GONZALES DE MENDOZA, Juan.

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Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China, First edition of the first major European survey of China, featuring the first Chinese characters printed in a European workshop. Mendoza reveals that printing and firearms were invented in China and had been in use for hundreds of years before reaching Europe. This is an unrecorded variant, with uncorrected title page and prelims.Arriving in Mexico in the early 1560s, the Spanish cleric and explorer Mendoza (1545-1618) amassed original reports on from Augustinian and Franciscan missionaries on the economics, politics, and customs of Ming China. Historia was commissioned to him in about 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII.The first section of the book is a survey of China's society and institutions. The major sources are Gaspar Da Cruz's published Tractado (1569), a manuscript account by Martin de Rada, Chinese books acquired by Rada in Fujian, and personal interviews with missionaries. The Chinese characters for "sky", "king", and "city" are printed at pages 104-5, in a chapter on education.The second and third sections include the account of the first Franciscan mission to China led by Pedro de Alfaro (d. 1580) and Agustín de Tordesillas, and the journey of Martin Ignacio de Loyola (d. 1606, a relative of the first Jesuit missionary) from Seville to China. Loyola also reports on the discovery of New Mexico by Antonio d'Espejo. Other chapters are dedicated to Japan, the Philippines, and Spanish missions

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