China In The Sixteenth Century

Journals of a pioneer Jesuit missionary in China before doors were closed to the outside world.

Originally published in 1974, this is a detailed study of the financial administration of the Chinese government during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), with particular attention to the sixteenth century, a topic about which very little has been published either in Chinese or any Western language. Professor Huang has worked through an enormous quantity and variety of source material - in particular the 133 substantial volumes of the Ming Veritable Records - and has compared the documents on financial matters with the entries in local gazetteers. The complicated workings of government finance present great difficulties to all specialists in Chinese financial and administrative history and in different branches of local Chinese history from the fifteenth century onwards. Professor Huang's study will provide all such researchers with an authoritative work of reference.

Published to accompany the exhibition held at the Getty Research Institute, Nov. 6, 2007 to Feb. 10, 2008.

Translations, the first based largely on that in Richard Willes, History of Travayle in the West and East Indies (1577), the second derived from Purchas his Pilgrimes (1624), the third by the editor from three sixteenth-century Spanish versions. With appendices on various matters, including a Chinese glossary and a table of Chinese dynasties and emperors. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volume first published in 1953.