In painting, European influence soon shows itself.  The best-known example of this is Lang Shih-ning, an Italian missionary whose original name was Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766); he began to work in China in 1715.  He learned the Chinese method of painting, but introduced a number of technical tricks of European painters, which were adopted in general practice in China, especially by the official court painters:  the painting of the scholars who lived in seclusion remained uninfluenced.  Dutch flower-painting also had some influence in China as early as the eighteenth century.

The missionaries played an important part at court.  The first Manchu emperors were as generous in this matter as the Mongols had been, and allowed the foreigners to work in peace.  They showed special interest in the European science introduced by the missionaries; they had less sympathy for their religious message.  The missionaries, for their part, sent to Europe enthusiastic accounts of the wonderful conditions in China, and so helped to popularize the idea that was being formed in Europe of an “enlightened”, a constitutional, monarchy.  The leaders of the Enlightenment read these reports with enthusiasm, with the result that they had an influence on the French Revolution.  Confucius was found particularly attractive, and was regarded as a forerunner of the Enlightenment.  The “Monadism” of the philosopher Leibniz was influenced by these reports.

The missionaries gained a reputation at court as “scientists”, and in this they were of service both to China and to Europe.  The behaviour of the European merchants who followed the missions, spreading gradually in growing numbers along the coasts of China, was not by any means so irreproachable.  The Chinese were certainly justified when they declared that European ships often made landings on the coast and simply looted, just as the Japanese had done before them.  Reports of this came to the court, and as captured foreigners described themselves as “Christians” and also seemed to have some connection with the missionaries living at court, and as disputes had broken out among the missionaries themselves in connection with papal ecclesiastical policy, in the Yung-cheng period (1723-1736; the name of the emperor was Shih Tsung) Christianity was placed under a general ban, being regarded as a secret political organization.

5 Relations with the outer world

During the Yung-cheng period there was long-continued guerrilla fighting with natives in south-west China.  The pressure of population in China sought an outlet in emigration.  More and more Chinese moved into the south-west, and took the land from the natives, and the fighting was the consequence of this.