Wirkliche und unwirkliche Chinesen im Europa der frühen Neuzeit

Abstract This paper was read on March 21,1987 in the “Herzog August Library” in Wolfenbüttel at the opening ceremony of an exhibition of European books on China printed in the 16th, 17th and 18th century. It deals with the fact that at exactly the same period when Europe was admiring the “Middle Kingdom”, China herself showed little interest in Europe. There were very few Chinese who travelled to the West, the most important group being young Christians sent to Europe by Jesuit fathers. Only one of them, Arcade Hoang (ca. 1679-1715) who helped to establish a Chinese division in the Royal Library in Paris, left notes (in French) about some of his observations on the Westem environment. They possibly initiated the literary genre of fictitious letters written by exotic - notably also “Chinese” - travellers in Europe. For the most famous early example, the lettres Persanes” (1721), was published by Montesquieu who had made Hoang’s personal aquaintance. A later text of this genre, Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Citizen of the World” (1762), suggests in a series of letters by a Chinese envoy the idea that in spite of all national or ethnic differences “the whole world is but one city”.