Novissima Sinica [title page].

News from China

1699

University of Otago Library Special Collections (Shoults) - Gb 1699 N

s17

[Leipzig?].

'I consider it a singular plan of the fates that human cultivation and refinement should today be concentrated, as it were, in the two extremes of our continent, in Europe and in Tshina (as they call it), which adorns the Orient as Europe does the opposite edge of the earth.' So wrote G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716), the German philosopher and mathematician, in his preface to Novissima Sinica (News from China), a collection of missionary reports and letters on China. Two questions from the text highlight the practical nature inherent in the book: 'Whether nothing is known of the sea between North Asia and North America' and 'whether there were any artificial economic devices of the Chinese for toiling the field and garden, which are of worth and useful to be described?' This is the second edition of 1699.

Title pages

Novissima Sinica, historiam nostri temporis illustratura in quibus De christianismo publica nunc primum autoritate propagato missa in Europam relatio exhibetur, deqve favore scientiarum Europaearum ac moribus gentis & ipsius praefertim monarchae, tum & de bello Sinensium cum Moscis ac pace constituta, multa hactenus ignota explicantur. Edente G.G.L. ... [Leipzig?] 1699.

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Novissima Sinica