Alfonso Vagnone S.J.'s “Tongyou Jiaoyu 童幼教育 (Child Education)” and its contribution to the introduction of Western learning into late Ming China

The introduction of Western learning (Xixue 西学) had a consistent cultural impact on late Ming and early Qing society in China. It helped to promote modernity by opening the door to a number of scientific innovations and by creating a new ‘global awareness’ in the way Chinese people saw themselves and their country. This slow and yet revolutionary process was carried out using books written in Chinese by Jesuit missionaries. These tomes aimed to promote core notions and values of Western origin, which were culturally adapted in order to be understood and accepted by Chinese readers. Although Giulio Aleni S.J.’s (1582 – 1649) “Xixue Fan 西学凡 (Summary of Western Learning, 1623)” is considered groundbreaking among the humanistic works that helped introducing Western learning and systematic education into 17th century China, in the past few years, Alfonso Vagnone S.J.’s (1566 – 1640) pedagogic treatise “Tongyou Jiaoyu 童幼教育 (Education of Children, published in 1632)”, has also gained increasing attention from scholars. The book deals with various aspects of child education from two perspectives (teaching and learning), resulting in a unique combination of philosophical and pedagogic concepts from both Chinese and Western (mostly Renaissance) traditions. In particular one of its chapters, “Xixue 西学” was composed 17 years before the rest of the book and about 8 years before Aleni’s “Xixue Fan 西学凡”. This chapter therefore contains some guidelines and lexical innovations which were further developed by Aleni in his book, published in 1623. On the basis of these assumptions, this article’s goal is to shed a new light on the role Vagnone’s “Tongyou Jiaoyu 童 幼教育”played in the promotion of Western learning in late Ming China. The article will at first provide an overview on how the concepts of the West (Xifang 西方) and Western learning (Xixue 西学) evolved between the Tang Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty. Later, it will discuss the crucial stages of the introduction of the Western learning and the contribution of Vagnone’s “Xixue 西学 and Aleni’s “Xixue Fan 西学凡” to both these periods. Finally, a lexical and structural examination of the chapter “Xixue 西学” will be carried out, to find out if, and to what extent, it influenced Aleni’s “Xixue Fan 西学凡”