Julius Klaproth (1783-1835) Leben und Werk, and: Julius Klaproth (1783-1835): Briefe und Dokumente, and: Zur Geschichte der Ostasienwissenschaft: Abel Remusat (1788-1832) und das Umfeld Julius Klaproth (1783-1835) (review)

The origins of sinology is a story filled with bright minds and ambitious personalities who were fascinated by a culture that was remote, in the physical, linguistic, and cultural senses, from Europe. Sinology was initially part of the study of the Orient, which included all of Asia. However, unlike Middle Eastern scholarship, where there was a Biblical tradition on which to build, including a knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, the study of East Asian cultures required that scholars begin from scratch. This was an area ripe for exploitation by charlatans and literary hacks, and, as a result, early sinologists were involved in an effort not only to study the languages and literatures of East Asia, but also to distinguish the intellectual impostors among themselves. It is in this context that we need to read these three volumes on Julius Klaproth and his milieu.

When Western interest in China began to develop in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the earliest research had been done by scholars whose expertise lay outside China. These proto-sinologists were, in many cases, men possessed of enormous curiosity, remarkable intelligence, and breadth of knowledge. Almost inevitably, this vast, unknown sphere attracted intellectual adventurers, some of whom were attempting to gain fame and fortune in an area where few were knowledgeable enough to identify impostors. But regardless of whether they were genuine scholars or literary hacks, the ability of proto-sinologists to read Chinese texts was minimal or nonexistent. (We need to distinguish the protosinologists from the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jesuit missionaries to China, many of whom were both scholarly and proficient in Chinese.) However, by the mid-nineteenth century, sinology had emerged as an academic discipline in which scholars specialized in the study of China and were moving from proficiency to expertise in reading Chinese texts.

The transition from proto-sinology to sinology came in the early 1800s and was centered in Paris. Two of the most important figures in this transition were the Frenchman Jean Pierre Abel Rémusat (1788-1832) and his German colleague and friend, Julius Klaproth (1783-1835). They worked together in Paris during the years 1815-1832 and were leading figures in the founding of the Société Asiatique, which played an important role in the early development of European sinology. Unlike the proto-sinologists, they had a high degree of proficiency in Chinese. However, they differed from later sinologists in that their proficiency in Chinese was limited by their attempt to study as well other Asian languages as diverse as Armenian, Manchu, and the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt. Later sinologists would increasingly concentrate on Chinese and Chinese-related languages—the so-called Sinitic (Sino-Tibetan) languages—and consequently would develop an expertise that Rémusat and Klaproth lacked.

Viewed in this light, Klaproth, Rémusat, and Antonio Montucci (1762-1829) represent watershed figures. Preceding them were proto-sinologists like Etienne Fourmont (1683-1745), Nicolas Fréret (1688-1749), Joseph de Guignes senior (1721-1800), Nicolas-Gabriel Clerc (1726-1798), and Joseph Hager (1757-1819). After them came (for the most part academic) sinologists like Rémusat's pupil Stanislas Julien (1799-1873), Jean-Pierre-Guillaume Pauthier (1801-1873), Johann Heinrich Plath (1802-1874), Wilhelm Schott (1807-1889), James Legge (1814-1897), Alexander Wylie (1815-1887), and Georg von der Gabelentz (1840-1893).¹

Klaproth, Rémusat, and Montucci...