Los jesuitas y la globalización del reloj: balance historiográfico entre el Nuevo Mundo, China y Japón / Uribe, Ricardo

(The Jesuits and the Globalization of Clocks: A Historiographical Balance Among the New World, China, and Japan), Historia crítica 101 (2026), pp. 3–33

Abstract:
Objective: Historiography has established an inextricable link between the globalization of clocks and the worldwide expansion of the Society of Jesus. Based on the positive results obtained in the Far East through the gift of these machines, historians have dated the beginning of this phenomenon to the second half of the sixteenth century, tracing a route on the world map from Europe to China and Japan. This has implied that the Jesuits were clockmakers and that the Eastern empires were familiar with these mechanisms before the New World. The lack of studies on the Spanish viceroyalties led to the assumption that, in fact, they were introduced later and through the Church, extrapolating the Jesuit experience from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western Hemisphere.
This study aims to balance this historiography by specifying the number of Jesuit clockmakers worldwide and assessing their role in the globalization of clocks. Methodology: As much literature as possible on the Jesuits and clockmaking has been compiled for comparison with Spanish-American sources from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
Originality: This work makes a valuable contribution to the study of the global history of the Society of Jesus, science, and technology by demonstrating how clocks circulated among the New World, China, and Japan and by assessing the Jesuits’ role in each hemisphere.
Conclusions: This article revises the timeline and map of the globalization of clocks. Contrary to the prevailing historiographical consensus, this technology did not first leave Europe for the Far East around 1550. Rather, it departed from Spain via the Atlantic route in the early sixteenth century. In the New World, clocks were introduced as administrative tools decades before the Society of Jesus or the Church adopted them. In China and Japan, the Jesuits offered them as diplomatic gifts to spread Christianity, initially relying on an Indigenous clockmaker from the Canary Islands whose journey to Zhaoqing provides clues about other key actors in understanding the global phenomenon of the clock.
 

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Introducción
El relojero canario de los jesuitas y otros herreros del Extremo Oriente
Los relojes en el Nuevo Mundo antes de la Compañía de Jesús
Conclusiones