There is a new piece now posted in Early China books (read more) on the seven French Jesuit priests recruited at the request of Ferdinand Verbiest in Peking, and sent to China by Louis XIV in 1685. They are famous as part of an extraordinary group of 17^th C Jesuit missionaries in China, many of whom became very close to the Chinese Emperors, particularly the Kiangxi Emperor, teaching mathematics and astronomy, even serving as diplomats for the Emperor. One stayed in Siam, one tried an inland route but failed, and five reached Peking. There are two books from amongst those five, by Joachim Bouvet and Louis Le Comte, which were published in Europe in the 1690s. They had an enormous influence, contributing to the growing awareness of China, its cultural influence on the development of the Enlightenment, and as a part of the linking of the greatest of the world powers at the time – France under Louis XIV and China under the Kangxi Emperor. We might add Russia under Peter the Great as a third, Peter also sending missions and envoys to China by the inland route across Siberia and Mongolia (see the accounts by Ysbrand Ides and Adam Brand in the 1690s and early 1700s).

The accounts were also were part of the increasing prevalence of travel writing, also meeting a growing public interest, nicely exemplified by the quote from Le Comte’s preface:

‘I know not of the two which to blame most, him that publishes hasty indigested relations of his Travels, or the Reader that runs ‘em over slightly and heedlessly.  The Business of writing Voyages is not altogether so light a Task as most are apt to Fancy, it requires not only Wit and Judgement, to manage it successfully, but likewise Sincerity, Exactness, and a simple Insinuating Stile, and Learning besides; for as a Painter, to be a Master in his Art, ought to know the propriety and force of all sorts of Colours, so whoever undertakes a Description of the People, Arts and Sciences, and the Religions of the New World, must also have a large Stock of Knowledge, and in a manner an Universal Genius.’ (Louis Le Comte, 1697)

As a nice piece of coincidental information, a little while back I came across a French vineyard in the Gironde producing a line labelled Louis Le Comte! Its from Vignobles Chaigne & Fils, Château Baan-Larquette, 33540 St Laurent du Bois. You never know where people pop up. There is also a modern French edition of Le Comte’s account: Un Jésuite à Pékin: Nouveaux Mémoires Sur L état Présent De La Chine 1687-1692. Phebus, 1991. There don’t seem to be modern English editions of either Bouvet or Le Comte, though contemporary English editions were published.