I met with the Jesuits [who are already known to you]; they are quite industrious and ready to perform whatever is required of them to the best of their ability. One of them seems to me very efficient. As far as I know [the one who?] meant something to you died recently; news from China always came to them making a large circle around Europe; not knowing why they were summoned here, they do not have any letters concerning China with them, nor do they have any names to whom they might write, and therefore they wish to be released to Polotsk, where they can examine their papers at their leisure.
There does not seem to be any inconvenience, to my knowledge, of releasing them to Polotsk, provided we determine in advance how we are to use them.
If they are to travel to Kiakhta, then they can, after gathering their papers, go there from Polotsk. In which case, Petr Bogdanovich Passek should be ordered to recommend them himself to the acting Governor-General in Irkutsk, or even better, to give them an order from his own office in Irkutsk so they can go straight from Polotsk to [Pil'?].
This I believe [should be done] in case it turns out to be absolutely necessary to send them to Kiakhta, from which they would be able to respond with friendly letters to their colleagues in Peking ...
... 1st. They should talk at length about the patronage their order benefits from in Russia due to the magnanimity of Her Imperial Majesty, making a greeting here to the Chinese [Jesuits], that for all the persecutions [their order has suffered] in other places in Europe, they at least have the solace of living in serenity and flourishing in the two greatest empires, i.e. the Russian and Chinese, that this patronage gives their order a means of pursuing and seeking pleasure and solace in their love for the sciences.
... They might add in this letter of theirs something about their Order, of its present condition, and also something of the sciences, whatever they themselves find appropriate, and it does not seem ill-advised to expand this portion, so that the matter concerning the English would not appear to be the principal subject of the letter, but contrariwise would appear to mention it in passing.
If the Chinese Jesuits send a response to this letter of [the Polotsk Jesuits], and in it put forth the possibility of their colleagues' traveling to Peking, the latter should be given orders in writing that their residence in Peking should have as its principal object creating obstacles to the arrival of an English embassy.
In such a case, that is, if our Jesuits are allowed the opportunity to travel to Peking, they should be dispatched from Kiakhta with various presents, including furs of various kinds, items of fashionable clothing, and rarities, as well as astronomical instruments...
- A. R. Vorontsov to A. A. Bezborodko, June 3, 17[80s-early -'90s?]
I consider this letter to be the greatest find of my entire summer, although my enthusiasm has been tempered a bit now that I have looked more closely at it (while I was translating for this post) and determined that it could almost certainly not date from 1778, as the archival file says (this is where I curse my poor notetaking skills for not having recorded any other numbers on the document). Unfortunately, it's only in draft form, and it's barely legible besides In any event, let's discuss the document, which in itself is almost as captivating as a Patrick O'Brian novel. Analysis here is premature and almost superfluous.
A. R. Vorontsov, who was most likely President of the College of Commerce at the time the letter was written, is writing to A. A. Bezborodko, who was either the empress's personal secretary or the Grand Chancellor of the Empire (most likely the former). These are the very senior levels of the state hierarchy, and Vorontsov in particular is a representative of an especially wealthy and influential noble clan. Vorontsov has interviewed a group of Jesuits from Polotsk, one of the territories acquired by Russia during the Partitions of Poland.
The significance of these Jesuits (as well as other Jesuits in formerly Polish lands) is that they are the only Jesuits technically remaining on Earth at this time, and certainly the only Jesuits possessed of an institutional support structure and a novitiate. This is because the Jesuit order was officially disbanded by the Pope in 1773. In a strange historical twist, the Orthodox Empress Catherine, who happened to acquire Belarussian lands the year before, saw here a great opportunity to win a powerful, educated, and culturally-influential body of clergymen to her side. She forbade the bull dissolving the order from being promulgated anywhere in the Russian empire, and when the local archbishop was given extraordinary authority by the Pope in an attempt to push through the dissolution regardless, she forced him to let the Jesuits open a novitiate (to train new members) instead. Thus the Russian Empire has become the sole official patron and protector of the Jesuit Order, whose members had been, before 1773, officially forbidden from setting foot on Russian soil. (In his 1719 expulsion decree, Peter the Great had laconically observed that "they engage in correspondence during church services").
Vorontsov has a grand project in mind. He aims to ship these Jesuits all the way across the Russian Empire, to the tiny but bustling town of Kiakhta, near Lake Baikal, which serves as (effectively) the only authorized site of direct Russo-Chinese trade. There, these Jesuits are to compose a letter in Latin to their colleagues in China, ostensibly of their own accord, in an attempt to convince them that helping Russia is in their best interests--in large part because Russia is in a position to support their scientific work. Vorontsov's letter delineates precisely, in point-by-point fashion, what this letter is to contain; the goal is to convince both the Jesuits and, especially, the Chinese, that no Russian government authority and certainly no central government authority had anything to do with the missive. (The letter is also to broach the possibility of a visit or residence in Beijing, which would give the Russians a whole new set of levers.)
The aim of this Russo-Chinese Jesuit alliance is to manipulate the situation at the court of the Chinese emperor Qianlong in order to prevent a planned English embassy from being received; this ties in with a persistent (and, it turns out, correct) Russian anxiety that the English are the only power capable of stealing away their Chinese trade. The embassy would eventually materialize as the Macartney Embassy in 1792-4, which concluded with the famous Chinese announcement that they had no need for European goods, leading directly to the Opium Wars in the next century. Of course, the Chinese had failed to mention that they had been buying Russian goods in large quantities--sufficient to despoil Siberia of a large portion of its fur-bearing mammals--for a hundred years. So, for the time being at least, the Russians ended up the geopolitical winners.
More important to me, however, is how Vorontsov is telling the Jesuits to write. He is telling them to include astronomical and scientific details, but for reasons that are explicitly and utterly instrumental: they are just filler intended to conceal the real geopolitical and commercial purpose of the contact. I'm not as widely read as I should be, but I have never come across any historical document that is quite so brazenly frank about using scientific discourse for narrowly political ends. Vorontsov literally doesn't care what the "substantive" portion of the letter says, as long as it looks more important than the mention of the English.
The question this raises for me is: if I were to come across this supposed letter--I have no idea whether it ever ended up being written, although I have some suspicions--would I even be able to tell? As historians, we are trained to be suspicious of excessive suspicion; we tend to regard it as the mark of amateur conspiracy theorists, a kind of fetishization of the primary source that treats it as if it were normally capable of being a totally transparent and objective reflection of the underlying reality. And it's hard to argue with that, at least for me. But it does mean that we almost always assume our sources to have been written in good faith: a political pamphlet, even a mendacious or a satirical one, is almost always treated at least as the result of an attempt to write a political pamphlet.
I would undoubtedly treat a letter filled with astronomical minutiae as the result of an attempt to communicate astronomical results; after all, I have plenty of similar Jesuit letters already transcribed. Does this mean that any of them could actually have been about something entirely different? Given Vorontsov's direct proof of such a communicative practice, shouldn't I be feeling more insecure about my sources? What does it say about my epistemological assumptions that I don't?
A. R. Vorontsov, who was most likely President of the College of Commerce at the time the letter was written, is writing to A. A. Bezborodko, who was either the empress's personal secretary or the Grand Chancellor of the Empire (most likely the former). These are the very senior levels of the state hierarchy, and Vorontsov in particular is a representative of an especially wealthy and influential noble clan. Vorontsov has interviewed a group of Jesuits from Polotsk, one of the territories acquired by Russia during the Partitions of Poland.
The significance of these Jesuits (as well as other Jesuits in formerly Polish lands) is that they are the only Jesuits technically remaining on Earth at this time, and certainly the only Jesuits possessed of an institutional support structure and a novitiate. This is because the Jesuit order was officially disbanded by the Pope in 1773. In a strange historical twist, the Orthodox Empress Catherine, who happened to acquire Belarussian lands the year before, saw here a great opportunity to win a powerful, educated, and culturally-influential body of clergymen to her side. She forbade the bull dissolving the order from being promulgated anywhere in the Russian empire, and when the local archbishop was given extraordinary authority by the Pope in an attempt to push through the dissolution regardless, she forced him to let the Jesuits open a novitiate (to train new members) instead. Thus the Russian Empire has become the sole official patron and protector of the Jesuit Order, whose members had been, before 1773, officially forbidden from setting foot on Russian soil. (In his 1719 expulsion decree, Peter the Great had laconically observed that "they engage in correspondence during church services").
Vorontsov has a grand project in mind. He aims to ship these Jesuits all the way across the Russian Empire, to the tiny but bustling town of Kiakhta, near Lake Baikal, which serves as (effectively) the only authorized site of direct Russo-Chinese trade. There, these Jesuits are to compose a letter in Latin to their colleagues in China, ostensibly of their own accord, in an attempt to convince them that helping Russia is in their best interests--in large part because Russia is in a position to support their scientific work. Vorontsov's letter delineates precisely, in point-by-point fashion, what this letter is to contain; the goal is to convince both the Jesuits and, especially, the Chinese, that no Russian government authority and certainly no central government authority had anything to do with the missive. (The letter is also to broach the possibility of a visit or residence in Beijing, which would give the Russians a whole new set of levers.)
The aim of this Russo-Chinese Jesuit alliance is to manipulate the situation at the court of the Chinese emperor Qianlong in order to prevent a planned English embassy from being received; this ties in with a persistent (and, it turns out, correct) Russian anxiety that the English are the only power capable of stealing away their Chinese trade. The embassy would eventually materialize as the Macartney Embassy in 1792-4, which concluded with the famous Chinese announcement that they had no need for European goods, leading directly to the Opium Wars in the next century. Of course, the Chinese had failed to mention that they had been buying Russian goods in large quantities--sufficient to despoil Siberia of a large portion of its fur-bearing mammals--for a hundred years. So, for the time being at least, the Russians ended up the geopolitical winners.
More important to me, however, is how Vorontsov is telling the Jesuits to write. He is telling them to include astronomical and scientific details, but for reasons that are explicitly and utterly instrumental: they are just filler intended to conceal the real geopolitical and commercial purpose of the contact. I'm not as widely read as I should be, but I have never come across any historical document that is quite so brazenly frank about using scientific discourse for narrowly political ends. Vorontsov literally doesn't care what the "substantive" portion of the letter says, as long as it looks more important than the mention of the English.
The question this raises for me is: if I were to come across this supposed letter--I have no idea whether it ever ended up being written, although I have some suspicions--would I even be able to tell? As historians, we are trained to be suspicious of excessive suspicion; we tend to regard it as the mark of amateur conspiracy theorists, a kind of fetishization of the primary source that treats it as if it were normally capable of being a totally transparent and objective reflection of the underlying reality. And it's hard to argue with that, at least for me. But it does mean that we almost always assume our sources to have been written in good faith: a political pamphlet, even a mendacious or a satirical one, is almost always treated at least as the result of an attempt to write a political pamphlet.
I would undoubtedly treat a letter filled with astronomical minutiae as the result of an attempt to communicate astronomical results; after all, I have plenty of similar Jesuit letters already transcribed. Does this mean that any of them could actually have been about something entirely different? Given Vorontsov's direct proof of such a communicative practice, shouldn't I be feeling more insecure about my sources? What does it say about my epistemological assumptions that I don't?
A great find and a great post; I feel like I'm getting a graduate education myself (and at a low, low price!). Keep up the good work!
ReplyDeleteWow! That is a great find. A fascinating insight into 18th Century geopolitics.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that people have been tricksy in all ages. I once had a discussion with a historian about how I, having studied literature, was trained in sniffing out contradictions, irony and other tricks of the inktrade, while she needed to take all her sources at their word, as long as they did not appear to be actively fraudulent or obviously sarcastic, satirical etc. Not because she wasn't aware of all that ambiguity and deceit humanity engages in, but because it was impossible for her to write her papers if she cast doubt on everything. We agreed there were different degrees of doubt and that different trades required different approaches to source material. I'm not so sure anymore... literary theory has taken a lot from the practices of historians in recent decades, maybe historians should start doing the vice versa.
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