Event Information:

• Thu

  14

  Jul

  2022

  Fri

  15

  Jul

  2022

  China Knowledge and China Perceptions in Economic Encyclopaedias of the French Age of Enlightenment (Savary Des Bruslons, Peuchet, Encyclopédie Méthodique)

  University of Bamberg

  Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink will give a lecture at a workshop on the role of China in the European knowledge order in the 17th and 18th centuries, organised by Mark Häberlein and Dorothee Schaab-Hanke at the University of Bamberg on 14 and 15 July 2022. It will focus on the question, which has hardly been considered in research so far, which economically oriented knowledge about China was conveyed in French encyclopaedias, especially in economic encyclopaedias, and which forms of perception, also of a stereotypical nature, were linked to this. After a brief outline of European-Chinese economic relations in the 18th century and an analysis of the articles on China, the project will focus on China. After a brief outline of European-Chinese economic relations in the 18th century and an analysis of the China articles in Louis Moréri's Grand Dictionnaire historique (first edition 1674) and Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopédie (1751-72), in which economic knowledge about China played a subordinate role, the lecture will focus on the China articles in the two major macroeconomically oriented French encyclopaedias of the Age of Enlightenment: Firstly, the Dictionnaire Universel de Commerce by the Savary des Bruslons brothers, published in initially three and later five folio volumes, which went through eight editions between 1723 and 1768 and was translated into five languages; and secondly, the Dictionnaire Universel de la géographie commerçante (1798-99, 4 vols. ) by Jacques Peuchet, which can be seen as a successor to Savary des Bruslons' Dictionnaire. In addition, the China articles in the partial volumes on "Géographie" (1782) and on "Économie" (1784) of the Encyclopédie Méthodique are also consulted, which in terms of their knowledge structures represented an intermediate stage between the two great economic encyclopaedias of the French 18th century (Savary des Bruslons and Peuchet).