Generation of Giants: The Story of the Jesuits in China in the last Decades of the Ming Dynasty

George H. Dunne

• Publisher: Paeroa House
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781779797759
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

In the waning decades of the Ming Dynasty, a handful of extraordinary men crossed half the world to stand at the threshold of the most ancient and sophisticated civilization on earth. They came not as conquerors or merchants, but as scholars and scientists, carrying telescopes, clocks, and mathematical tables alongside their crucifixes. These were the Jesuits of China, and their story is one of the most astonishing adventures in the history of human encounter. George H. Dunne's Generation of Giants brings this breathtaking chapter to life with the force of a novel and the rigor of serious scholarship, tracing the lives of men who refused to let fear, failure, or the vast machinery of an imperial bureaucracy extinguish their extraordinary ambitions. At the heart of this narrative are figures of towering intellect and iron will. Men like Matteo Ricci, who mastered the Chinese language and Confucian thought so completely that Mandarin scholars sought his company as an equal. Men who mapped the stars above Beijing, debated philosophers in the imperial court, and built friendships across a cultural divide that seemed, to most of the world, utterly unbridgeable. Dunne captures not only their intellectual achievements but the texture of their daily struggle, the loneliness of living as perpetual foreigners, the grief of watching colleagues die in distant provinces, and the fierce, burning sense of purpose that kept them going year after year, decade after decade. The atmosphere of late Ming China, dazzling and decadent, philosophically rich and politically treacherous, shimmers on every page. What makes this book essential reading is not merely the history it preserves but the questions it raises that still resonate today. How does one civilization speak honestly and generously to another without erasing what makes each unique? What does it cost a human being to devote an entire life to a cause larger than personal comfort or recognition? Generation of Giants is a story about faith, certainly, but it is equally a story about courage, curiosity, and the rare and precious possibility of genuine understanding between worlds. Readers drawn to history, biography, cross-cultural drama, or simply the lives of remarkable individuals will find in these pages a work that challenges, moves, and ultimately inspires long after the final chapter is closed.

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• Foreword
• Illustrations
• PROLOGUE
• Chapter I — Reaching for the Moon
• Chapter II — Ricci Joins the Expedition
• Chapter III — Ricci Takes Charge
• Chapter IV — Broadening the Base
• Chapter V — Reaching the Moon
• Chapter VI — The Grain of Wheat
• Chapter VII — Storm Warnings
• Chapter VIII — Typhoon
• Chapter IX — Riding the Storm
• Chapter X — Who Killed Cock Robin?
• Chapter XI — Nova Et Vetera
• Chapter XII — Ebb and Flow
• Chapter XIII — Pillars Fall
• Chapter XIV — Brother Helped by Brother
• Chapter XV — “How Good and Delightful—”
• Chapter XVI — Accommodation Under Fire
• Chapter XVII — A Question of Rites
• Chapter XVIII — Green Fields
• Chapter XIX — Survival of the Fit
• Chapter XX — Red Button and Golden Crane
• Chapter XXI — Sturdy Oaks Brought Down
• Epilogue
• Bibliography