Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes

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Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes (1759–1845) was a French merchant-trader, ambassador and scholar. He was the son of French academician and sinologue, Joseph de Guignes. He learned Chinese from his father, and then traveled to China where he stayed for the next 17 years and returned to France in 1801.

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[edit] At court of the Qianlong Emperor

In 1794-95, de Guignes served as interpreter for Isaac Titsingh, the Dutch ambassador to the court of the Qianlong Emperor of China.[1] Titsingh travelled to Peiking for celebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of the Emperor's reign. The Titsingh delegation also included the Dutch-American Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest[2], whose description of this embassy to the Chinese court were soon published in the U.S. and Europe.

Belvedere of the God of Literature, Summer Palace, before its destruction
Belvedere of the God of Literature, Summer Palace, before its destruction

In 1808, de Guignes published his account of the Titsingh mission, which provided an alternate perspective and a useful counterpoint to other reports which were then circulating.[3] Neither the Europeans nor the Chinese could have known that the Titsingh embassy would turn out to have been the last occasion in which any European appeared before the Chinese Court within the context of traditional Chinese imperial foreign relations.[4]

[edit] Sinologist

In 1808, Napolean ordered de Guignes to prepare of a Chinese-French-Latin dictionary. The work was completed five years later. Shortly after the publication, it was discovered that the dictionary was nothing more than a copy of an older work composed by the Franciscan friar, Basilio Brollo de Glemona (1648-1704). While de Guignes had altered the original by arranging the characters according to the order of the 214 radicals (as contrasted with Basilio's tone-based order), the dictionary received strong criticism in 1814 from the first person to be appointed to be a professor of Chinese at a European institution of higher learning, Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1788-1832).[5] Despite any controversy, de Guignes was elected a member of the Institut de France in the Académie des Sciences (Géographie et Navigation) and of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.[6]

[edit] References

  • de Guignes, C.-L.-J. (1813). Dictionnaire Chinois, Français et Latin, le Vocabulaire Chinois Latin. Paris.
  • de Guignes, C.-L.-J. (1808). Voyage a Pékin, Manille et l'Ile de France. Paris.
  • Duyvendak, J.J.L. (1937). "The Last Dutch Embassy to the Chinese Court (1794-1795)." T'oung Pao 33:1-137.
  • O'Neil, Patricia O. (1995). Missed Opportunities: Late 18th Century Chinese Relations with England and the Netherlands. [Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington]
  • van Braam Houckgeest, A.E. (1797). Voyage de l'ambassade de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales hollandaises vers l'empereur de la Chine, dans les années 1794 et 1795 Philadelphia; _____. (1798). An authentic account of the embassy of the Dutch East-India Company, to the court of the emperor of China, in the years 1794 and 1795. London.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Duyvendak, J.J.L. (1937). 'The Last Dutch Embassy to the Chinese Court (1794-1795).' T'oung Pao 33:1-137.
  2. ^ van Braam Houckgeest, A.E. (1797). Voyage de l'ambassade de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales hollandaises vers l'empereur de la Chine, dans les années 1794 et 1795 Philadelphia; _____. (1798). An authentic account of the embassy of the Dutch East-India Company, to the court of the emperor of China, in the years 1794 and 1795. London.
  3. ^ de Guignes, C.-L.-J. (1808). Voyage a Pékin, Manille et l'Ile de France. Paris.
  4. ^ O'Neil, Patricia O. (1995). Missed Opportunities: Late 18th Century Chinese Relations with England and the Netherlands. [Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington]
  5. ^ Zurndorfer, Harriet Thelma. (1995) China Bibliography: A Research Guide to Reference Works about China Past and Present. New York.
  6. ^ see http://www.lyc-fustel.ac-strasbourg.fr/Bibliotheque_des_prof/IUT/Dico.htm
Persondata
NAME de Guignes, Chrétien-Louis-Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION French diplomat
DATE OF BIRTH 1759
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH 1845
PLACE OF DEATH
Languages