Acknowledgments
This book started with a random search for references to the Chinese gazette in eighteenth-century European sources. The quest for these references was part of a larger research project on the intercultural communication circuit of books between China and Europe of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Originally, I had assumed that there were not many references to the gazette to be found. I expected to spend only a few days on this search, or at most a week or two. However, the unexpected discovery of a wealth of sources made it so that the topic preoccupied me for more than three years.
During this whole period, I benefited enormously from the help, support, and friendship of many colleagues. I express my gratitude to colleagues who generously provided extra material for this book: Chen Tuo
I hope readers will enjoy “reading the gazette” as much as I did over the past few years. Maybe they will be equally amazed at the extent to which Europe was informed about China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They might even long for the time when many European scholars and savants were willing to learn from other cultures, including China. Modern-day scholars may still find themselves heeding the advice that one of their eighteenth-century predecessors gave with some enthusiasm but also with farsightedness:
Il n’y a pas de meilleur moyen de s’instruire de la Chine, que par la Chine même: car par là on est sûr de ne se point tromper, dans la connoissance du génie, & des usages de cette Nation.1
There is no better way to learn about China, than through China itself: because in this way one is sure not to be mistaken, in the knowledge of the genius and of the customs of this Nation.
Description … de la Chine (1735), vol. 2, p. 258; also quoted on the title page of Hau Kiou Choaan (1761).