In the eighteenth century, c1assical scholars shared a simultaneous passion for antiquity and new forms of scholarship. Scholars re-appropriated the mathematical c1assics and early astronomy in the millennial quest for ancient wisdom. In a post-Jesuit world, the Ch’ing court during the Ch’ien-lung era was fortuitously buffered from contemporary European wars and the revolutionary changes then preoccupying Britain and France. In this geopolitical vacuum, Ch’ing literati sought to compare what they knew of European learning, brought principally by the Jesuits, with native learning. Though the priority was on the latter, the restoration of ancient learning allowed Manchus and Chinese to bring under control early modern European contributions in mathematics and astronomy. The Jesuits in China had devised a unique, accommodation approach to gain the trust of the Ch’ing court and its gentry elites, which they rarely employed in Japan, India, or Southeast Asia, not to mention the “NewWorld.” Matteo Ricci and his immediate followers prioritized natural studies and mathematical astronomy during the late Ming and early Ch’ing because they recognized that Chinese literati and Ming and Ch’ing emperors were interested in such fields. Such literati interests in natural studies and “Western learning” continued in the eighteenth century despite the impact of the Rites Controversy. Hence, the account here challenges the usual image of Chinese lack of curiosity concerning early modern European science. The reverse of current c1aims about Chinese disinterest in European science is the parallel assertion that Christianity and science had only marginal influence on Chinese literati before the nineteenth century. Many still emphasize the requirement to understand, first and foremost, the key, internal issues inscribed in the classical debates of Ming-Ch’ing scholars. In the round, this c1aim has many merits. It over looks, however, parallel events in European and Chinese intellectual and social history that imply that literati interests in European science were cut short not by Chinese disinterest but by the failure of the Jesuit mission to act as a reliable conduit of scientific and mathematical knowledge during and after the K’ang-hsi reign. The Chinese “lack of knowledge” about scientific developments in eighteenth century Europe represented a breakdown of scientific transmission that can be tied directly to the demise of the Jesuits and their schools in Europe during the eighteenth century, which vicariously affected Chinese information about new trends there. Michel Benoist, for example, finally introduced an accurate account of Copernican cosmology in China after Church’s ban ended in 1757. Anti-Jesuit polemics generated first by the Jansenists and later by the Enlightenment philosophes, however, led to suppression of the order, first in Portugal in 1759 and then by France, Spain, Naples, and Parma, before the Pope dissolved the order wor1dwide in 1773. China’s “window on Europe” was shattered by forces internal to both European and Chinese history.