Georgetown College. Georgetown University.

October 27, 2008

By Kara Burritt

With a history at Georgetown University that spans over 40 years, Father John W. Witek, S.J. has become a campus presence both as a professor in the Department of History and as an expert on China. Since earning his doctorate in East Asian History at Georgetown, Witek has transformed his original dissertation topic—studying manuscripts of Jesuit missionary to China Jean-Francois Foucquet—into an illustrious career of research that is currently experiencing a major renewal thanks to China's evolving politics.

It was during Witek's regency, a period of teaching high school required as part of Jesuit training, that his curiosity about Asia was first piqued. At that time, America had battled on both Japanese and Korean soil, yet few American high school students could speak to the history or the current situation of that part of the world.

"Students had no idea of Asia," explains Witek. "Something caught my eye."

As his interest developed, he decided to pursue his doctoral degree in Chinese studies. A mentor of Witek advised him to seek an institution that would offer him education from two perspectives: native Chinese and Western. This duality is what Witek found in Georgetown's Department of History, and today it’s what is defining his research of China's late Ming and early Qing dynasties.

Until the economic reform and modernization of China in the 1980s, non-native study of China's history was conducted from a Western perspective, in part because of the political situation. "Since then we've had a huge shift, and properly so," explains Witek. Especially in Witek’s area of focus—Jesuit missions to China in the 16th and 17th centuries—the Chinese were historically approached as the passive recipients of Westernization.

Study of this period focused on the non-Chinese, as Witek can attest. He has published a number of books and attended many conferences centered on Jesuit personalities who served as missionaries to China. But China’s recent openness has given historical Chinese figures a voice, something that has opened new avenues of inquiry.

"By the 1980s studies of China were moved from an emphasis on China's reaction to the West, but not participation in it, to a China-oriented approach," explains Witek. Now different questions are being asked of the Jesuits' missions to China: What did the Chinese think, see and perceive? How did they participate in this history?

This modern approach "changes the perspective of history," he explains. It takes into account inculturation, which is key to the Jesuit mission in China. Rather than force Christianity on the Chinese, early Jesuit missionaries such as Matteo Ricci spread the idea of Christianity by promoting similarities between Confucianism and Christianity. Chinese rites were respected, and the results of such missions have endured.

"Today there are villages in China that are very Christian. How and why is it that these people have rooted themselves despite the Cultural Revolution?" says Witek. Such endurance is evidence that Chinese Christians identified strongly with the teachings of Jesuit and other missionaries, and as such were not just passive subjects of Westernization.

This shift has greatly affected Witek's research. China recently opened to foreigners archives of documents that had previously been closed to non-Chinese researchers, leading to a new form of "cooperative research." For historians like Witek, formerly inaccessible resources are now available for use in understanding the Chinese perspective of historical events. In fact, it is working with such rare documents that is at the core of Witek's current project, editing the second volume of "Monumenta Sinica."

"Monumenta Sinica" is part of the Jesuit "Monumenta Historica," a collection of over 100 volumes of original documents transcribed from early Jesuit history. Documents range from informal correspondence to accounts of travel.

The first volume of the ongoing project was published in 1894, and several volumes are dedicated to Jesuit history in single countries. As a corresponding member of the Jesuit Historical Institute in Rome, Witek became involved in editing the China-focused volumes. Additionally, Father Joseph Sebes, S.J., a professor with whom Witek worked closely at Georgetown, had been assigned the first volume of "Monumenta Sinica." Upon Sebes' death, Witek took up the project, determined to finish the work his colleague had dedicated to it. The first volume of "Monumenta Sinica" focuses on the Jesuit mission to China between 1546 and 1562, a period previously considered to be one of renunciation of the often-frustrating journey to China. The documents collected in volume one reflect, rather, an active stage of gathering information about and preparing for voyage to China. The second volume will cover the years 1562-1583, a period of major development in the Jesuit mission in China.

Witek is excited by the potential for projects like "Monumenta Sinica," given the political progress that is revolutionizing his study of Chinese history. He says, "This change affects our understanding and ways of trying to do this research." Witek, himself, never actually visited China until 1987, when he received an invitation to serve as visiting professor at Peking University. This was only a few years after the laws governing foreign visitors had been relaxed.

But the significance of this new approach to studying a foreign country is farther reaching than just the Westernization of China, especially in terms of the modern world’s growing interconnectedness, explains Witek. "Inculturation is an important word, not only in terms of Christianity, but even today—we're taking different ideas and trying to see how they can become a part of a culture on their own terms."

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