Where Is the Renaissance? What Is Western Civilization?

While the end of the First Cold War saw a rapid decline in the popularity of using civilizational frameworks to understand the Renaissance (and other periods), they have recently returned with a vengeance. This can be seen not only in scholarship but also in the public discourse of the USA, China, UK, etc. This moment presents both challenges and opportunities. In particular, it invites us to scrutinize the geographical limits and conceptual range of terms like “Renaissance,” “Western” and “civilization” in the light of our greatly increased historical knowledge. To begin such a conversation, this paper will center the Historia de la Conquista de la China por el Tártaro (1670) by the energetic and learned Bishop of Puebla in Mexico, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza (1600 – 1659). This is an exemplary humanist history of the fall of the Ming dynasty based on letters Palafox received from missionaries in Asia that presents the Manchu as paradigmatic of the core Renaissance political virtues of “justice” and “good government.” As such, Palafox’s Historia sits both firmly within -- and far outside – conventional understandings of the Western tradition in its Renaissance incarnation. “Lumpers” might dismiss such examples as marginal, while “splitters” might see this as a demonstration that both the Renaissance and Western civilization are meaningless constructs. In contrast, I argue that it underlines the malleability of culture, and what I call the “leaky bucket” model of civilizations. While ideas, scripts and texts are often transmitted within identifiable social and institutional frameworks, they do not represent anything like monolithic or hermetically-sealed civilizational units, like the “West.” Rather, they are constantly fluctuating between curiosity and hostility to new ideas – just like humanity itself.