Early China-West Exchanges: A Short Honeymoon

Louis XIV sent a six-member delegation to visit China. All were fellows of the French Academy of Sciences. Two of them, Joachim Bouvet and Gerbillon Jean Franois, met Emperor Kangxi and took the place of the elderly Verbiest as Kangxi’s science teacher and adviser. 15 French scientists came to China under the initiative of the two emperors. This means that the originally religious missions by European churches became State-sponsored scientific and cultural exchanges between the two sovereigns. Before that, for thousands of years, China and Europe kept an indirect, material link through trade via the land and maritime Silk Road. The only legacy in China that still tells people today about the short honeymoon between China and the West during that time are the astronomical instruments built by European missionaries at the royal observatory in Beijing and Western clocks and watches in the Palace Museum. But the honeymoon had cultural repercussions in Europe. The missionaries’ letters  aroused strong interest in Chinese culture among intellectuals in Europe, especially some pioneers of the Enlightenment. They had never been to China. Their thinking about China was mainly informed by the missionary letters.