to sit on a shelf with the half dozen great classics of foreign observation of China before the middle of the nineteenth century – the monks Ennin and Jōjun, Marco Polo, Matteo Ricci, John Barrow, and the Abbe Huc.
I thank all of the above warmly for their support and advice and particularly Drs Moncó and McDermott who have put such a considerable effort into re-introducing us to this truly remarkable account. It arguably ranks as the first, and perhaps only, village-level account of China by an outsider in the thousand years between Ennin and the mid-nineteenth century. It very considerably expands our knowledge of part of that great and important civilization.
During the time when it was impossible to visit the British Library to obtain copies of the many illustrations in the volume, I have scanned those in the French edition and included them here, as well as a map showing las Cortes’ voyage. I gratefully acknowledge the original copyright of the British Library in these, and any copyright of the publisher of the French edition.