The History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China is one of early modern Europe's most influential syntheses of Ming China, presenting its geography, government, laws, military, learning, religion, commerce, and customs with an admiration unusual for its age. Written in a lucid, compendious prose typical of Renaissance cosmography and missionary travel literature, it transforms reports, letters, and eyewitness testimonies into a coherent portrait of a sophisticated empire. Juan González de Mendoza, a Spanish Augustinian friar and later bishop, never reached China himself, yet his intellectual and ecclesiastical milieu made him an ideal compiler. Drawing on Iberian missionary accounts, especially those circulating through Mexico, Manila, and Portugal, he wrote at a moment when Spain sought deeper knowledge of Asia for evangelization, diplomacy, and imperial strategy. His work reflects both Christian missionary hopes and genuine curiosity about Chinese institutions. This book is recommended to readers interested in the history of cross-cultural encounter, early Sinology, and the European imagination of Asia. Though shaped by its sources and period assumptions, it remains indispensable for understanding how China entered European scholarly and political consciousness in the sixteenth century.

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Juan González de Mendoza (1545-1618) was the author of one of the earliest Western histories of China, born in Spanish province La Rioja in 1545. He joined the army but after some years resigned to enter the Order of Saint Augustine. González de Mendoza based his most famous text on the journals of Miguel de Luarca, whose 1580 trip to Ming China provided a simple majority thereof. He never set foot in China, but spent two years in Mexico before returning to Spain.