History of science in China #5: The Jesuits in seventeenth century China

The Portuguese overseas expansion brought about unprecedented direct contacts between Europe and East Asia. Jesuit missionaries working under Portuguese patronage entered first Japan and then China. There their evangelising enterprise entailed the teaching of and circulation of printed works on the sciences as taught in Jesuit colleges in Europe. In China, demand on the part of Chinese literati gradually led the missionaries to focus on the mathematical sciences, and to work on an astronomical reform.