From Information to Evidence: Jesuits and the Eurasian Dimension of the Enlightenment Controversy over the Shape of the Earth

Objective

This project rewrites the history of one of the most celebrated scientific disputes of the Enlightenment: the eighteenth-century controversy over the shape of the Earth. By restoring the neglected role of evidence derived from the Kangxi imperial land surveys, transmitted through Jesuit missionaries, the project reframes the debate for the first time from a Eurasian perspective. The research examines how Jesuit astronomical observations and geographical measurements, originally co-produced with local participants both as part of their scientific missions in China and for Qing imperial cartography, travelled across continents, entered European scholarly networks, and were eventually weaponised as powerful evidence in the controversy over the shape of the Earth. Breaking with the conventional one-way narrative of knowledge transfer from Europe to China, the project reconstructs the reverse trajectory. It traces the movement of Jesuit-mediated sources from China through intellectual, institutional, political-religious, and cultural contexts before they resurfaced in European publications, maps, and controversies. Based on multilingual Eurasian archival materials, the study shows how non-European information was reframed, authenticated, or strategically altered in order to become European evidence. Combining close historical analysis with digital methods, the project delivers two types of outcomes. First, it generates scholarly publications that situate the Earth-shape debate within a global chain of evidence, challenging entrenched Eurocentric accounts of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment science. Second, it creates an open-access digital resource that visualises these transcontinental flows of information/evidence, offers a transferable model for studying global trajectories of knowledge, and engages wider audiences through public talks, exhibitions, and online platforms.