GONZALES DE MENDOZA, Juan

Rare edition, the eighth published in ten years of the first major work on China and the first European book in which Chinese characters occur. All early editions in the original Spanish are now rare. It includes the celebrated ‘Itinerario del nuevo Mundo’, details of Tordesillas’ voyage from Manila to China, the first Franciscan mission to China in 1579 and the account of the Canary Islands, Santo Domingo, the Philippines, Japan, Malacca and Coromandel, along with Loyola’s account of the discovery of New Mexico by Antonio d’Espejo which was never published separately. An English translation by Robert Parke was published in 1588. It was the first major survey of China and ran to some 33 editions between 1585 and 1613.

“This work, the first great book about China to be published in Europe, was a compilation of material Mendoca had obtained from a few Spanish missionaries, both Augustinians and Franciscans, living in the Philippines who had visited the southern coast of China for brief intervals. Mendoca’s principle source was the learned Martin de Rada. This wonderful book contains a four-page sketch of the history of China, from Emperor Yao to the Wan-li Emperor of the Ming dynasty. Mendoca probably got much of his information from the papers of de Rada, including Chinese books he had bought during a short visit to Fu-chien province, that he had had translated by Chinese people living in the Philippines…. Though brief, this summary gives a historical dimension to this first book about China to be presented to the European reader, a work that was printed in forty-six editions in seven languages in the first fifteen years after it came out.” Thomas H. C. Lee “China and Europe: Images and Influences in Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries”