Europeans in Medieval China

[1] These were people from countries traditionally belonging to the lands of Christendom during the High to Late Middle Ages who visited, traded, performed Christian missionary work, or lived in China.

[3] The establishment of the Ming dynasty in 1368 and reestablishment of ethnic Han rule led to the cessation of European merchants and Roman Catholic missionaries living in China.

Direct contact with Europeans was not renewed until Portuguese explorers and Jesuit missionaries arrived on Ming China's southern shores in the 1510s, during the Age of Discovery.

[1] Euthydemus I, Hellenistic ruler of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom in Central Asia during the 3rd century BC, led an expedition into the Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang, China) in search of precious metals.

[18][19][20][21] Emperor Wu's diplomat Zhang Qian (d. 113 BC) was sent to forge an alliance with the Yuezhi, a mission that was unsuccessful, but he brought back eyewitness reports of legacies of Hellenistic Greek civilization with his travels to "Dayuan" in the Fergana Valley, with Alexandria Eschate as its capital, and the "Daxia" of Bactria, in what is now Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

[38][39] Gan was dissuaded by Parthian authorities from venturing further than the "west coast" (possibly the Eastern Mediterranean) although he wrote a detailed report about the Roman Empire, its cities, postal network and consular system of government, and presented this to the Han court.

[46] Roman golden medallions from the reigns of Antoninus Pius and his adopted son Marcus Aurelius have been found in Oc Eo (near Ho Chi Minh City), a territory that belonged to the Kingdom of Funan bordering Jiaozhi.

[46] Suggestive of even earlier activity is a Republican-era Roman glass bowl unearthed from a Western Han tomb of Guangzhou (on the shores of the South China Sea) dated to the early 1st century BC,[47] in addition to ancient Mediterranean goods found in Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

[46] The Greco-Roman geographer Ptolemy wrote in his Antonine-era Geography that beyond the Golden Chersonese (Malay Peninsula) was a port city called Kattigara discovered by a Greek sailor named Alexander, a site Ferdinand von Richthofen assumed was Chinese-controlled Hanoi,[48] but given the archaeological evidence could have been Oc Eo.

From this revelation, monks were sent by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian (ruled 527–565) as spies on the Silk Road from Constantinople to China and back to steal the silkworm eggs.

The Byzantine historian Theophylact Simocatta, writing during the reign of Heraclius (r. 610–641), relayed information about China's geography, its capital city Khubdan (Old Turkic: Khumdan, i.e. Chang'an), its current ruler Taisson whose name meant "Son of Heaven" (Chinese: 天子 Tianzi, although this could be derived from the name of Emperor Taizong of Tang), and correctly pointed to its reunification by the Sui dynasty (581–618) as occurring during the reign of Maurice, noting that China had previously been divided politically along the Yangzi River by two warring nations.

[45][57] Some Chinese during the Song period showed interest in countries to the west, such as the early 13th-century Quanzhou customs inspector Zhao Rugua, who described the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria in his Zhu fan zhi.

[58] According to the 9th-century Book of Roads and Kingdoms by ibn Khordadbeh,[59] China was a destination for Radhanite Jews buying boys, female slaves and eunuchs from Europe.

They have salt which they boil and set in a mold ..."[67] Polo also remarked how the Chinese burned paper effigies shaped as male and female servants, camels, horses, suits of clothing and armor while cremating the dead during funerary rites.

[71] While Montecorvino became a bishop in Khanbaliq (Beijing), his friend Lucalongo continued to serve as a merchant there and donated a large amount of money to maintain the local Catholic Church.

[79] The guide notes the size of Khanbaliq (modern Beijing) and how merchants could exchange silver for Chinese paper money that could be used to buy luxury items such as silk.

[82] The Italian explorer and archbishop Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and Polish friar and traveler Benedykt Polak were the first papal envoys to reach Karakorum after being sent there by Pope Innocent IV in 1245.

[95][96] Following the death of John of Montecorvino, Giovanni de Marignolli was dispatched to Beijing to become the new archbishop from 1342 to 1346 in an effort to maintain a Christian influence in the region.

[1] William of Rubruck, a Flemish missionary who visited the Mongol court of Mongke Khan at Karakorum and returned to Europe in 1257, was a friend of the English philosopher and scientific thinker Roger Bacon.

[124][125] The earliest use of Chinese prototype firearms occurred at an 1132 siege during the Jin-Song Wars,[126][127][128] whereas the oldest surviving bronze hand cannon dates to 1288 during the Yuan period.

[133] Rabban Bar Sauma, a Nestorian Christian Turkic Chinese born in Zhongdu (later Khanbaliq, Beijing, capital of the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty), China,[134][135][136] was sent to Europe in 1287 as an ambassador for Arghun, ruler of the Ilkhanate and grandnephew of Kublai Khan.

[137] He was preceded by Isa Kelemechi, an Assyrian Nestorian Christian who worked as a court astronomer for Kublai Khan in Khanbaliq,[138][139] and was sent by Arghun to Pope Honorius IV in 1285.

[137][140] A decade earlier, Bar Sauma had originally set out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, passing through Gansu and Khotan in Northwest China, yet spent time in Armenia and Baghdad instead to avoid getting caught up in nearby armed conflicts.

[134] He had been accompanied by Rabban Markos, another Uyghur Nestorian Christian from China who was elected as the Patriarch of the Eastern Church and advised Arghun Khan to have Bar Sauma lead the diplomatic mission to Europe.

[146] Aside from his desire to see Christian sites, churches, and relics, Bar Sauma also showed a keen interest in the university life and curricula of Paris, which Morris Rossabi contends was rooted in how exotic it must have seemed from his perspective and educational background in Muslim Persia and Chinese Confucian teaching.

[149] The first Portuguese explorer to land in southern China was Jorge Álvares, who in May 1513 arrived at Lintin Island in the Pearl River Delta to engage in trade.

[155] He arrived in Macau in 1582, when he began to learn the Chinese language and information about China's ancient culture, yet was unaware of the events that had transpired there since the end of the Franciscan missions in the mid 14th century and establishment of the Ming dynasty.

[156] Since that time the Islamic world presented an obstacle for the West in reaching East Asia and, barring the grand treasure voyages of the 15th-century admiral Zheng He, the Ming dynasty had largely pursued policies of isolationism that kept it from seeking far-flung diplomatic contacts.