Little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris

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Little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris is a book by the historian Jonathan D. Spence . The English original was published in 1988 (The Question of Hu) and the German translation for the first time in 1990. The microhistorical yet global historical analysis describes the history of Chinese Hu Ruowang (John Hu, also Giovanni Hu) that the Roman Catholic converted Christianity, 1722 the Jesuit Father Jean-François Foucquet accompanied him to Europe and was imprisoned in the Charenton Psychiatric Clinic in Paris for two years before he could return to China. The characters and events described are historical personalities and historical events that have been processed by Spence from historical sources and are documented in the appendix. However, there is disagreement about the final form of the book, whether it is fiction or non-fiction.

Content and context

Table of contents

The Chinese Hu Ruowang (John Hu), a Christian convert from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong (Canton), came to France ( Orléans and Paris ) in 1722 as the companion of the Jesuit father Jean-François-Foucquet . According to the contract that Hu and Foucquet signed on the crossing from China via Brazil to Europe, Hu is to work for Foucquet as a copyist of old Chinese texts for five years. The collaboration between Hu and Foucquet did not go well from the start. The reasons can be found on both sides: Hu hardly copies from the Chinese texts, he does not learn a new language and can therefore usually only communicate with Foucquet, who is the only other person who can also speak Chinese. Hu's behavior soon attracts Foucquet and others around him. He fights with a sailor on the crossing, borrows a horse in France without being asked, tears up textiles, wants to go on long journeys on foot, talks about visions, preaches in public in Chinese, moves the furniture and does an audience with the papal nuncio struggling with the strong presence of women in public in Europe. For his part, Foucquet hardly deals with Hu and is soon tired of him, because from his point of view he only causes trouble and does not carry out his tasks.

When Hu refuses to travel with Foucquet from Paris to Rome, Foucquet initiates that Hu is locked up with a lettre de cachet , whereupon Hu spends two years (1723-1725) in the hospice at Charenton in Paris. Hu's situation only changes when someone happens to be found who speaks the Cantonese dialect. The nuncio visited Hu in August 1725 with an interpreter and found Hu healthy. Two months later, in October 1725, Hu received a visit from Father Goville SJ , who was Foucquet's superior in Guangdong (Canton) and who had returned to Europe in 1724 after the latest political developments. Goville also thinks Hu is healthy and is campaigning for his release. At the same time, he ensures that a letter from Hus reaches Foucquet. In the time up to the crossing and until he is back on Chinese soil, Hu behaves as uncooperatively as before his time in Charenton. In November 1726, Hu finally returned to China. In his home village, Hu sits surrounded by children who want to know “how it is over there in the west”, and Hu begins his story: “'Well,' he says, 'that's the way it is.'"

context

Several larger themes form the background to this story. The reason Hu should work for Foucquet as a copyist was Foucquet's research. For many years, Foucquet had tried to defend his thesis that the central ancient Chinese texts, such as the Book of Changes (Yi Jing or I Ching ), also came from the Christian God. The larger context in the background of these discussions was the so-called ritual controversy in which the Jesuits were involved and which formed a major question of the Jesuit mission . The rites dispute was about the question of how rituals, for example ancestor worship , should be classified and whether these rituals should continue to be tolerated by the Christian side after the conversion or not. These discussions, in turn, were shaped by church and power political dynamics. There were different views on this within the Jesuit order, as well as among the various Roman Catholic orders that carried out Christian missions in China and neighboring regions. In 1742 Pope Benedict XIV finally forbade the rites.

The mood of the native population in Guangdong (Canton) towards European foreigners was mostly tense and always deteriorated after fatal or other incidents. This was one of the reasons why Father Goville SJ, Foucquet's superior in Guangdong, wanted to prevent Foucquet from taking a Chinese to Europe. In the hurry and under these circumstances, Foucquet had been able to find almost no one, which is why he finally chose Hu. The status of the European missionaries in China also depended on the Chinese emperor. After the death of Emperor Kangxi in 1722 , who had taken a somewhat tolerant attitude towards them , the conditions for the European missionaries deteriorated under his successor, his son Yongzhen . In 1724, Emperor Yongzhen ordered the expulsion of the Catholic missionaries.

Question, interest in knowledge and method

Question and interest in knowledge

The trigger for this work was a book (1982) John Witeks SJ (1933-2010), then a professor at the University of Georgetown , about Jean-François Foucquet SJ. It briefly describes the events with Hu and this prompted Spence to pursue them further.

Spence lets the main character Hu ask the central question of his book himself in the first chapter with the heading “The Question”: “Why was I locked up here?” With “here” is meant the Charenton psychiatric clinic in Paris, the hospice of the Merciful Brothers , where Hu had to spend two years (1723-1725). On the one hand, it is about coming to terms with the events and circumstances that led to the fact that the Chinese Hu Ruowang was in Charenton for two years. It turned out that misunderstandings, cultural differences and language barriers also played a major role. In addition, this question is also about the delicate attribution of “madness” or “madness”, which is always different for historical and cultural reasons. Finally, it becomes clear how Eurocentric the assessment of Hu's behavior in Europe was and how this contradicted the Jesuit interest overseas in local customs and ideas.

Sources and method

Records on the events surrounding Hu and Foucquet can be found in some large archives such as the Archives Nationales in Paris, the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome and the British Library in London. Spence consulted the records in these and other institutions. A central source was the “Récit Fidèle”, which Foucquet had written to justify himself after disagreement about his behavior towards Hu had become loud. This report contains numerous copies of letters that Foucquet wrote or received. Only one source of Hu has survived to this day, namely a letter that he wrote from Charenton to Foucquet in 1725 and that Father Goville SJ had arranged for it to be transmitted. Another letter from Hu went down. Other sources include reports from Chinese officials, Paris police files, and Charenton records. Although the book tries to focus on Hu, Foucquet's voice takes up at least as much space due to the sources. Spence formulates the result as follows: “I do not think that Foucquet behaved correctly towards Hu, but I could only come to this assessment because Foucquet allowed it. Therefore, even if I believe that I have successfully provided him, he remains the winner in a certain way. "

Assignment to microhistory and global microhistory

As different as categories such as “ microhistory ” and “ global history ” are sometimes understood, several features of the method and the finished book speak for an assignment to both of these historiographical traditions. In the meantime, the new term “Global Microhistory”, which was introduced by Tonio Andrade , and which Spence's Der kleine Herr Hu can also be counted on, is used again and again to combine these two historical areas .

The choice of sources, method and writing style bear witness to the micro-historical approach of this work. According to István M. Szijártó's view, three features are central to microhistory: a detailed historical examination of a clearly defined, small object of investigation; the search for answers to major historical questions; and the agency assigned to the person. Francesca Trivellato sees further features of microhistory in the focus on primary sources and a synchronous approach. With the protagonist Hu, Spence shows an extraordinary story of a man who at first glance seems inconspicuous. Only a few other Chinese of the time are known to have traveled to Europe and back to China. Another well-known example is Louis Fan (Fan Shouyi) , who is also mentioned in the book. The story of Hu is about individuals and their experiences during these five years or so. It is also about power and power relations in general and about what agency individuals have or not. Likewise typical of works of microhistory is a novel-like writing style, such as that presented in the classic The Cheese and the Worms (1976) by Carlo Ginzburg and represented by many other well-known microhistorians such as Natalie Zemon Davis . For the main text, Spence has all the information he has taken from the sources, sorted chronologically by date and given a location, as in a journal. The description of the events follows, also as in a journal. Combined with the narrative narrative style and the built-in thoughts of the protagonists, the readers virtually relive the story of Hus and Foucquet. Each section of text is written from the perspective of a specific person, mostly Hu or Foucquet, but sometimes also from the perspective of other people involved. The traceability is still largely guaranteed, since Spence provides information on the sources and his own considerations in the notes in the notes, sorted by page numbers.

Last but not least, Der kleine Herr Hu is also about how these individual stories are interwoven into larger, higher-level structures, such as the long-running ritual dispute or the history between China and Europe in general, and in particular the China mission , European expansion and European colonial history . Between the lines of the book, questions of cultural contact arise , the possibilities and limits of mutual exchange and understanding, as well as cultural differences and the resulting misunderstandings. Using some excerpts from the lives of Hus and Foucquet, it is described how geographical, linguistic and cultural boundaries are crossed by individuals in global dimensions and how boundaries remain at the same time.

Criticism and reception

The reviews praised Spence's extensive, in-depth source research for this book. With the publication of his book, from the point of view of the sinologist Nicolas Standaert in the late 1980s and early 1990s , Spence contributed to the expansion of (European) historical research on the relations between China and Europe by focusing on a new element: Not only People who went from Europe to China, for example to trade or proselytize , but also people from China who visited Europe had their say. In several specialist articles in which a connection between the two disciplines of microhistory and global history is discussed (including by Francesca Trivellato , Tonio Andrade and Hans Medick ), Der kleine Herr Hu appears as an early example of how this connection can be successfully implemented and become one new approach called Global Microhistory . In his reflections on a "renaissance" of microhistory in a global historical context and on microhistorical works on China, the microhistorian Hans Medick regards the work Spences Der kleine Herr Hu as a forerunner of a new transcultural microhistorical approach in relation to studies on early modern China. Tonio Andrade lists Spences Little Mr Hu and other books such as Natalie Zemon Davis ' Leo Africanus: A Traveler Between Orient and Occident (Trickster Travels) among several examples of books that combine micro-historical and biographical approaches with intercultural and global dimensions. Such books, in his view, reach a wider audience because the focus on people brings the discipline of history back to life.

In the novel-like writing style typical of micro-history, Spence manages to bring the places he describes to life. He describes how the cities are built, what paths the protagonists may have taken, what daily life looked like. Reviews of this work can be found not only in specialist journals, but also in various newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times , the New York Times and the weekly Zeit . At the same time, Spence neglects to explicitly classify his characters in their historical time and cultural areas and to try to explain their behavior, as criticized by Bruce Mazlish , for example . Although this stimulates the imagination of the reader, it does not add much to historical knowledge. For example, how did European and Chinese ideas differ in the 18th century in relation to property, in relation to the relationship and role of women and men in public or in the perception of "madness"? Several reviews criticize that this additional information was missing and that a synopsis with Spence's own interpretations was not available. Instead, Spence sticks to the views and perceptions of his sources and protagonists in this book.

The novel-like writing style and the simultaneous criticism of a lack of historical classification is linked to another criticism. Bruce Mazlish raises the question of whether Little Mr. Hu is actually a historical non-fiction book or whether it is not more of a historical novel, or whether neither is nor true and Little Mr. Hu is simply a good novel. Mazlish intensifies the question of whether it makes a difference whether one regards Little Mr. Hu as (historical) fiction or not. Mazlish also appreciates the in-depth source research and Spence's work. In his opinion, however, in order for a text to be considered a historical work, it also needs well-founded speculations by historians and a classification in the respective historical period. To characterize the genre of the historical novel , Mazlish invokes the literary scholar Georg Lukács . Lukács sees a peculiarity of the historical novel in the fact that the characters and stories are presented as individual results of their specific historical time and the social circumstances and motives of the people can be relived by the reader. Mazlish misses this classification in the concrete historical time and culture and the asking of larger questions, which is why he does not regard Spence's book as a historical text, in The Little Mr Hu . Nonetheless, Mazlish emphasizes his respect for Spence as a scientist and for his work and describes Little Mr. Hu as a wonderfully written book based on "elegant erudition."

literature

Work editions

English:

  • The Question of Hu , New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
  • The Question of Hu , New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.

German:

  • Little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. From the American by Susanne Ettl, Unabridged Edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1993.
  • Little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. From the American by Susanne Ettl. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 1990.

Italian:

  • L'enigma di Hu . Traduzione di Mara Caira (Biblioteca Adelphi 256). Adelphi, Milano 1992.

Chinese:

  • 胡 若望 的 疑問 / Hu Ruowang de yi wen, Guilin: Guangxi shi fan da xue chu ban she, 2014.

Further literature

  • Bruce Mazlish: The Question of the Question of Hu. In: History and Theory, Vol. 31, No. 2, 1992, pp. 143-152.
  • Carlo Ginzburg, Carlo Poni: Il nome e il come. Scambio ineguale e mercato storiografico. In: Quaderni Storici, Vol. 14, No. 40 (1), 1979, pp. 181-190 (English translation by Eren Branch: The Name and the Game. Unequal Exchange and the Historiographic Marketplace; in: Edward Muir, Guido Ruggiero (Ed.): Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe . Translation Eren Branch. Selections from Quaderni Storici, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore / London 1991).
  • John W. Witek: Controversial Ideas in China and in Europe. A Biography of Jean-François Foucquet, SJ (1665–1741) (= Bibliotheca Instituti Historici SI 43). Institutum Historicoum SI, Rome 1982.
  • Nicolas Standaert: Review on Spence's Book The Question of Hu , in: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 49, No. 1, pp. 136-137.
  • Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon , István M. Szijártó : What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice. Routledge, Oxon (GB) / New York 2013.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. From the American by Susanne Ettl. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1993, p. 38-39 .
  2. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. S. 112-119 .
  3. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. S. 140-142 .
  4. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. S. 144-148 .
  5. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. S. 148 .
  6. ^ Klaus Hock, Claudia v Collani: Ritenstreit . In: Religion Past and Present . ( brillonline.com [accessed August 23, 2019]).
  7. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. S. 22-23, 31, 137 .
  8. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. S. 137 .
  9. ^ PTM Ng, ACC Lee, H. Seiwert, H. Schmidt-Glintzer: China . In: Religion Past and Present . ( brillonline.com [accessed August 23, 2019]).
  10. ^ John W. Witek: Controversial Ideas in China and in Europe. A Biography of Jean-François Foucquet, SJ (1665-1741) . Institutum Historicum SI, Rome 1982.
  11. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. S. 9 .
  12. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. S. 18 .
  13. ↑ a b c d Francesca Trivellato: Is There a Future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global History? In: California Italian Studies . tape 2 , no. 1 , 2011 ( escholarship.org [accessed August 23, 2019]).
  14. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. S. 10 .
  15. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. S. 12-14 .
  16. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. From the American by Susanne Ettl . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1993, p. 14, 134, 140-142 .
  17. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. S. 15 .
  18. ^ A b c Tonio Andrade: A Chinese Farmer, Two African Boys, and a Warlord: Toward a Global Microhistory . In: Journal of World History . tape 21 , no. 4 , 2010, ISSN  1045-6007 , p. 573-591 , JSTOR : 41060851 .
  19. ↑ Jonathan D. Spence: The little Mr. Hu. A Chinese in Paris. S. 30 .
  20. ^ A b Nicolas Standaert: Review of The Question of Hu . In: The Journal of Asian Studies . tape 49 , no. 1 , 1990, ISSN  0021-9118 , pp. 136-137 , doi : 10.2307 / 2058465 , JSTOR : 2058465 .
  21. ↑ Steven Englund: The Faith Yes, Europe No. 'The Question of Hu' by Jonathan D. Spence (Alfred A. Knopf: $ 18.95; 187 pp .; 0-394-57190-8). In: Los Angeles Times. November 20, 1988. Retrieved August 5, 2019 (American English).
  22. ↑ Angeline Goreau: Travels of an Exasperating Man . In: The New York Times . December 18, 1988, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed August 5, 2019]).
  23. ^ Tilman Spengler: The rifle wrench . In: The time . April 6, 1990, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed August 5, 2019]).
  24. ↑ a b c d Bruce Mazlish: The Question of the Question of Hu . In: History and Theory . tape 31 , no. 2 , 1992, ISSN  0018-2656 , pp. 143-152 , doi : 10.2307 / 2505593 , JSTOR : 2505593 .
  25. ↑ Without claim to completeness.