The Formation of Academic Sinology: A Material History, 1800-1860

FAIN: FT-52935-04

Patricia Angela Sieber
Ohio State University (Columbus, OH 43210-1349)

This study focuses on the formation of academic sinology between 1800-1860 in Western Europe. French, German, and British scholars active between 1800 and 1860 were responsible for carrying forward the legacy of the early Jesuit construction of China (1580-1800), while also laying the groundwork for modern sinological inquiry in China and the West (1900-present). Due to China’s status as a literate and rational culture in eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Western thinking, the academic study of China during this period also played a formative role in the emergence of other disciplines such as philology, comparative literature, and comparative linguistics.