The Mandate of Heaven—Strategy, Revolution, and the First European Translation of Sunzi’s Art of War (1772)
The Mandate of Heaven examines the first European version of Sunzi’s Art of War, which was translated from Chinese by Joseph Amiot, a French missionary in Beijing, and published in Paris in 1772. His work is presented in English for the first time. Amiot undertook this project following the suppression of the Society of Jesus in France with the aim of demonstrating the value of the China mission to the French government. He addressed his work to Henri Bertin, minister of state, beginning a thirty-year correspondence between the two men. Amiot framed his translation in order to promote a radical agenda using the Chinese doctrine of the “mandate of heaven.” This was picked up within the sinophile and radical circle of the physiocrats, who promoted China as a model for revolution in Europe. The work also arrived just as the concept of strategy was emerging in France. Thus Amiot’s Sunzi can be placed among seminal developments in European political and strategic thought on the eve of the revolutionary era.
Ecological Crisis and Strategy in the Jesuit China Mission
In Laudate Deum (2023), Pope Francis calls on those negotiating today’s climate emergency to be “strategists.” No organization has a longer history of strategy-making than the pope’s alma mater, the Society of Jesus, whose China mission was founded during an ecological crisis. No Jesuit is more celebrated as a strategist than Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), who observed the effects of that crisis in 1604 and praised the emperor’s response but noted its inadequacy. As a result of this, and the influence of Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), the idea of introducing European science to China materialized as the final strand of the China mission’s strategy. Xu’s own career was dedicated to preserving Ming China through agricultural and military reform, and his ideas are present in Ricci’s work. Thus, Ricci’s strategy-making was forged in the context of challenges recognizable today, and its strengths and limitations represent a resource for the strategists addressed by Pope Francis. [1st of 2 sister articles.]
Ecological Crisis and the Jesuit Way of Proceeding in the Mission of Henri de Laulanié
Henri de Laulanié, S.J. (1920–95) was a French agronomist whose mission to Madagascar shows how the Jesuit way of proceeding may be applied in the ecological crisis we face today. For thirty-four years, Laulanié worked with Malagasy peasant farmers to help them become self-sufficient while restoring degraded land and protecting more land from slash-and-burn farming. Laulanié can be placed in a four hundred-year arc of Jesuits who have confronted ecological crisis and called for regeneration. Laulanié took his mission into the fields, where he was guided by necessity and the resources available to him. His greatest achievement was the empirical development of a new, agroecological approach to rice cultivation known as the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). Laulanié combined transplantation of young seedlings with wider spacing of plants and sparing use of water to double yields or more. Subsequent research has validated Laulanié’s observations and shown that SRI also reduces greenhouse gas emissions. SRI has spread to most rice-producing countries, become a Project Drawdown solution, and been included in the Nationally Determined Contributions of a dozen countries. Nonetheless, scaling has proven difficult, as is the case with agroecology in general. Laulanié’s mission may encourage a new generation of agricultural entrepreneurs to make agroecology the foundation of food sovereignty and a regenerative food system. This transformation is urgently needed if we are to meet the needs of people and planet. It can only be achieved if we follow Laulanié in doing what is necessary and working with what is available now. [2nd of 2 sister articles.]