Thread by @antonhowes

Because of colonialism and widespread printing, we know a lot about what Europeans thought of Asia in the 17th and 18th centuries

But what did Asian visitors think of Europe?

A thread:

Early Asian visitors to Europe unfortunately very rarely left records. But sometimes, even the smallest fragments tell us volumes.

Take Michael Shen Fuzong, a Chinese convert to Catholicism, who came to Europe in the 1680s to become a Jesuit priest.

antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-inven…

Upon his arrival, Shen Fuzong became an instant celebrity. He met the Pope, Louis XIV of France, and James II of England. James even had a full-length portrait of him painted, to hang in the king's own bedroom (pictured).

And he met many of England's prominent intellectuals.

He met scientists like Robert Boyle, and became friends with the linguist Thomas Hyde, teaching him some Chinese and helping him translate manuscripts in the Bodleian library.

While Europeans were interested in Chinese religion, however, he was interested in European technology.

We have only a handful of letters Shen Fuzong wrote to Hyde, but they frequently asked or reminded him to send what he called "mathematical gifts" - microscopes, telescopes, etc - which he thought would be popular in China.

Such items were apparently popular in Siam, too.

The French ambassador to Siam in the 1680s, for example, was accompanied by a clockmaker, glass-maker, and fireworks engineer, all at the king of Siam's request.

But these hints about Chinese and Siamese opinions are actually very frustrating, because so little survives:

Shen Fuzong died on his return journey to China, along with any impressions he may have intended to write up about Europe.

And although a Siamese embassy to France took extremely meticulous records of their trip, those records were largely destroyed in a fire. Argh!

Yet, we do have some fuller accounts from the 18thC, especially by Turkish and Indian visitors. Unlike the older works, these were fortunately quickly translated into French and/or English, and then published too.

Some of them are downright charming, and carefully observant.

One of my favourites is the account of the trip by the Ottoman ambassador to France in the 1720s, Yirmisekiz Mehmed Çelebi.

Çelebi devoted pages and pages to geeking out over French water infrastructure - its canals, fountains, aqueducts and pumping machines.

He even labelled the Canal du Midi "among the wonders of the world"!

He visited the Paris observatory, and peered through its telescopes, impressed at how the invention allowed people to see things unknown to the ancients. Though he was rightly sceptical of some French claims:

When looking at the Moon, for example, he saw only craters and channels, and “could not perceive the trees and the waters that some French pretend there are”.

And, in addition to the scientific geekery, Çelebi also included some touching personal portraits.

He described meeting the 11-year old king Louis XV, who was delighted to examine Çelebi’s daggers, all while his governor doted, commenting on the child’s manners. Then his majesty was made to parade about the room, displaying “the majestic gait of a partridge”, apparently.

As for Europe's Indian observers, one of the earliest full accounts is that of Mirza Shaikh Ictisam al-Din, sent to Britain by the Mughal emperor in the late 1760s.

He noted much about English laws, customs, and social habits, some of which seemed downright bizarre:

Ice-skating, apparently, was something Ictisam al-Din had thought was just a myth. He described how women with milk-pails and baskets of vegetables on their heads and shoulders would effortlessly skate around some towns.

And the dogs, too, were simply beyond belief:

English dogs, he wrote, "are taught to perform many wonderful and surprising things, which the common people of India do not believe a word of.”

As for the local food, Ictisam al-Din bemoaned that it was under-spiced, under-salted, and could do with some ghee.

Interestingly, on living standards, Ictisam al-Din noted how poorer French people rarely wore leather boots or shoes, either going in wooden clogs or barefoot, while the English were clearly better-fed and always well-shod.

And he gave a faithful record of local opinions:

He noted that the French thought the English a "stupid race", that the Scots thought the English "great gluttons", and that the English despised both for being poor.

Ictisam al-Din was wisely sceptical of all such claims, which is where I think such accounts are so valuable.

Because while such accounts reveal Chinese, Ottoman, and Mughal opinions of Europe, they also provide us with relatively disinterested portraits of 18thC European practices, customs, and living standards.

More detail here: antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-inven…