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The history of the great and mighty kingdom of China and the situation thereof (Spanish: Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China) is one of the earliest European books about China. It was written by the Spanish-Mexican Augustinian friar Juan González de Mendoza, primarily based on two types of sources: the accounts of several abortive attempts of Spanish friars to enter the Ming China from the Philippine Islands in the 1570s, and the material from a number of books these friars had purchased in China, whose content was interpreted for the Spanish by Philippine Chinese informants.

The book was first published in Spanish in 1585 in Rome, and in the space of a few years was translated into most major European languages. The English edition, whose full title was The historie of the great and mightie kingdome of China, and the situation thereof: Together with the great riches, huge citties, politike gouernement, and rare inventions in the same, appeared in London in 1588, and, according to historians, it was "the earliest detailed account of that country ever published in the English language".

The book contained a small chapter on the Chinese language and writing, with a few examples of Chinese characters, which many historians view as the first ever attempt to present Chinese characters (even if heavily corrupted) to the European reading public.

Genesis of the book

It were the Portuguese who in the 16th century first established a system of maritime trade routes connecting Europe's Atlantic Seaboard with the South China coast, via the Cape of Good Hope, Indian Ocean, Portuguese India, and Malacca. Even though the Portuguese government's attempt to send an embassy to the Ming Court in 1518-21 ended in a catastrophic failure, the Portuguese still were the European nation with the closest contact with China, and by 1557 they had a fortress of their own on Chinese coast, Macau.

The Spanish, however, were interested in reaching China as well, for both economic and missionary reasons. Indirect contacts became possible once the Spanish established their first colonies in the Philippines, first at Cebu (1565) and soon in Manila (1571), which had long been within the orbit of Chinese maritime and trade activities.

A possibility for a visit of a Spanish delegation to China was soon offered by the invasion of the Luzon Island by the fleet of the Chinese pirate Limahon (Lim Ah-Hong) in the late 1574. In 1575, as the Spanish forces besieged the pirates' fortified camp in Lingayen (today's Pangasinan Province), a Chinese government fleet commanded by Wang Wanggao (王望高; known to the Spanish as Omoncon) arrived to Luzon in pursuit of Limahon's pirates. Thanks to the presence of a Spanish-speaking ethnic Chinese (Sangley) merchant among the Spanish, named Sinsay (in Spaniards' transcription), the Spanish commanding general Juan de Salcedo was able to communicate with Wang Wanggao, and invite him to Manila.

The negotiations between the Spanish governor of the Philippines, Guido de Lavezaris and Wang Wanggao resulted in the Chinese captain's agreeing to take a group of Spanish friars to China, in the hope that the news of Spanish victory over the pirate, and their liberation of the pirates' Chinese captives, would cause the Fujian provincial authorities waive for them the general ban of foreigners' entry.

The missionary team that went aboard Wang's ship to China consisted of the Augustinian friars Martín de Rada (also known as Martin de Herrada), originally from Pamplona, and Geronimo Martín, from Mexico City. A few soldiers, in particular Pedro Sarmiento and Miguel de Loarca (Loarcha), went along with them. A "boy of China" who had been baptized in Manila as Fernando and spoke good Spanish went with them as an interpreter. The delegation had letters from the Spanish governor of the Philippines to the governor of Zhangzhou ("Chincheo") and the viceroy of the Province of Fujian ("Ochian") and presents for them.

The friars left the Philippine port Bolinao ("Buliano") on 25th of June, 1575, and reached the Chinese coast on the 3rd of July.

... Martín Ignacio de Loyola

etc.

Juan González de Mendoza in his History of the great and mighty kingdom of China (1585; English translation 1588), based on the reports of Spanish friars who had visited China in the 1570s, highly praises the fruit:

[T]hey haue a kinde of plummes, that they doo call lechias, that are of an exceeding gallant tast, and neuer hurteth any body, although they shoulde eate a great number of them.

http://books.google.com/books?id=0x1Io6VOuAIC&pg=PA791

Literature

Various editions of Mendoza's book

• Mendoza, Juan González de (1585), Historia de las cosas mas notables ritos y costumbres del gran Reyno de la China: sabidas assi por los libros de los mesmos Chinas como por relación de Religiosos y otras personas que han estado en el dicho Reyno, Rome: Vincentio Accolti. This is the first Spanish edition, which the author found to contain many typos. Also, scan of another copy of the same edition.

• Mendoza, Juan González de (1853), Mendoza's Historie of the Kingdome of China, vol. 1, translated by Robert Parke, Hakluyt Society. Reprint of the 1588 English edition, edited by Sir George T. Staunton, Bart.; introduction by Richard Henry Major.

• Mendoza, Juan González de (1854), Mendoza's Historie of the Kingdome of China, vol. 2, translated by Robert Parke, Hakluyt Society. Reprint of the 1588 English edition, edited by Sir George T. Staunton, Bart.

• Purchas, Samuel (1906), "Chap. IV, Spanish plantation of the Philippinas, and what entercourse hath thence hapned betwixe them and the Chinois", Hakluytus posthumus, or, Purchas his Pilgrimes: contayning a history of the world in sea voyages and lande travells by Englishmen and others, Volume 12 of Hakluytus posthumus, J. MacLehose and sons, pp. 142–221 (reprint of a 17th-century work). This chapter is a pastiche of accounts taken from Mendoza and other Spanish writers of the period.

• Links to many other translations on-line

Others

• Boxer, Charles Ralph; Pereira, Galeote; Cruz, Gaspar da; Rada, Martín de (1953), South China in the sixteenth century: being the narratives of Galeote Pereira, Fr. Gaspar da Cruz, O.P. [and] Fr. Martín de Rada, O.E.S.A. (1550-1575), Issue 106 of Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, Printed for the Hakluyt Society (Includes an English translation of some of de Rada's own writing, with C.R. Boxer's comments)
• Lach, Donald F. (1965), Asia in the making of Europe, vol. Volume I, Book Two, The University of Chicago Press {{citation}}: |volume= has extra text (help)
• Chen, Boyi (陳博翼) (2009), "「Aytiur」(Aytim)地名釋證：附論早期海澄的對菲貿易 (Identifying the place named "Aytiur" (Aytim), with a note on the early trade between [[Longhai City|Haicheng]] and Philippines)" (PDF), 明代研究 (Ming Studies) (13): 81–108 {{citation}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) (This paper gives correct Chinese names for many places and people mentioned in Mendoza's book)

• Borao, José Eugenio (2009), "Macao as the non-entry point to China: The case of the Spanish Dominican missionaries (1587-1632)", International Conference on The Role and Status of Macao in the Propagation of Catholicism in the East, Macao, 3-5 November 2009, Centre of Sino-Western Cultural Studies, Istituto Politecnico de Macao. (PDF)

• Ferguson, Donald (1902), Letters from Portuguese captives in Canton, written in 1534 & 1536: with an introduction on Portuguese intercourse with China in the first half of the sixteenth century, Educ. Steam Press, Byculla

• Carey, Daniel (2004), Carey, Daniel (ed.), Asian travel in the Renaissance, Volume 1 of Renaissance Studies Special Issues, Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 1405111607