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21Astronomical Chronology, the Jesuit China Mission, and Enlightenment HistoryJournal of the History of Ideas 84 (3): 487-510. 2023.Abstract:This article examines the use of astronomical chronology in Jesuit and secular works of history between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. It suggests that the highly visible adoption of astronomical records in historical scholarship in Enlightenment Europe by Nicolas Fréret and Voltaire was entangled with debates about Chinese chronology, translated by Jesuit missionaries. The article argues that the missionary Martino Martini's experience of the Manchu conquest of China…Read more
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315Racial Capitalism in Voltaire's EnlightenmentHistory Workshop Journal 94. 2022.This essay argues that the concept of ‘racial capitalism’ can help us understand the connections between seemingly disparate parts of Voltaire’s extensive corpus of work. It contends that even though the Enlightenment’s racial politics abounded with contradictions and ambivalences, Voltaire stood out from his contemporaries. While the connections between his polygenism – the theory that humans of different races were created separately – and material investments in colonial commerce have long be…Read more
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11William Beinart and Saul Dubow, The Scientific Imagination in South Africa: 1700 to the Present Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp. 406. ISBN 987-1-1088-3708-8. £64.99 (hardback) (review)British Journal for the History of Science 55 (1): 121-122. 2022.
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18Pratik Chakrabarti, Inscriptions of Nature: Geology and the Naturalization of Antiquity Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020. Pp. 280. ISBN: 987-1-4214-3874-0. $54.95 (review)British Journal for the History of Science 54 (1): 118-120. 2021.
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24Galenizing the New World: Joseph-François Lafitau's 'Galenization' of Canadian Ginseng, CA 1716-1724Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 75 (1): 59-72. 2021.This essay situates the French Jesuit missionary Joseph-François Lafitau's (1681–1746) ‘discovery’ of Canadian ginseng within its social, commercial and religious contexts, and illustrates how the missionary's upbringing and education in France shaped the way he perceived nature in the New World. It elucidates the manner in which Lafitau ‘Galenized’ Canadian flora, fauna and peoples. It explores the role of Lafitau's dual enculturation in both a mercantile household and later the Society of Jesu…Read more
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1158Rethinking the Rites Controversy: Kilian Stumpf's Acta Pekinensia and the Historical Dimensions of a Religious QuarrelModern Intellectual History 19 (1): 29-53. 2022.The Chinese rites controversy is typically characterized as a religious quarrel between different Catholic orders over whether it was permissible for Chinese converts to observe traditional rites and use the terms tian and shangdi to refer to the Christian God. As such, it is often argued that the conflict was shaped predominantly by the divergent theological attitudes between the rites-supporting Jesuits and their anti-rites opponents towards “accommodation.” By examining the Jesuit missionary …Read more
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Cambridge UniversityDepartment of History and Philosophy of Science, St Edmund's CollegeDoctoral student