02.11.2026
Sabine Kink Defended her Doctoral Thesis on the Taixi shuifa 泰西水法 (Hydromethods of the Great West; 1612)
On 01 September 2026, Sabine Kink successfully defended her doctoral thesis titled “Cross-Cultural Knowledge Transfer in the Early Modern Period: The Taixi shuifa 泰西水法 (Hydromethods of the Great West; 1612) and Its Limited Success in China.”
On 01 September 2026, Sabine Kink successfully defended her doctoral thesis titled “Cross-Cultural Knowledge Transfer in the Early Modern Period: The Taixi shuifa 泰西水法 (Hydromethods of the Great West; 1612) and Its Limited Success in China.” Her dissertation provides the first in-depth investigation of the content and history of this treatise, which was co-authored by the Jesuit missionary Sabatino de Ursis and the eminent scholar-official Xu Guangqi 徐光啟. As one of the early works of the ‘apostolate of the book’ – through which the Jesuits sought to spread their Christian faith in China under the guise of Western learning – the Taixi shuifa presented to its literati readership Renaissance-era useful and reliable knowledge about water. To this end, it combines, in a unique and hybridising manner, theoretical considerations about water within the framework of the Aristotelian theory of the Four Elements with the description of hydraulic technologies and practical artisanal skills. Yet despite an initially keen interest – particularly in the spectacular water pumps – and a remarkable, albeit all too brief, openness towards Western ideas, these technologies did not gain a lasting foothold in China. The fate of the Taixi shuifa therefore sheds an illuminating light not only on the intricacies of trying to convey innovative knowledge across borders on paper, but also on the influence of different societal patterns on early modern developments in effective water management in both China and the West. Mrs. Kink’s research thus also makes an important contribution to ongoing discussions on the emergence of global divergences and their economic implications. Her thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Hans Ulrich Vogel and Prof. Dr. Achim Mittag, with Prof. Dr. Huang Fei serving as the third examiner.
Download the PhD thesis.