Liam Matthew Brockey's book "Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724" describes the interaction between intellectual European priests and Chinese communities at a time when society had already experienced significant progress, both from an economic and from an ideological point of view. Brockey deals with how Christians attempted to promote their ideas in China and with how they struggled to perform a mission that they completely believed in despite the fact that they immediately encountered significant resistance. The second part of the book is concentrated on dealing with new information coming from original sources and that is likely to impress many readers.
¶ … half story "Journey East: The Jesuit Mission China" 1579-1724. read write pages 207-425.
"Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579 -- 1724"
Review and reflection
Liam Matthew Brockey's book "Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579 -- 1724" describes the interaction between intellectual European priests and Chinese communities at a time when society had already experienced significant progress, both from an economic and from an ideological point-of-view. Brockey deals with how Christians attempted to promote their ideas in China and with how they struggled to perform a mission that they completely believed in despite the fact that they immediately encountered significant resistance. The second part of the book is concentrated on dealing with new information coming from original sources and that is likely to impress many readers.
The first part of the book can be associated with a chronological description of the mission that the Jesuits took on and follows them and their exploits in China. Each chapter in the second part is meant to emphasize a series of main events that marked the clash of cultures and ideas. The first part of the book covers persecutions that Jesuits experienced, how they recovered from these respective persecutions, their difficulty in putting across the message they wanted to send, the little successes they saw, and, eventually, the cold failure the mission as a whole saw in the 18th century.
The second part of the book is primarily impressive because of the information it contains. From the very first paragraphs readers are likely to observe how the main idea of the narrative shifted from being descriptive to bringing on new and exciting information. This part is more complex as Brockey focused on presenting the mission in great detail and on presenting the feelings and experiences a Jesuit needed to go through in his struggle to accomplish his mission.
The fact that the book provides the chance to accompany a Jesuit missionary as he goes from training in order to be able to go to China to the actual moment when he interacts with Chinese culture and individuals assists readers in being able to gain a better understanding of the overall mission that Jesuit Christians took on during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Chapter 6, "In the Apostles' Classroom, is meant to describe the intellectual factors involved in being trained as a Jesuit missionary. Brockey emphasizes the intellectual requirements that a student needed to act in agreement with in order for him to be accepted in the China mission. This enables readers to focus on a series of parallels between the mission and each individual that was a part of the respective mission. The book does not simply provide information, as it keeps readers captivated and it assists them in becoming familiarized with attitudes and feelings that one could find in the Jesuit community meant to bring reform to China. The fact that the book helps readers associate the mission as a whole with a series of feelings experienced as Jesuits trained for and performed the mission is essential in improving one's understanding of the historic event.
The second chapter of the book is virtually a window into the mission and an opportunity to go back in time in order to be able to see matters from a first-person perspective. This is not necessarily a description of historical events, as it enables readers to go further by being able to complexly comprehend what it meant to be a Jesuit missionary.
The series of ideas brought on by the book's second part is certainly impressive, especially considering that it allows readers to accompany Jesuits as they struggled to complete a mission that they believed in and in which they invested all of their resources hoping that it is going to generate positive results. While one might have been inclined to believe that this mission was flawed from the very start as a result of the fact that Jesuit missionaries actually believed they could change much about a dominant culture, the reality is that this part of the book actually emphasizes the efforts that the mission took on as it attempted to make something that it believed in work.
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