1.Introduction

The historiography of Chinese language studies in the West is characterized by several different perspectives and approaches. One common trend is a focus on the historical development of linguistic ideas by asking how and when particular terms and concepts developed and how these were applied to the study of the Chinese language (e.g. Casacchia and Gianninoto 2012Casacchia, Giorgio & Mariarosaria Gianninoto 2012 Storia della linguistica cinese. Venice: Cafoscarina., Gianninoto 2014Gianninoto, Mariarosaria 2014 “The Development of Chinese Grammars and the Classification of the Parts of Speech”. Language & History 57:2. 137–148. , 2023Gianninoto, Mariarosaria 2023 “Transposing Linguistic Categories and Terminology: Interactions between Western and Chinese Linguistic Traditions”. When the West meets the East: Early Western Accounts of the Languages of the Sinosphere and their Impact on the History of Chinese Linguistics, ed. by Barbara Meisterernst, 147–168. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag., Kilarski 2014Kilarski, Marcin 2014 “The Place of Classifiers in the History of Linguistics”. Historiographia Linguistica 41:1. 33–78. , Pellin 2011Pellin, Tommaso 2011 “The Sweet Revolutionaries: The Chinese Revolution in Grammar Studies and Henry Sweet”. Language & History 54:1. 35–57. , Peverelli 2015Peverelli, Peter 2015 The History of Modern Chinese Grammar Studies. Berlin& Heidelberg: Springer. , Peyraube and Chappell 2023Peyraube, Alain & Hilary M. Chappell 2023 “Early Linguistic Traditions in China, With an Appendix on Western Grammars of Sinitic Languages”. The Cambridge History of Linguistics ed. by Linda R. Waugh, Monique Monville-Burston, John E. Joseph, 54–67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ). Another body of research centres on particular works and/or linguistic genres by placing their content into historical context and, in doing so, determining their historical position (e.g. Chappell and Lamarre 2005Chappell, Hilary & Christine Lamarre 2005 A Grammar and Lexicon of Hakka: Historical Materials from the Basel Mission Library. Paris: CRLAO, École des Hautes Études en Science Sociales., Chappell and Peyraube 2014Chappell, Hilary & Alain Peyraube 2014 “The History of Chinese Grammars in Chinese and Western Scholarly Traditions”. Language & History 57:2. 107–136. , Klöter 2011Klöter, Henning 2011 The Language of the Sangleys: A Chinese Vernacular in Missionary Sources of the Seventeenth Century. Leiden & Boston: Brill. , Klöter 2019Klöter, Henning 2019 “China from c. 1700”. The Cambridge World History of Lexicography ed. by John Considine, 317–339. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , Paternicò 2013Paternicò, Luisa Maria 2013  When the Europeans Began to Study Chinese: Martino Martini’s Grammatica Linguae Sinensis (= Leuven Chinese Studies, 24). Leuven: Leuven University Press/Ferdinand Verbiest Foundation K.U. Leuven.). This approach again needs to be distinguished from that of biographies of language scholars and their contributions to the discipline. Biographical approaches typically look at eminent scholars, whose pioneering contributions are hardly ever questioned, such as the Swedish sinologist Bernhard Karlgren (1889–1978; Johansson 2011Johansson, Perry 2011 Saluting the Yellow Emperor: A Case of Swedish Sinography. Leiden & Boston: Brill.: 11–43, Malmqvist 2011Malmqvist, N[ils] D[avid] G[öran] 2011 Bernhard Karlgren: Portrait of a Scholar. Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press.) or the German scholar Georg von der Gabelentz (1840–1893; e.g. Gimm 2013Gimm, Martin 2013 Georg von der Gabelentz zum Gedenken: Materialien zu Leben und Werk. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz., Klöter and Li 2020Klöter, Henning & Xuetao Li eds. 2020 Von Lindenblättern und verderbten Dialekten: Neue Studien zu Georg von der Gabelentz (1840–1893). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag., McElvenny 2019McElvenny, James ed. 2019 Gabelentz and the Science of Language. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.). Biographical approaches are often connected to national or regional histories of Chinese linguistics, as evidenced by the entries in the five-volume Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics (Alleton 2017Alleton, Viviane 2017 “Chinese Linguistics in France”. Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, ed. by Rint Sybesma [et al.], 478–483., Bartos 2017Bartos, Huba 2017 “Chinese Linguistics in Eastern Europe”. Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, ed. by Rint Sybesma [ et al.], 475–478. Leiden & Boston: Brill., Eifring 2017Eifring, Halvor 2017 “Chinese Linguistics in Scandinavia”. Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, vol. I, ed. by Rint Sybesma [ et al.], 512–516. Leiden & Boston: Brill., Raini 2017Raini, Emanuele 2017 “Chinese Linguistics in Italy”. Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, vol. i, ed. by Rint Sybesma [ et al.], 483–490. Leiden & Boston: Brill., Sybesma 2017Sybesma, Rint 2017 “Chinese Linguistics in the Netherlands”. Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, ed. by Rint Sybesma [ et al.], 537–543. Leiden & Boston: Brill., Walravens and Behr 2017Walravens, Hartmut & Wolfgang Behr 2017 “Chinese Linguistics in the German speaking world”. Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, vol. i, ed. by Rint Sybesma [ et al.], 526–537. Leiden & Boston: Brill., Zavyalova 2017Zavyalova, Olga 2017 “Chinese Linguistics in Russia”. Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, ed. by Rint Sybesma [ et al.], 497–512. Leiden & Boston: Brill., Zhang 2017Zhang, Hongmin 2017 “Chinese Linguistics in North America”. Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, ed. by Rint Sybesma [ et al.], 497–505. Leiden & Boston: Brill.).

Although each of these approaches has its merits, all are also characterized by different degrees of one-dimensionality, as each frames linguistic historiography around one analytical reference point. By contrast, this article aims to present the history of Chinese language studies in Europe as a complex development of interwoven intellectual, material, institutional, and logistic processes. This complexity is mainly due to the spatial and linguistic distance between Chinese and European languages, which markedly distinguishes Chinese linguistics in Europe from the study of nearby European languages. In particular, Chinese is a language that is, from a European perspective, spoken in a country that was virtually unreachable and inaccessible for many centuries. Spatial and linguistic distance are closely related: before the beginning of cultural exchanges, Chinese did not share cognate words with Indo-European languages, and a huge amount of its cultural lexicon is rooted in a culture, and therefore in a framework of reference points, unrelated to European culture and civilisation, and vice versa. Thus, by addressing the areal and intercultural interstices of linguistic historiography, this article is about neither European nor Chinese traditions, but rather about the specific challenges involved in overcoming spatial, linguistic and conceptual distance.

Against this backdrop, my attempt at conceptualising the history of Chinese linguistics in Europe as a series of interwoven processes centres on distance and the gradual process of overcoming it. Overcoming distance not only has a bearing on the possibility or impossibility of collecting first-hand language data, but, arguably even more importantly, on the possibility of making empirically informed challenges to claims made by others, for which the availability of verifiable data is a prerequisite. Since spoken data collected in the field can now be made accessible and therefore verifiable through digital databases, the standards for verifiability are higher than ever before in history. While, to state the obvious, digital devices are completely irrelevant when speaking of the history of Chinese linguistics, the mention of digital databases reminds us that data access, like language documentation in general, is inseparable from material conditions. Thus, when we examine a given historical stage, we should not only look at the content of the sources but also take into account the material conditions of knowledge production and other factors behind the dissemination of knowledge.

In brief, this article places the development of linguistic thought within the context of the material conditions of knowledge dissemination as exemplified by the shift from manuscript-based knowledge production to the printing of digraphic Chinese-Western works.11.Digraphic printing in this article refers to the systematic integration of Chinese and Western fonts in one printed document. This material shift is again inseparable from logistic questions of accessibility: when and under what circumstances did Westerners obtain direct access to China and Chinese language data? How did increased access change the field of language studies? The combination of these factors would be incomplete without looking at the institutionalisation of Chinese language studies in European universities and its influence on language-related knowledge production and dissemination. It is in the very nature of such a complex interweaving of processes that their underlying factors do not unfold simultaneously. Therefore, no attempt will be made to re-define periods in the history of Chinese linguistics in the West. Although this article is structured chronologically along centuries, these are not regarded as closed chronological containers but as general reference points.

The point of departure is the late sixteenth century, when the first European books on China were published. Analogous to the existing concept of sinomania, the term sinographomania is introduced here to elucidate the early myth-making surrounding Chinese characters or sinographs that unfolded with the publication of these books. In Section 2, I argue that this development resulted from a combination of the peculiarities of digraphic printing in those days and the absence of accessibility to authentic language data. The beginning of Christian missions in Asia during the seventeenth century opened up access to China and its languages, leading to the compilation of numerous handwritten dictionaries, teaching manuals, and grammars. However, as discussed in Section 3, these manuscripts reached Europe on a relatively small scale, and only a few scholars had access to even these, not to speak of immediate access to China. This ‘double inaccessibility’ vanished in the nineteenth century with the expansion of steamboat traffic and, as a consequence, rapidly increasing mobility to and from China. In Section 4, I explain how, when it came to the professionalisation of Sinology and Chinese linguistics in the nineteenth century, sea travel was intertwined with other factors such as the formation of academic institutions and progress in digraphic printing.

There are two generalizations in this article that require clarification. First, at various points, I concurrently refer to Sinology and Chinese linguistics. In its historical genesis, I regard the latter as a field of inquiry that is integral to the former. Thus, from a historical perspective, the study of Chinese languages is inseparable from the study of China in its broader historical, cultural, and religious contexts. This is especially true for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when language-related studies were a cornerstone of European Sinology. It has only been towards the end of the twentieth century that this connection was loosened. The social turn during the 1980s has led to an obvious marginalization of linguistics within Sinology.22.Since the beginning of political reforms and China’s opening towards the West in the late 1970s, many universities in Europe and the US have established professorships in contemporary politics and society. By contrast, the state of Chinese linguistics in Germany in the late 1990s, as noted by Kaden (1999Kaden, Klaus 1999 “Das gespaltene Verhältnis der deutschen Sinologie zur Sprachwissenschaft”. Chinawissenschaften — deutschsprachige Entwicklungen: Geschichte, Personen, Perspektiven, ed. by Helmut Martin & Christiane Hammer, 332–343. Hamburg: Institut für Asienkunde.: 340), is a cause for concern, with the relevant linguistic subareas “given little attention or even wholly neglected, even though all Sinologists agree that the Chinese language is the basis of all branches of Sinology or Chinese Studies (translation HK). Although this remark is about the situation in Germany some 25 years ago, it can also be applied to the current situation and other countries in Europe and North America. At the same time, the Chinese language is now prominently featured in the research agendas of general linguistics institutes, which are distinct from Sinology. Second, for stylistic convenience, I use the singular expression ‘Chinese language’ as an umbrella term for various Chinese or Sinitic languages.33.For an overview of China’s language situation, I refer to Arcodia & Basciano (2021Arcodia, Giorgio Francesco & Bianca Basciano 2021 Chinese Linguistics: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. : 6–61). I also do not distinguish between the classical Chinese literary language and Mandarin or other spoken Sinitic languages as historical objects of inquiry. The question of when European scholars started to make such distinctions and how they conceptualized language variation would constitute a study on its own, which must be left for future research.

2.The seeds of sinographomania

From the first sporadic mentions of the Chinese language in European sources in the fourteenth century, there was an exoticizing focus on the Chinese script (cf. Harbsmeier 1998Harbsmeier, Christoph 1998 Language and Logic (vol. 7:1 of Science and Civilization in China, ed. by Joseph Needham). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.: 8–9, 34). This culminated with the publication of the first three monographs on China. These appeared in very close succession at the end of the sixteenth century, at a time when China was predominantly, albeit not entirely, inaccessible for Europeans. The author of the first monograph, Gaspar da Cruz (1520–1570), a Dominican missionary, had reached China in the 1550s when he preached for one month in the city of Guangzhou (Borao 2009Borao, José Eugenio 2009 “Macao as the Non-Entry Point to China: The Case of the Spanish Dominican Missionaries (1587–1632)”. Paper presented at the International Conference on The Role and Status of Macao in the Propagation of Catholicism in the East , Macao, 3rd–5th November 2009, Centre of Sino-Western Cultural Studies, Istituto Politecnico de Macao. Online at http://​homepage​.ntu​.edu​.tw​/~borao​/2Profesores​/Macao%20Gate​.pdf, last accessed October 3rd, 2023.: 2). After his return, he published his ‘Treatise on things Chinese’ (Tractado em que se co[m]tam muito por este[n]so as cousas da China, da Cruz 1569Cruz, Gaspar da 1569 Tractado em que se co[m]tam muito por este[n]so as cousas da China, co[n] suas particularidades, [e] assi do reyno dormuz. Euora: em casa de Andre de Burgos.). Consisting of 29 chapters and spanning 175 pages, the Tractado is “the first European book devoted exclusively to China” (Lach 1965Lach, Donald F. 1965 Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. I: The Century of Discovery, book two. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.: 742). Language is just one of the numerous subjects discussed in the Tractado. In the header of Chapter 17, the author asserts that “the Chinese understand each other in writing and not by speech in divers tongues” (‘se entendem por pena nam por palaura em diuersas lingoas’; da Cruz 1569Cruz, Gaspar da 1569 Tractado em que se co[m]tam muito por este[n]so as cousas da China, co[n] suas particularidades, [e] assi do reyno dormuz. Euora: em casa de Andre de Burgos.: 95, English translation by Boxer 1953Boxer, C[harles] R[alph] ed. 1953 South China in the Sixteenth Century (1550–1575): Being the Narratives of Galeote Pereira, Fr. Gaspar da Cruz, O.P., Fr. Martín de Rada, O.E.S.A. (1550–1575). London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society.: 158). Within the chapter, the author goes on to claim that “the Chinese have no fixed letters in their writing, for all that they write is by figures” (‘Nam tem os chinas letras certas no escrever, porque tudo bo que escrevem be por figuras’; da Cruz 1569Cruz, Gaspar da 1569 Tractado em que se co[m]tam muito por este[n]so as cousas da China, co[n] suas particularidades, [e] assi do reyno dormuz. Euora: em casa de Andre de Burgos.: 99, translation based on Boxer 1953Boxer, C[harles] R[alph] ed. 1953 South China in the Sixteenth Century (1550–1575): Being the Narratives of Galeote Pereira, Fr. Gaspar da Cruz, O.P., Fr. Martín de Rada, O.E.S.A. (1550–1575). London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society.: 161, slightly modified). Highlighting “the great multitude of letters” (‘grande multidam de letras’) he goes on to state that each thing is signified by a letter, “in such sort that one only letter signifies ‘Heaven’, another ‘earth’, and another ‘man’” (‘De maneira que uma soo letra lhes significa ceo e outra terra e outra homem’; ibid.).

The series of early China-related books was continued in 1577Escalante, Bernardino de 1577 Discurso de la navegación que los portugueses hazen a los reinos y provincias del oriente, y de la noticia que se tiene del reino de la China. Sevilla: Viuda de Alonso Escribano. by ‘Discourse of the Navigation’(Discurso de la navegacion) by the Spanish soldier and priest Bernardino de Escalante (ca. 1537– after 1605; Lach 1965Lach, Donald F. 1965 Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. I: The Century of Discovery, book two. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.: 742), followed by the ‘History of the most remarkable things, rites and customs of the great kingdom of China’ (Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China) by the Augustinian missionary Juan González de Mendoza (1545–1618) in 1585González de Mendoza, Juan 1585 Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China. Rome: a costa de Bartholome Grassi.. Translated into different European languages, “the authority of Mendoza’s book was so great that it became the point of departure and the basis of comparison for all subsequent European works on China written before the eighteenth century” (Lach 1965Lach, Donald F. 1965 Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. I: The Century of Discovery, book two. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.: 744). Thus, after centuries of widespread neglect, the twenty years after 1569 drastically changed the way China was perceived in Europe. And, despite their brevity, the passages on language in these publications had a lasting influence on European scholarship. It can even be argued that the legacy of these books can be traced right up to the present day, whenever the myth of ideographic writing and the supposedly language-boundary-crossing character of Chinese writing resurfaces.

Escalante’s and Mendoza’s remarks on the Chinese language did not modify the direction previously taken by da Cruz. Establishing the practice of providing “commonly repeated information” (Luca 2016Luca, Dinu 2016 The Chinese Language in European Texts: The Early Period. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. : 82), they highlight the notions that Chinese is written with figures representing things, that thousands of such characters exist, and that written communication across the boundaries of mutually unintelligible languages is possible. However, one important difference between da Cruz’s Tractado and the other two books is the inclusion of shapes resembling sinographs in the latter. Although it cannot claim the historical honour of being Europe’s first printed book on China, Escalante’s Discurso is nonetheless the first book of its kind with a chapter on Chinese writing displaying Chinese characters, or rather unorthodox visual reinterpretations of sinographs (cf. Luca 2016Luca, Dinu 2016 The Chinese Language in European Texts: The Early Period. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. : 81).

A combination of imagination and sinological contextualization makes it possible to match up the three shapes to the sinographs for 天 ‘heaven’, 皇 ‘emperor’, and 城 ‘city’ (cf. Luca 2016Luca, Dinu 2016 The Chinese Language in European Texts: The Early Period. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. : 81).44.A facsimile showing the three characters in Escalante’s Discourso can be found in Luca (2016Luca, Dinu 2016 The Chinese Language in European Texts: The Early Period. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. : 82). The inclusion of roughly identifiable characters is not the only noteworthy feature of Escalante’s text. Appearing directly after the demonstrative esta ‘this’ referring to them, the characters also occupy an appropriate spot in the running text and they are well-proportioned in relation to the Spanish metatext. In other words, despite the limitations of printing techniques, Escalante’s book somehow succeeds in integrating specimens of a non-Western script into a treatise written in the Roman alphabet. By contrast, even the wildest imagination is not much help when it comes to the English translation by John Frampton (1579Frampton, John transl. 1579 A Discourse of the Navigation which the Portugales Doe Make to the Realmes and Provinces of the East Partes of the Worlde, and of the knowledge that growes by them of the great things which are in the dominions of China [English translation of de Escalante 1577]. London: Thomas Dawson.), which is marked by the disintegration of both the graphemic components constituting the sinograph and the graph in relation to the text.55.A digital sample page can be accessed through the Folger Shakespeare Library at https://​digitalcollections​.folger​.edu​/img31690 (last accessed July 24th, 2024). The resulting unrelatability to existing graphs and their suggested readings “strengthens the pictorial aspect of the translation—emphasized, no doubt, by the presence of a frame of white space that keeps the foreign script separated from the familiar notation—in relation to the more textual original” (Luca 2016Luca, Dinu 2016 The Chinese Language in European Texts: The Early Period. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. : 82). As I will discuss below in Section 4.3, more than 250 years later, the digraphic realization of linguistic information was still considered a major challenge when it came to the dissemination of knowledge relating to the Chinese language in Europe.

In contrast to da Cruz, Mendoza, the author of the most influential book on China, did not have the opportunity to physically visit China, despite having once had the intention of doing so during the early stages of his life (cf. Lach 1965Lach, Donald F. 1965 Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. I: The Century of Discovery, book two. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.: 747). His descriptions are entirely based on reports by others: the passages about Chinese writing in his work are mainly verbatim reproductions of Escalante’s Discurso, which itself drew extensively on da Cruz’s Tractado. Since Escalante is likewise not known for having had access to China, one is left wondering what he drew on to be able to include concrete examples of Chinese writing. Prior research has established da Cruz’s Tractado as his primary and most significant source of knowledge. However, as the Tractado does not include any instances of Chinese writing, it is evident that additional sources must have contributed to the visual inclusion of sinographs. Escalante’s Discurso was published at a time when some travellers to Asia had made it back to Europe; he also “testifies that he saw a Chinese make characters” (Lach 1965Lach, Donald F. 1965 Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. I: The Century of Discovery, book two. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.: 743; see also Luca 2016Luca, Dinu 2016 The Chinese Language in European Texts: The Early Period. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. : 118, fn. 29). Thus, generally speaking, it can be inferred that information included in the Tractado relied on hearsay, chance encounters, unattributed quotations from unknown sources, and other forms of information dissemination.

On whatever basis the characters made it into the books of Escalante and Mendoza, their peculiar shape reminds us of the importance of the material conditions of knowledge production. Back then, printing Chinese characters in Europe was exceedingly challenging, and the production of books that effectively incorporated printed Chinese characters and the Roman alphabet was a formidable endeavour. Irrespective of these technological challenges, the visual aspects of Escalante’s and Mendoza’s narratives are inherently intertwined with their respective contents. Through their visual representation and conceptual emphasis on Chinese “figures,” they effectively highlighted writing as the fundamental characteristic of the Chinese language. Therefore, it was not solely the technological constraints of the printing process that hindered authors such as Escalante from providing more language data—their emphasis on the script aligned better with the language-ideological perspective of portraying China as the exotic Other (cf. Luca 2016Luca, Dinu 2016 The Chinese Language in European Texts: The Early Period. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. : 81). The written characters were presented and framed as curiosities rather than being treated as genuine linguistic data.

The brief mention of Chinese writing in Escalante’s Discurso had a notable impact and unleashed an enormous “trope-producing potential” (Luca 2016Luca, Dinu 2016 The Chinese Language in European Texts: The Early Period. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. : 81). This laid the foundation for enduring myths about the Chinese language that have become deeply embedded in the field of Chinese linguistics and beyond. Turning the spotlight on the Chinese script, they paved the way for sinographomania, which I define as an enduring persistence of an at times overly pronounced and uncritical ‘written language bias’ (Linell 2005Linell, Per 2005 The Written Language Bias in Linguistics: Its Nature, Origins and Transformations. London: Routledge.) in Chinese linguistics. Resurfacing in different early works of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (cf. Lehner 2004Lehner, Georg 2004 Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa: Entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 14–15), the three ‘Escalante characters’ and their metalinguistic framing induced the “most seductive notion” (DeFrancis 1984DeFrancis, John 1984 The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. : 133) of Chinese characters representing meaning independently from the spoken language. This “ideographic myth,” as DeFrancis (1984DeFrancis, John 1984 The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. : 133–148) has termed it, forms the logical basis of the “universality myth” (ibid., 149–160). Since, according to this myth’s underlying belief, characters are detached from speech, they have the potential to cross language boundaries and can thus function as a means of written communication for speakers speaking different languages.

3.Missionary linguistics, double inaccessibility, and the beginnings of Chinese language studies in Europe

Only a few years after the publication of Escalante’s and Mendoza’s books, the conditions for European scholarship on Chinese languages changed fundamentally. These changes can be attributed to the advent of the Jesuit mission in China and to the arrival of Dominican and Franciscan missionaries in Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines. The Jesuits initially settled in the city of Macao and at first encountered difficulties in gaining entry to the Chinese mainland. However, they successfully arrived in the southeastern province of Guangdong in 1582 and the northern city of Beijing in 1601 (Rule 2016Rule, Paul 2016 “The Historiography of the Jesuits in China”. Jesuit Historiography Online, last accessed October 3rd, 2023. ). Simultaneously, in the year 1565, the Spanish colonization of the Philippines and the influx of Chinese migrants to the region facilitated the emergence of Chinese language documentation beyond the borders of China (Klöter 2011Klöter, Henning 2011 The Language of the Sangleys: A Chinese Vernacular in Missionary Sources of the Seventeenth Century. Leiden & Boston: Brill. ; for a synopsis of Chinese missionary linguistics, I refer to Klöter 2017Klöter, Henning 2017 “Missionary Linguistics.” Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, vol. 3, ed. by Rint Sybesma [ et al.], 41–46. Leiden & Boston: Brill. and Masini 2019Masini, Federico 2019 “Chinese Language and Christianity”. The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Applied Linguistics ed. by Chu-Ren Huang, Zhuo Jing-Schmidt, and Barbara Meisterernst, 44–60. Abingdon, New York: Routledge. ). On the one hand, from the perspective of accessibility, the resulting Chinese-Western encounter induced tremendous changes. Direct interaction with Chinese speakers and authentic in-situ experiences led to the compilation of several ground-breaking works that have informed the field of Chinese linguistics up to the present day. On the other hand, limited changes can be observed in the material and institutional conditions of knowledge dissemination within Europe. Although some important documents written by missionaries in China did reach Europe, their reception remained limited and selective.

The advent of missionaries such as Michele Ruggieri (1543–1607) and Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) ushered in a new era characterized by prolonged and profound interactions with China and its languages. Casual and sporadic interactions gradually became extended periods of residence, leading to the development of scholarly works of exceptional calibre. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, several significant works were produced in the field of Chinese linguistics in the missionary context. These include Nicolas Trigault’s Xiru ermu zi 西儒耳目資 (‘Aid for the Ears and Eyes of Western Literati’, 1626Trigault, Nicolas 1626 Xiru ermu zi 西儒耳目資 [‘An Aid for the Ears and Eyes of Western Literati’], s.l.), Martino Martini’s Grammatica Linguae Sinensis (1696), and Basilio Brollo’s Dictionarium Sinico-Latinum (1694Brollo, Basilio 1694 Dictionarium Sinico-Latinum 漢字西譯. Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Rinuccini 22.), among others. Outside China, the available manuscripts mostly documented the Sinitic Hokkien language spoken by the Chinese migrants in the Philippines. The oldest extant example is Pedro Chirino’s Dictionarium Sino Hispanicum (1604Chirino, Pedro 1604 Dictionarium Sino Hispanicum. Biblioteca Angelica (Rome), MS 60.), which can be considered a combination of a phrase book and an instructional guide in contemporary terms (cf. Klöter 2011Klöter, Henning 2011 The Language of the Sangleys: A Chinese Vernacular in Missionary Sources of the Seventeenth Century. Leiden & Boston: Brill. : 63). The earliest grammar of a Chinese language is the Arte de la lengua chio chiu, which was composed in 1620Anonymous 1620 Arte de la Lengua Chio Chiu. Biblioteca de la Universidad de Barcelona, Ms. 1027. by an anonymous Spanish missionary.66.The signature of Melchor de Mançano appears at the end of the manuscript, which is why some studies ascribe authorship to him (e.g., Lin and Peyraube 2023Lin, Xiao & Alain Peyraube 2023 “Some grammatical issues on Old Pekingese and Early Northern Mandarin dialects, with new comments on Western and native documents”. Zaoqi Hanyu fangyan yufa 早期漢語方言語法 [Early Chinese Dialect Grammars] ed. by Min-hua Chiang & Carine Yuk-man Yiu, 269–305. Taipei: Academia Sinica, Institute of Linguistics.: 272, Chappell and Peyraube 2014Chappell, Hilary & Alain Peyraube 2014 “The History of Chinese Grammars in Chinese and Western Scholarly Traditions”. Language & History 57:2. 107–136. : 113, Peyraube and Chappell 2023Peyraube, Alain & Hilary M. Chappell 2023 “Early Linguistic Traditions in China, With an Appendix on Western Grammars of Sinitic Languages”. The Cambridge History of Linguistics ed. by Linda R. Waugh, Monique Monville-Burston, John E. Joseph, 54–67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. : 64). Since the signature appears at a spot that is quite remote from the main text, and since there is no textual evidence explicitly suggesting authorship, this piece of evidence must be taken with caution. Mançano could just as well have signed as a copyist or owner of the manuscript, which is why I maintain the claim of anonymous authorship. As I will discuss below, this work nicely showcases the formal and functional changes that missionary works underwent when they were analysed, translated, and re-published by European scholars. All the works above were produced as a result of extended periods spent in an authentic Chinese language environment, extensive interaction with Chinese scholars and/or tutors, and the practical necessity of actively acquiring the language in order to effectively address the communicative demands of missionary work and, in the context of the Philippines, colonial governance.

While missionary linguistics was crucially dependent on access to remote regions and their languages, it is important to consider the various factors that affected accessibility to these areas. Attempts to reach far-away places were extremely challenging, both in terms of personal risk and prolonged time commitments. Based on estimations, around 50 percent of the missionaries departing from Europe to China between 1581 and 1712 succumbed to the dangers posed by the maritime voyage (cf. Brockey 2007Brockey, Liam Matthew 2007 Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579–1724. Cambridge, MA & London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. : 234). The individuals who successfully completed the undertaking were facing “almost a year in cramped quarters under the shadow of death” (ibid.). Against this background, it is reasonable to assert that accessibility was severely restricted, with China effectively remaining out of reach for the expanding group of European intellectuals with a keen interest in the Chinese language.

Linguistic documents such as dictionaries, grammars, and other primary accounts were transmitted to Europe in the form of manuscripts, either through procurators dispatched from the Chinese missions to Europe or, more importantly, through direct correspondence with the missionaries. It is evident that, in contrast to the printed literature of the nineteenth century, most manuscripts were unique copies that could only be accessed at a certain location. They became inaccessible in the event of loss, destruction, or theft. In contrast to the printed books and journals of the nineteenth century, discussed in Section 4.3, they had a comparatively limited impact on the transmission of information. Having access to these manuscripts or maintaining fruitful correspondence with missionaries was a privilege of the few. At this juncture, the concept of accessibility acquired a new dimension, as it encompassed not only the geographically remote region of China, but also the highly sought-after textual materials authored by missionaries, which posed their own challenges in terms of obtaining access. In other words, before the nineteenth century, scholarly discourse on Chinese language and culture was characterized by a double inaccessibility, i.e. the dual challenge of limited direct access to the language and restricted availability of pertinent sources. As a consequence, as pointed out by Harbsmeier, “concern with the Chinese language was dominated by speculation and hampered by lack of specific information” (1998Harbsmeier, Christoph 1998 Language and Logic (vol. 7:1 of Science and Civilization in China, ed. by Joseph Needham). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.: 15). Even when the first works on Chinese grammar were printed, such as Varo (1703)Varo, Francisco 1703 Arte de la Lengua Mandarina. Canton.s.i., these works “remained inaccessible to most scholars in Europe” (ibid.).

At the same time, missionary accounts contributed to the perpetuation and strengthening of existing myths about the ideography and universality of Chinese writing. This discourse exhibited a significant level of self-referentiality and a preoccupation with ideas and ideals originating in the European tradition. Indeed, it may be claimed that the Jesuits did not seriously attempt to demystify the discourse. One notable example was the exchange of letters between the renowned German scholar Gottfried W. Leibniz (1646–1716) and Jesuit missionaries in China (documented in Widmaier 2006Widmaier, Rita ed. 2006 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Der Briefwechsel mit den Jesuiten in China (1689–1714). Translated by Malte-Ludolf Babin. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag.). In essence, these reports strengthened the emphasis placed on Chinese character writing, leading to a nearly obsessive fascination among European scholars. Such a fascination for Chinese writing can, for instance, be found in the works of scholars like Francis Bacon (1561–1626), Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), John Wilkins (1614–1672), and Leibniz. This must be seen within the broader framework of the European quest for a universal language and the endeavour to create ‘Real Characters’ which, as described by David Mungello, “would be capable of communicating their meaning to all nationalities in a clear, logically self-evident manner rather than in the usual arbitrarily agreed-upon manner of languages” (Mungello 1985Mungello, D[avid] E. 1985 Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. : 35). There was a prevalent belief that Chinese characters had the capacity to fulfil this function. The pursuit of a universal language carried significant theological implications, as evidenced by the first English monograph on the Chinese language, John Webb’s (1611–1672) Historical Essay (1669Webb, John 1669 An Historical Essay Endeavoring a Probability that the Language of the Empire of China is the Primitive Language by John Webb. London: Printed for Nath. Brook.). Summarizing “what could be gleaned on the Chinese language from the published Western literature”, he constructed “a case that Chinese was the original language of mankind before the building of the tower of Babel” (Harbsmeier 1995Harbsmeier, Christoph 1995 “John Webb and the Early History of the Study of the Classical Chinese Language in the West”. Europe Studies China: Papers from an International Conference on the History of European Sinology, ed. by Ming Wilson & John Cayley, 297–338. London: Han-Shan Tang Books.: 327). In addition to the search for the pre-Babel universal language, Chinese featured prominently in the language-philosophical quest for a new universal language (cf. Leung 2002Leung, Cécile 2002 Etienne Fourmont (1683–1745): Oriental and Chinese Languages in Eighteenth-Century France (= Leuven Chinese Studies, 13). Leuven: Leuven University Press/Ferdinand Verbiest Foundation K.U. Leuven.: 164). In other words, the universality myth not only persisted but also grew in strength.

However, the eighteenth century also witnessed modest attempts to broaden the spectrum of linguistic inquiry. At the same time, philosophical reflections on the Chinese script turned into technical projects and the first systematic attempts to print Chinese characters. Both developments are nicely exemplified by the book Museum Sinicum (1730Bayer, Theophilus S. 1730 Museum sinicum in quo Sinicae linguae et litteraturae ratio explicatur. St. Petersburg: Typographia Academiae Imperatoriae.), written by the German scholar Theophilus S. Bayer (1694–1738). The Museum Sinicum is a two-volume compendium containing a Chinese dictionary, philosophical texts with transcriptions and philological glosses, and grammatical overviews. Bayer, who was affiliated with the St. Petersburg Academy of Science when he wrote the Museum Sinicum, relied extensively on manuscripts held by the Royal Library in Berlin (cf. Lundbæk 1986Lundbæk, Knud 1986 T.S. Bayer (1694–1738): Pioneer Sinologist. London &Malmö: Curzon Press.: 5). In order to have Chinese characters printed for the dictionary part of the Museum Sinicum, he copied specimens by hand from a manuscript dictionary in Berlin and handed the copied characters to the engravers in St Petersburg who obviously didn’t know what they were up against (cf. Lundbaek 1986Lundbæk, Knud 1986 T.S. Bayer (1694–1738): Pioneer Sinologist. London &Malmö: Curzon Press.: 125, fn. 28; see also Lehner 2004Lehner, Georg 2004 Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa: Entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 18). Although the Museum Sinicum displays more than 200 characters, both Bayer and his critics expressed significant dissatisfaction with the results. The French scholar Étienne Fourmont (1683–1745) criticized them as “miserably engraved” (cf. Lundbæk 1986Lundbæk, Knud 1986 T.S. Bayer (1694–1738): Pioneer Sinologist. London &Malmö: Curzon Press.: 205). Some decades later, Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1788–1832), Europe’s first chairholder in Sinology, lamented that Bayer’s characters had deformed his work (cf. Lehner 2004Lehner, Georg 2004 Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa: Entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 109).

In relation to the contents of the Museum Sinicum, it is worth mentioning that Bayer also directed his focus towards Chinese grammar, thereby exploring aspects of the spoken language. For this purpose, he copied the aforementioned Arte de la lengua chio chiu, translated some parts of it into Latin, and included the translation in the chapter entitled Grammatica Linguae Sinicae. He wanted to include the text since he considered it “important as an example of a language or dialect in which the sounds and the tonal system were very different from those of the standard Mandarin” (Lundbæek 1986Lundbæk, Knud 1986 T.S. Bayer (1694–1738): Pioneer Sinologist. London &Malmö: Curzon Press.: 129; see also Klöter 2023Klöter, Henning 2023 “Language contact, wishful thinking or bad fieldwork? How to make sense of consistent language documentation in missionary sources”. When the West meets the East: Early Western Accounts of the Languages of the Sinosphere and their Impact on the History of Chinese Linguistics ed. by Barbara Meisterernst, 37–48. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 41–42). The Museum Sinicum exemplifies Bayer’s significant reliance on first-hand materials from China. Due to the limited availability of these resources, Bayer’s own dissatisfaction with the Museum Sinicum was not restricted to the quality of the printed characters, but also to the breadth of the analysed data. In order to be able to write his book, he had contacted missionaries in China, asking them to send him the materials he needed. Since he didn’t receive the materials and had to finish the book, he was compelled to complete it by making do with the available resources at his disposal. Somewhat ironically, the materials he had requested arrived more or less exactly at the moment that the book was printed. Bayer’s biographer Lundbæk therefore draws our attention to “the situation of the young scholar who had conceived of the idea of writing a book on Chinese language and literature in the wilderness of Peter the Great’s Russia. The book is finished and being printed; there is no time to make corrections or additions. And now the material is arriving which he should have had all the time — the fundamental texts and dictionaries!” (Lundbæk 1986Lundbæk, Knud 1986 T.S. Bayer (1694–1738): Pioneer Sinologist. London &Malmö: Curzon Press.: 100).

Significantly, Bayer’s sharpest critic, Étienne Fourmont, was himself subject to severe criticism with regard to the printing of Chinese characters. His magnum opus, the Grammatica Sinica (1742Fourmont, Étienne 1742 Linguæ Sinarum Mandarinicæ Hieroglyphicæ Grammatica Duplex, Latinè, Et Cum Characteribus Sinensium. Item Sinicorum Regiæ Bibliothecæ Librorum Catalogus. Lutetia Parisorum [Paris]:Joseph Bullot.) (also referred to as Grammatica Duplex), was a translation of the Mandarin grammar written by the Dominican missionary Francisco Varo (1627–1687; Varo 1703Varo, Francisco 1703 Arte de la Lengua Mandarina. Canton.s.i.). Fourmont not only translated Varo’s work into Latin; he also supervised the engraving of 80,000 sinographs on woodblocks for the digraphic representation of Mandarin example sentences. For Fourmont, a Chinese text without Chinese characters was “nothing at all” (‘rien du tout’, Leung 2002Leung, Cécile 2002 Etienne Fourmont (1683–1745): Oriental and Chinese Languages in Eighteenth-Century France (= Leuven Chinese Studies, 13). Leuven: Leuven University Press/Ferdinand Verbiest Foundation K.U. Leuven.: 230).77.For a comprehensive study on Fourmont and his engraving project, I refer to Bussotti & Landry-Deron (2020)Bussotti, Michela & Isabelle Landry-Deron 2020 “Printing Chinese Characters, Engraving Chinese Types: Wooden Chinese Movable Type at the Imprimerie Nationale (1715–1819)”. East Asian Publishing and Society 10:1. 1–72. . The creation of the woodblocks necessitated the collaboration of a team of five skilled artisans over a span of two decades. Fourmont’s failure to properly attribute the source of his book resulted in allegations of plagiarism (Leung 2002Leung, Cécile 2002 Etienne Fourmont (1683–1745): Oriental and Chinese Languages in Eighteenth-Century France (= Leuven Chinese Studies, 13). Leuven: Leuven University Press/Ferdinand Verbiest Foundation K.U. Leuven.: 230–235). Until today, his contribution to the field of Sinology is seen as “an administrative, not scholarly achievement” (Honey 2001Honey, David B. 2001 Incense at the Altar: Pioneering Sinologists and the Development of Classical Chinese Philology. New Haven: American Oriental Society.: 21).

As a matter of fact, the transition to the nineteenth century witnessed a recurring pattern of printing works on Chinese with added Chinese characters on the basis of missionary manuscripts. In the early nineteenth century, Fourmont’s compatriot Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes (1759–1845) rearranged the lexicographical macrostructure of the aforementioned manuscript dictionary compiled by Basilio Brollo and had it printed, using the characters that had been engraved under the auspices of Fourmont. Published as the Dictionnaire Chinois-Français et Latin, it merely identified Brollo’s dictionary as a model and not as the actual lexicographic source (Lundbæk 1995Lundbæk, Knud 1995 “The Establishment of European Sinology 1801–1815”. Cultural Encounters: China, Japan, and the West: Essays Commemorating 25 Years of East Asian Studies at the University of Aarhus, ed. by Søren Clausen, Roy Starrs & Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg, 15–54. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.: 29). Like Fourmont, de Guignes faced accusations of plagiarism, which ultimately worked against him in the selection of Abel-Rémusat as the inaugural Sinology chairholder in France (see 4.1, cf. Lundbæek 1995Lundbæk, Knud 1995 “The Establishment of European Sinology 1801–1815”. Cultural Encounters: China, Japan, and the West: Essays Commemorating 25 Years of East Asian Studies at the University of Aarhus, ed. by Søren Clausen, Roy Starrs & Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg, 15–54. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.: 37).

Despite increased interest in the Chinese script, the division between data gathering and analysis that had been present from before the seventeenth century remained unaltered, along with the persistent issue of verifiability. For the growing number of European scholars interested in Chinese writing, China was still inaccessible. The manuscript sources that were compiled in China eventually made their way to Europe, where, however, they underwent substantial transformations in terms of their purpose, metalanguage, and material properties. Originally compiled for didactic purposes and therefore representing a “form of practical knowledge (ars)”, missionary linguistics “could shed its instrumental character and reach new audiences as a form of theoretical knowledge (scientia)” (Van Loon and Peetermans 2020Van Loon, Zanna & Andy Peetermans 2020 “Wide-Lensed Approaches to Missionary Linguistics: The Circulation of Knowledge on Amerindian Languages through Sixteenth-Century Spanish Printed Grammars”. Missionary Linguistic Studies from Mesoamerica to Patagonia ed. by Astrid Alexander Bakkerus [ et al.], 54–80. Leiden & Boston: Brill. : 73). In other words, the purpose and intention behind the writing of the manuscripts in Asia differed from the intention behind the reading and use of them in Europe. Printing of translated works was accompanied by attempts to display a steadily growing number of Chinese characters, thus adding a new technological and inventive dimension to the continuation of sinographomania.

The question of whether the spoken languages of China could have played a more significant role at this juncture is a futile one. They played a minor role in the works of Escalante and Mendoza and were “essentially excluded from the sphere of such Europe-produced efforts at intellectual appropriation” (Luca 2016Luca, Dinu 2016 The Chinese Language in European Texts: The Early Period. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. : 81). However, even in the event that there was interest in the spoken languages, the availability of direct access to language data would have remained limited. Claims regarding Chinese or any other Asian language could be posited without fear that contradicting evidence would disprove them. An illustrative yet extreme instance is the Formosan language, which was invented by a man who adopted the pseudonym George Psalmanazar during the seventeenth century. When he presented, in spoken and written form, an Asian language that originated solely from his own imagination, some respected scholars were taken in. Interestingly, although it was soon widely known that Psalmanazar had indeed made up both the language and the script, the myth of a native Formosan alphabet survived its creator by many decades (Keevak 2004Keevak, Michael 2004 The Pretended Asian: George Psalmanazar’s Eighteenth-century Formosan Hoax. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.).

4.Professionalisation of Sinology and Chinese linguistics in the nineteenth century

In the nineteenth century, there was a notable process of professionalisation within the field of Sinology in general and Chinese linguistics in particular. This can be characterized by a broad spectrum of linguistic theories and analytic approaches being applied to Chinese and the language situation of China as well as the existence of specific professorships, academic curricula, specialized publication outlets, professional organisations, and conferences. Thus, like other fields of inquiry that evolved as independent or quasi-independent disciplines, professionalisation of Chinese linguistics was not purely an intellectual matter but was also bound up with “the establishment of bodies that make rules governing entry to a particular occupation, organize training, maintain collective standards and so on” (Burke 2016Burke, Peter 2016 What is the History of Knowledge? Malden: Polity Press.: 30). Furthermore, alongside the institutional criteria, the logistic and material forces that had shaped conditions of data access, verifiability, and dissemination since the initial encounter with the Chinese language saw significant transformations. Against this background, I treat professionalisation of Sinology and Chinese linguistics as a multimodal process that was marked by various interdependent aspects: the institutionalisation of the relevant academic disciplines at universities, the influx of language professionals and Chinese native speakers from China, the advances in digraphic printing that facilitated the dissemination of academic publications and, as a consequence, the unfolding of discourse and informed dissent.

4.1Institutionalisation of Chinese language studies

Around the year 1815Abel-Rémusat, Jean-Pierre 1815 Programme du Cours de Langue et de Littérature Chinoises et de Tartare-Mandchou. Paris: chez Charles., the study of China and its languages received formal recognition for the first time through the establishment of professorial chairs and university curricula. This important step is closely associated with the aforementioned French scholar Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat and his formal appointment as a professor of “Langue et littérature chinoises et tartares-mandchoues” (Chinese and Manchu-Tartar languages and literatures) at the Collège de France in 1814 and formal inauguration one year later (Gianninoto 2014Gianninoto, Mariarosaria 2014 “The Development of Chinese Grammars and the Classification of the Parts of Speech”. Language & History 57:2. 137–148. : 143). The German scholar Heinrich Julius Klaproth (1783–1835) is commonly associated with a comparable trajectory. According to previous studies (van Driem 2018van Driem, George 2018 “Linguistic History and Historical Linguistics”. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 41:1. 106–127. : 110, Walravens 1999aWalravens, Hartmut 1999a Julius Klaproth (1783–1835): Leben und Werk. Wiesbaden. Harrassowitz Verlag.: 19), he was appointed professor of Asian languages and literature at the University of Bonn in 1816. It is indeed well documented that his appointment received significant backing from notable figures such as the renowned scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835), King Frederick William III of Prussia (1770–1840), and the Chief Minister of Prussia Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822). Nonetheless, important details surrounding his position warrant further archival scrutiny. In a nutshell, Klaproth never lectured at Bonn, and whether he was ever considered a formal member of the newly founded university can be doubted.88.In a letter written in 1816, Klaproth referred to himself as “Professor der Asiatischen Litteratur und Sprachenkunde” (cf. Walravens 1999bWalravens, Hartmut ed. 1999b Julius Klaproth (1783–1835): Briefe und Dokumente. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 75). However, not only was he “exempted from all professorial duties […] in order to enable him to continue living comfortably in Paris whilst pursuing his research single-mindedly” (van Driem 2018van Driem, George 2018 “Linguistic History and Historical Linguistics”. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 41:1. 106–127. : 110), but documents kept in the Prussian Privy State Archives also suggest that, after the formal establishment of the University of Bonn in 1818, Klaproth did not receive the salary payments that the Prussian administration had promised. Despite these peculiarities, his ‘case’ nevertheless serves as evidence of a growing formal acknowledgment of scholarly research on Asian languages, particularly Chinese. Whether successful or not, from an institutional perspective, the attempts to establish the first chairs devoted to the study of the Chinese language in Europe was a turning point of truly historic dimensions.

The academic discourse on Chinese saw a significant shift away from sinographomania, thanks to the scholarly contributions of Abel-Rémusat, Klaproth, and other European scholars. Significantly, touching on topics such as tones, tone change, and regional variations of Chinese (1815: 27), Abel-Rémusat’s academic program starts with the spoken language (langue parlée). As Gianninoto rightly argues, his major work, the Elémens de la grammaire chinoise (1822), “as one of the first non-missionary grammars of Chinese […] marked an important step in the rise of European academic sinology” (2014Gianninoto, Mariarosaria 2014 “The Development of Chinese Grammars and the Classification of the Parts of Speech”. Language & History 57:2. 137–148. : 143). Klaproth’s scholarly legacy goes far beyond Chinese linguistics in a narrow sense. Comparing language data from various Asian regions, he effectively shifted the regional focus of comparative-historical linguistics away from Europe and formulated hypotheses of lasting validity (for details, see van Driem 2018van Driem, George 2018 “Linguistic History and Historical Linguistics”. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 41:1. 106–127. ).

On the one hand, as pointed out above, the early nineteenth century was marked by notable advances in linguistic analysis and by the establishment of Chinese linguistics within academic institutions. On the other hand, other factors underlying the professionalisation of the field did not unfold immediately, which is why this period can be seen as one of transition. Significantly, in terms of accessibility, Abel-Rémusat and Klaproth met with a position no more advantageous than that encountered by Bayer and other researchers of the eighteenth century and earlier. For Abel-Rémusat, matters were even worse. Although the national library in Paris kept a number of Chinese-Western dictionaries, he did not have access to them due to restrictions imposed on him by de Guignes (Lundbæk 1995Lundbæk, Knud 1995 “The Establishment of European Sinology 1801–1815”. Cultural Encounters: China, Japan, and the West: Essays Commemorating 25 Years of East Asian Studies at the University of Aarhus, ed. by Søren Clausen, Roy Starrs & Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg, 15–54. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.: 41). Thus, during the initial stage of his professional journey, when he was studying the Chinese language independently, he had to deal with a dearth of resources; the young Abel-Rémusat even lamented that he had never seen a Chinese dictionary (ibid.). At a later stage he was inspired by manuscripts written by missionaries in China. The best-known example is the Notitia linguae sinicae compiled by the Jesuit Joseph-Henry de Prémare (1666–1736), “the most outstanding grammarian of Chinese in the 18th century” (Harbsmeier 1998Harbsmeier, Christoph 1998 Language and Logic (vol. 7:1 of Science and Civilization in China, ed. by Joseph Needham). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.: 16).

Written in 1732, the manuscript Notitia served as a model for Abel-Rémusat’s Elémens de la grammaire chinoise (Chappell and Peyraube 2014Chappell, Hilary & Alain Peyraube 2014 “The History of Chinese Grammars in Chinese and Western Scholarly Traditions”. Language & History 57:2. 107–136. : 120). From a letter written by Klaproth to Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) in 1831Klaproth, Julius 1831 Heinrich Julius Klaproth an Wilhelm von Humboldt (?), 05.11.1831. Wilhelm von Humboldt: Online-Edition der Sprachwissenschaftlichen Korrespondenz. Berlin. Version dated 15.03.2023. https://​wvh​-briefe​.bbaw​.de​/75, it is evident that Abel-Rémusat was even accused of having plagiarized Prémare. Such accusations, however, were not substantiated and Klaproth pointed out that the publication of a printed edition of Prémare’s Notitia one hundred years after its compilation as a manuscript was on Abel-Rémusat’s initiative (Klaproth 1831Klaproth, Julius 1831 Heinrich Julius Klaproth an Wilhelm von Humboldt (?), 05.11.1831. Wilhelm von Humboldt: Online-Edition der Sprachwissenschaftlichen Korrespondenz. Berlin. Version dated 15.03.2023. https://​wvh​-briefe​.bbaw​.de​/75). Thus, in addition to his programmatic contributions, Abel-Rémusat, also played an active role in facilitating the challenging transition from manuscript-based to print-based scholarship. Thereby, like other scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he demonstrated a multifaceted role as a sinologist, linguist, and educator while also displaying a dedication to the dissemination of historical manuscript-based knowledge. Thus, if Prémare was indeed an outstanding grammarian, it was only the printing of his work in the nineteenth century that led to a broader awareness of his genius.

Klaproth’s own academic journey was characterized by a significantly greater level of mobility than Abel-Rémusat, as seen by his participation in expeditions that took him at least close to China. Like Abel-Rémusat, however, he had to gather his Chinese language data from the missionary manuscripts that were available in European libraries. Previous scholarly research has effectively demonstrated that Klaproth not only examined manuscripts originating from Asia but also appropriated them for personal possession (Loon 1967van der Loon, Piet 1967 “The Manila Incunabula and Early Hokkien Studies, Part 2”. Asia Major 13. 95–187.: 107). The examples of Abel-Rémusat and Klaproth reveal one characteristic of this transition period: missionaries and their manuscripts continued to serve as intermediaries connecting the languages and their speakers to European academia.

4.2Returnees, native speakers, and the role of Chinese language teaching

In terms of accessibility, the time had just not yet been ripe for scholars like Abel-Rémusat and Klaproth. Things changed fundamentally after the middle of the nineteenth century when the rapid expansion of steamboat traffic and the inauguration of the Suez Canal in 1869 resulted in a notable decrease in travel time (Qing 2015Qing, Han 2015 “Western Steamship Companies and Chinese Seaborne Trade During the Late Qing Dynasty, 1840–1911”. International Journal of Maritime History 27:3. 537–559. ). In contrast to the arduous voyages undertaken by the first group of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century (see Section 3), historical records from the German shipping company Norddeutscher Lloyd (North German Lloyd) indicate that by the early twentieth century, the duration of the journey had been significantly reduced to less than fifty days. Technological innovation and new infrastructure went along with expansionist political agendas on the part of Western countries, particularly England. This trend gained momentum in the latter half of the century, coinciding with a series of conflicts known as the Opium Wars. These wars led to the forced opening of numerous Chinese port cities by European powers (for details, see Spence 1990Spence, Jonathan D. 1990 The Search for Modern China. New York & London: W. W. Norton.: 143–164).

The Western expansion in Eastern China created new needs for learning languages, not only in China, but also in Europe. Yet overview articles on Chinese linguistics in the West tend to elide the links between the history of the discipline and the growth of Chinese language teaching during the nineteenth century. Alleton (2017Alleton, Viviane 2017 “Chinese Linguistics in France”. Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, ed. by Rint Sybesma [et al.], 478–483.: 479) briefly mentions that “the institutions involved in the study of Chinese were those where the language was taught,” referring to the chair of Vernacular Chinese at the École Nationale des Langues Orientales Vivantes in Paris in 1843 as an example. On the whole, however, the mutual influence of language teaching and linguistic analysis in the nineteenth century has remained under-addressed in previous scholarship.

The establishment of institutional frameworks for teaching Chinese began in the Italian city of Naples during the eighteenth century, likewise under the influence of missionaries. In 1724, the Jesuit Matteo Ripa founded the Collegio dei Cinesi, also known as the Chinese College. The primary objective of this institution was to provide Chinese students with education in Latin and theology, with the ultimate goal of preparing them for ordination as priests to support the Jesuit mission in China (cf. Castorina 2016Castorina, Miriam (= Jia Meilin 佳美琳) 2016 “Nabulesi Zhonghua shuyuan ji qi Hanyu jiaoxue 那不勒斯中華書院及其漢語教學” [The Collegio dei Cinesi and its Chinese Language Teaching], transl. by Wang Zhonghua. Guoji Hanxue Tongxun 国际汉学研究通讯 12. 89–102., 2020Castorina, Miriam 2020 “Some Observations on De Lingua Sinensi: A Forgotten Work”. Italian Association for Chinese Studies. Selected Papers 3, 2020 ed. by Chiara Piccinini & Elisa Giunipero, 11–25. Venezia: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina.: 12). By 1887, more than 100 young Chinese men had completed their training in Naples (cf. Bertuccioli and Masini: 2014Bertuccioli, Giuliano & Federico Masini 2014 Italia e Cina. Roma: L’Asino d’oro edizioni.: 153). In order to receive financial support for the College, Ripa agreed to train interpreters as well, but during the eighteenth century, the teaching of Mandarin remained “discontinuous and qualitatively very poor” (Castorina 2020Castorina, Miriam 2020 “Some Observations on De Lingua Sinensi: A Forgotten Work”. Italian Association for Chinese Studies. Selected Papers 3, 2020 ed. by Chiara Piccinini & Elisa Giunipero, 11–25. Venezia: Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina.: 13). When, at the end of the century, the British government decided to dispatch a mission to China in order to convince the Qianlong Emperor (1711–1799) to engage in diplomatic relations, it asked the College to dispatch two of its students as interpreters (ibid.).99.Named after its head George Macartney (1737–1806), the mission failed thoroughly. For general historical details of the Macartney Mission, I refer to Spence (1990Spence, Jonathan D. 1990 The Search for Modern China. New York & London: W. W. Norton.: 121–123). This very fact serves as evidence that, despite the aforementioned deficiencies, the College had managed to establish a certain level of recognition beyond the borders of Italy. In 1812, the College was turned “into a sort of high school” and renamed Scuola Speciale Cinese (Special school of Chinese) (ibid.). This institutional change went along with more systematic attempts at curriculum planning and textbook compilation.

The increased diplomatic and economic engagement with China following the Opium Wars resulted in a notable upsurge in the teaching of the Chinese language across Europe. In France, Antoine-Pierre-Louis Bazin (1799–1863) is identified as a “professor of Chinese” (professeur de chinois) at the École spéciale des langues orientales as early as 1840 (cf. Pino and Rabut 1995Pino, Angel & Isabelle Rabut 1995 “Bazin Aîné et la création de la chaire de chinois vulgaire à l’École des langues orientales”. Un siècle d’enseignement du chinois a l’école des langues orientales, 1840–1945 ed. by Marie-Claire Bergère & Angel Pino, 29–51. Paris: L’Asiathèque.: 34), but the new chair for the teaching of vernacular Chinese was formally endorsed by King Louis-Philippe only three years later in 1843 (cf. Pino and Rabut 1995Pino, Angel & Isabelle Rabut 1995 “Bazin Aîné et la création de la chaire de chinois vulgaire à l’École des langues orientales”. Un siècle d’enseignement du chinois a l’école des langues orientales, 1840–1945 ed. by Marie-Claire Bergère & Angel Pino, 29–51. Paris: L’Asiathèque.: 36). Bazin, the first chairholder, had studied under Abel-Rémusat and his successor Stanislas Julien (1797–1873), but had never acquired active knowledge of the spoken language through a stay in China (Pino 2008Pino, Angel 2008 “Antoine-Pierre-Louis Bazin”. Dictionnaire des orientalistes de langue française ed. by François Pouillon, 65–66 Paris: IISMM-Karthala.: 65). The transfer of responsibility for Chinese language instruction to a specialist with first-hand experience in China occurred in 1872, namely with the appointment of Michel Alexandre Kleczkowski (1818–1886) (Galy 1995aGaly, Laurent 1995a “Entre sinologie pratique et sinologie savant : les interprètes — professeurs de l’École des langues orientales vivantes, 1871 — 1930”. Un siècle d’enseignement du chinois a l’école des langues orientales, 1840–1945, ed. by Marie-Claire Bergère & Angel Pino, 131–167. Paris: L’Asiathèque.: 136). Furthermore, the recruitment of Chinese native speakers as instructors (répétiteurs indigènes, cf. Galy, 1995bGaly, Laurent 1995b “Les « répétiteurs indigènes pour la langue chinoise », 1873 — 1925”. Un siècle d’enseignement du chinois a l’école des langues orientales, 1840–1945, ed. by Marie-Claire Bergère & Angel Pino, 287–313. Paris: L’Asiathèque.) indicates a greater emphasis on authentic spoken language use.

A similar development can be traced for the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin (now Humboldt-Universität), where the scholar Wilhelm Schott (1802–1889) started to offer Chinese language courses in the 1830s. Before his tenure in Berlin, Schott had cooperated closely with two young Chinese men known as Fung Asseng and Fung Ahok, presumably the first Chinese travellers who ever set foot on German soil (Jiang 2023Jiang, Xueqi 2023 “Die zwei chinesischen Goethe-Besucher und die ausgestellten Chinesen im Deutschland des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts”. Monumenta Serica 71:1.123–145. ). In 1887, with the inauguration of the School of Oriental Languages (Seminar für Orientalische Sprachen), Chinese language teaching became professionalized. Carl Arendt (1838–1902) was the inaugural professor of Chinese to be appointed to the newly established School. Arendt brought with him almost two decades of working experience as a diplomat and interpreter at German consulates in China. Similar to the situation in France, the provision of Chinese language instruction was facilitated by the presence and assistance of Chinese native speakers. Chinese language teaching in the UK and the Netherlands likewise received a boost from interpreters, missionaries, and scholars who had returned from China after having spent a large amount of time there. They had not only acquired proficiency in the language but also conducted linguistic analyses based on their direct exposure to the language and its native speakers. Well-known examples include James Summers (1828–1891), who became a Professor of Chinese at King’s College in London in 1854 (Chen 2023Chen, Wei 2023 “All the Aids Which a Beginner Needs”: James Summers’ (1828–1891) Research on Chinese Grammar. PhD dissertation, Leiden University.: 10), and Gustav Schlegel, who started to train future interpreters at Leiden University in 1872 (Sybesma 2017Sybesma, Rint 2017 “Chinese Linguistics in the Netherlands”. Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics, vol. 1, ed. by Rint Sybesma [ et al.], 537–543. Leiden & Boston: Brill.: 538). Both had spent a substantial number of years in sinophone environments in Asia prior to their appointments.

The implementation of language programs by educators proficient in Chinese and native Chinese speakers contributed significantly to the development of Chinese linguistics. A multitude of grammars, teaching manuals, and dictionaries were developed with the specific intention of catering to the requirements of language learners. Lee-Lee and Trujillo-González (2019Lee-Lee, Xavier & Verónica C. Trujillo-González 2019 “A Historiographical Approach to Paul Perny’s Grammar of the Chinese Language”. Language and History 62:1.1–13. : 2) point out that, in France alone, more than 30 grammars of Chinese were published during the nineteenth century. Many of these grammars have thus far been neglected by scholarship in the field of linguistic historiography. A case in point is the ‘forgotten’ Grammaire de la langue chinoise orale et écrite written by the Catholic missionary Paul-Hubert Perny (1818–1907) after his return to France following a 20-year stay in China (ibid.: 1). Significantly, it was the returned missionary-turned-grammarian Perny who emphasized that philological research on Chinese was a field that seemed little explored (Ce champ nous semble encore peu exploré; Perny 1873Perny, Paul 1873 Grammaire de la langue chinoise orale et écrite. Vol. I. Paris: Maisonneuve & Cie.: 5, quoted in Lee-Lee and Trujillo-González 2019Lee-Lee, Xavier & Verónica C. Trujillo-González 2019 “A Historiographical Approach to Paul Perny’s Grammar of the Chinese Language”. Language and History 62:1.1–13. : 9). This suggests that an active command of the spoken language enhanced the perception of gaps and deficiencies in theoretical studies. Thus, even if the early nineteenth century witnessed a shift from practical knowledge (ars) towards theoretical knowledge (scientia), new works inspired by the didactic needs of language teaching were published as well. The latter were typically written by the aforementioned returnees, i.e. practitioners who had learned the language during a long-term stay in China.

It would go beyond the scope of this article to compare the grammatical analyses written by scholars who studied the language through written documents and those whose linguistic thinking was inspired by and inseparable from their active spoken knowledge. A glance at some sources gives the impression that the co-existence of different approaches went hand-in-hand with attempts to establish hierarchies within the emerging discipline. Consider the case of the German scholar Georg von der Gabelentz (1840–1893). Never having visited China and lacking active knowledge of the spoken language, his lasting contributions to Chinese and general linguistics are widely recognized (Bisang 2022Bisang, Walter 2022 “Die Chinesische Grammatik von Georg von der Gabelentz aus typologischer Sicht”. Von Lindenblättern und verderbten Dialekten: Neue Studien zu Georg von der Gabelentz (1840–1893) ed. by Henning Klöter & Xuetao Li, 99–122. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 99, McElvenny 2017McElvenny, James 2017 “Georg von der Gabelentz”. Oxford Research Encyclopedia ofLinguistics. https://​oxfordre​.com​/linguistics​/view​/10​.1093​/acrefore​/9780199384655​.001​.0001​/acrefore​-9780199384655​-e​-379. Last accessed October 3rd, 2023. ). Prior to his landmark grammar of Classical Chinese (Gabelentz 1881Gabelentz, Georg von der 1881 Chinesische Grammatik, mit Ausschluss des niederen Stils und der heutigen Umgangssprache. Leipzig: Weigel.), he published an article on his concept of grammar writing together with an evaluative summary of 18 previously published grammars of Chinese. The overview contains some notable side-swipes against didactic grammars, for example, when he writes of Perny (1873Perny, Paul 1873 Grammaire de la langue chinoise orale et écrite. Vol. I. Paris: Maisonneuve & Cie., 1876) that it was “written without any scientific claims purely following practical considerations” (‘ohne wissenschaftliche Ansprüche nach rein praktischen Erwägungen verfasst’; Gabelentz 1878Gabelentz, Georg von der 1878 “Beitrag zur Geschichte der chinesischen Grammatiken und zur Lehre von der grammatischen Behandlung der chinesischen Sprache”. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 32:4. 601–664.: 630). Elsewhere he writes of the aforementioned Carl Arendt, likewise a returnee and professor of Chinese at the University of Berlin, that he is a superb expert on colloquial Pekingese, yet “he has not given me nor […], to my knowledge, others who must know him better the impression of a scholarly man” (‘den Eindruck eines wissenschaftlichen Mannes hat er weder […] auf mich, noch, daß ich wüßte, auf Andere gemacht, die ihn näher kennen müssen’; quoted in Kaden 2013Kaden, Klaus 2013 “Die Berufung Georg von der Gabelentz’ an die Berliner Universität”. Georg von der Gabelentz: Ein biographisches Lesebuch, ed. by Kennosuke Ezawa & Annemete von Vogel, 271–288. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.: 273).

More textual evidence and a broader analytical framework are needed if we are to construct a hierarchical divide between those who spoke and analysed the language and those who were primarily committed to its analysis. On the one hand, it seems plausible that a division in academic recognition existed, as this would align with a broader trend witnessed in European research throughout the nineteenth century. As Burke (2016Burke, Peter 2016 What is the History of Knowledge? Malden: Polity Press.: 46–47) points out, “mathematics and philosophy were often considered to be ‘higher’ pursuits than natural history because they were analytical while natural history was only descriptive. Analysis was also contrasted with ‘the mere gathering of facts’”. On the other hand, from the broader perspective of linguistic historiography, the late nineteenth century was also the formative period of modern linguistics with its focus on spoken languages. No less than the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) claimed that “in order to investigate a language […] a person must be able to speak it, to enter into the language, to be a member of the language users’ community” (Tkaczyk 2023Tkaczyk, Viktoria 2023 Thinking with Sound: A New Program in the Sciences and Humanities Around 1900. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. : 76). Despite meeting this requirement, scholars such as Perny, Arendt, and Summers obviously earned relatively limited recognition for their qualifications and analytical approach.

4.3Digraphic printing

Chinese linguistics in Europe could not have developed without technical advances in printing. For the history of Sinology in general and Chinese linguistics in particular, the focus was not on printing Chinese characters per se, but, as mentioned above, on digraphic printing. The integration of Latin and Chinese fonts was considered a prerequisite if writing about the Chinese language in a Western language was to be successful. Within the tradition of Western language studies, there is no or little scriptal variation, which is why the typographical integration of metalanguage and object language constitutes no or only a minor issue. Significant disparities arise when the object language is grounded in a distinct writing tradition, such as in the case of Chinese. Sinographs not only differ from the letters of the Roman or Greek alphabet in terms of subgraphemic constituents, the way these combine to a grapheme and the sheer number of distinct graphemes. In traditional writing, sinographs are also larger in size and arranged in vertical columns from right to left. It was only during the twentieth century that a horizontal left-to-right arrangement gained ground and received formal recognition as standard writing in the People’s Republic of China.

As discussed above, the initial endeavours to incorporate characters into European publications emerged during the latter part of the sixteenth century (Lehner 2004Lehner, Georg 2004 Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa: Entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 12–14). During that period, the production of sinographs involved the utilisation of woodcarving or copper engraving techniques. The graphs were then added to the Western text separately. Catholic missionaries in China were not engaged in the production of Chinese types. Given the considerable technical obstacles inherent in digraphic printing, it is not surprising that the shift from manuscript-based scholarship to printed publications, exemplified by Martino Martini’s Grammatica linguae sinensis (1696Martini, Martino 1696 Grammatica Linguae Sinensis. Attached to Melchisédech Thévenot, Relations de divers voyages curieux, vol. 5. Paris: Chez Thomas Moette Libraire. https://​archive​.org​/details​/grammaticalingua0015p​/page​/n1​/mode​/2up, last accessed October 5th, 2023.) and Francisco Varo’s Arte de la lengua mandarina (1703Varo, Francisco 1703 Arte de la Lengua Mandarina. Canton.s.i.), was characterized by the exclusive utilisation of Romanized transcriptions for Chinese expressions (except for two marginal insertions of sinographs in Martini’s grammar). In other words, the digraphic approach found in many earlier handwritten grammars and dictionaries compiled in China was temporarily discontinued due to technical constraints.1010.To be sure, Chinese was not the only language associated with the challenge of digraphic printing. The same is true for Japanese, Korean, and other Asian languages and scripts, such as the Philippine Baybayin script. To the best of my knowledge, there is no study that systematically compares the interplay of Asian language research and the advancement of digraphic printing in missionary treatises. The question whether and how distinct traditions may have influenced each other must therefore be left for future research.

The convergence of Chinese and Western typefaces in the eighteenth century was a significant milestone. It was not until the nineteenth century that this development underwent a higher level of professionalisation. In 1825, the well-known missionary and lexicographer Robert Morrison (1782–1834) remarks:

The Press is the most likely instrument to prove successful in promoting an intellectual intercourse between the Chinese-language nations and Europe. The Lithographic Press is very applicable to papers wholly Chinese; but still it does not answer well for blending the Chinese characters with the European letter-press. … Chinese will not become familiar in Europe till some public-spirited Type Founders shall produce elegant and cheap founts of Chinese types.(Morrison 1825Morrison, Robert 1825 Chinese Miscellany; Consisting of Original Extracts from Chinese Authors, in the Native Character. London: London Missionary Society.: 51, original emphasis)

On the whole, the nineteenth century witnessed a tremendous drive for the improvement of Chinese printing by Europeans. In this context, Chinese linguistics cannot be separated from the broader field of Sinology as a whole, nor from other domains that necessitated the proficient utilisation of Chinese characters. Missionaries, for instance, were actively involved in the translation of the Bible and its subsequent publication and dissemination in China (Lehner 2004Lehner, Georg 2004 Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa: Entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 210).

Additionally, libraries compiled catalogues of their Chinese book collections (Lehner 2004Lehner, Georg 2004 Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa: Entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 178). Furthermore, following the end of the first Opium War (1839–1842), a burgeoning commercial interest emerged, thereby necessitating the production of labels, brochures, and advertisements in the Chinese language (Lehner 2004Lehner, Georg 2004 Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa: Entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 248). This was made possible by advances in techniques that outperformed lithographic printing plates, notably movable wooden and metal types produced in Europe or imported from China, and, at a later stage, the use of electrotyping for the manufacture of matrices (cf. Lehner 2004Lehner, Georg 2004 Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa: Entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 245–247). In spite of significant advances in technology, the Amercian linguist and sinologist John DeFrancis still notes in 1940DeFrancis, John 1940 “Far Eastern Type for American Scholarly Publications”. Notes on Far Eastern Studies in America 7. 1–8. that “the combining of English and Chinese type is however not a simple matter” (DeFrancis 1940DeFrancis, John 1940 “Far Eastern Type for American Scholarly Publications”. Notes on Far Eastern Studies in America 7. 1–8., quoted by Lehner 2004Lehner, Georg 2004 Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa: Entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 9).

The progress in digraphic printing facilitated the publication of a number of ground-breaking grammars and dictionaries and also the release of academic journals in Asian Studies, including Sinology, which integrated sinographs with the western metatext. Existing journals like the Journal Asiatique and the Journal of the American Oriental Society underwent a gradual transition towards digraphic Chinese/Western printing, and newly-founded journals like T’oung Pao (Leiden, since 1890) or Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen (Berlin, since 1898) followed this practice. These and other journals considerably expanded the spectrum of academic discourse by publishing scholarly articles, reviews, obituaries, announcements and information about the course of affairs at the institutes to which they were attached. They can, therefore, be thought of as printed spaces for verifying, critiquing, challenging, questioning, and ultimately negotiating the state of affairs of the discipline. Significantly, the newly emerging scholarly discourse was not only focused on the contents of published works. Far more than is done today, when evaluating the quality of scholarly works on Chinese, authors and critics added comments, or even passages, on the quality of the printed characters and how these were graphically integrated into the Western metalanguage. Examples of print-related evaluations released in the nineteenth century include “perfect elegance” (Abel-Rémusat on Marshman 1814), “tolerably drawn but tiny Chinese characters” (‘leidlich gezeichnete, aber winzig kleine chinesische Charaktere’, Gabelentz [1878Gabelentz, Georg von der 1878 “Beitrag zur Geschichte der chinesischen Grammatiken und zur Lehre von der grammatischen Behandlung der chinesischen Sprache”. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 32:4. 601–664.: 631] on Gützlaff 1842Gützlaff, Karl F. A. (under the pseudonym Philo-Sinensis) 1842 Notices on Chinese Grammar: Part I. Orthography and Etymology. Batavia: Mission Press.), and “confused accumulation of strokes” (‘wirre Anhäufung von Strichen’, Gabelentz [1878Gabelentz, Georg von der 1878 “Beitrag zur Geschichte der chinesischen Grammatiken und zur Lehre von der grammatischen Behandlung der chinesischen Sprache”. Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 32:4. 601–664.: 631] on Perny 1873Perny, Paul 1873 Grammaire de la langue chinoise orale et écrite. Vol. I. Paris: Maisonneuve & Cie.).

The development of printing was interwoven with the institutionalisation of Chinese Studies (see 4.1) and Chinese language teaching in Europe (see 4.2). Indeed, it is worth noting that the newly established institutes and their members dedicated significant resources to obtaining types of superior quality. Chinese Studies at Berlin and Leiden will be taken as examples. When the teaching of Chinese in Berlin received a boost with the founding of the School of Oriental Languages, the newly appointed professor Carl Arendt (1838–1902) lobbied for the acquisition of Chinese types for use by the Imperial Printing Office (Reichsdruckerei). Once these were obtained, he actively contributed to the Printing Office’s efforts to produce printed Chinese texts. It was considered “impossible for it to be honorable for the German Reich” (‘des Deutschen Reichs unmöglich würdig’, quoted by Lehner 2004Lehner, Georg 2004 Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa: Entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 134) if publications by academics of the new institute were to have to rely on technical support from printers in Paris or Vienna. A few decades earlier, the German philologist Johann Joseph Hoffmann (1805–1878) had successfully lobbied for the acquisition of Chinese types in the Netherlands, arguing that this was an “undisputedly vital question for the further cultivation and dissemination of knowledge about the Chinese and Japanese languages in the Netherlands” (‘eene erkende levensvraag voor de verdere aankweeking en uitbreiding der kennis van de Chinesche en Japansche talen in Nederland’, quoted by Lehner 2004Lehner, Georg 2004 Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa: Entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 196).

In the light of the enormous technological challenges and the costs of high-quality digraphic printing, one is left wondering why the ‘characterless’ pathway beaten by the first printed grammars was not continued or at least considered a serious alternative. Lehner mentions that scholars referred to the high degree of homophony and the small syllable inventory of Chinese as a reason for the lack of alternatives to the insertion of characters (cf. Lehner 2004Lehner, Georg 2004 Der Druck chinesischer Zeichen in Europa: Entwicklungen im 19. Jahrhundert. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.: 245). When it comes to Mandarin or other spoken Sinitic languages, the widespread claim about homophony is refutable on linguistic grounds. However, the issue is not whether or not Chinese has many homophones and, therefore, needs a script with disambiguating properties. The crux of the matter is that in the nineteenth century, an alternative to sinographic writing was just not seriously considered. In the words of DeFrancis (1950DeFrancis, John 1950 Nationalism and Language Reform in China. Princeton: Princeton University Press.: 18), in the 1830s, “there was still almost unanimous agreement among experts and amateurs alike that the Chinese language should be characterized as exceedingly difficult, uniquely monosyllabic, and, most important of all, necessarily ideographic in its written form”.

5.Conclusion

While the status of Chinese linguistics as a distinct discipline remains controversial, the existence of dedicated journals, monograph series, associations, conferences, professorships, and an international community of scholars has contributed to its recognition and visibility as a field of inquiry. It is, in any case, a field the boundaries between which and Sinology, general linguistics, and other established fields are permeable, contributing to its interdisciplinarity. Its current status results from a historical development that began to unfold more than four centuries ago when the first monographs about China were published in Europe. The main purpose of this article has been to provide an integrated perspective that conceptualizes this development as an interwoven process affected by different factors. Going beyond linguistic ideas, the article is framed around several central questions for linguistic historiography: how has linguistic knowledge been gained? How has it been diffused? How has it been preserved? (cf. Swiggers 2010Swiggers, Pierre 2010 “History and Historiography of Linguistics: Status, Standards and Standing”. Revista Eutomia 3:2. 1–18.: 2). By engaging with these and other questions, my look at interwoven processes ties in with Tkaczyk’s (2023Tkaczyk, Viktoria 2023 Thinking with Sound: A New Program in the Sciences and Humanities Around 1900. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. : 13–14) call for “a new history of knowledge that combines intellectual history with the histories of science, media, and technology”.

I have approached the questions of the obtention, diffusion, and preservation of linguistic knowledge through the prism of accessibility to China and its corollaries for making and verifying claims about the language. In addition, I have looked at the changing institutional and material conditions of knowledge production and dissemination. This chronological overview reveals that the interplay of different factors did not unfold simultaneously. However, the nineteenth century can be identified as a time when the convergence of different factors brought about the professionalisation of Chinese linguistics, which was then inseparable from Sinology. Over the course of several centuries, the conditions facilitating bi-directional accessibility have been influenced by advances in international maritime transport. During the nineteenth century, larger cohorts of missionaries, diplomats, merchants, and interpreters reached China. Equipped with a proficient command of the language, some returned to Europe and assumed responsible positions in one or other of the newly founded applied Chinese studies programs, where they were sometimes supported by native speakers serving as teaching assistants. Future research will be needed to examine the role and (non-)recognition of returnees and native speakers in the formation of Chinese linguistics during that period more systematically. Language education was, in any event, inseparable from the institutional recognition of Chinese language studies that began with the inauguration of the first chair in Sinology in France in 1815. In addition, the progress made in the evolution of digraphic printing had a crucial impact on laying the groundwork for the creation and dissemination of many specialist publications, hence facilitating the growth of academic discourse.

It is hoped that, by focusing on the interweaving of processes rather than on isolated processes, this article will counterbalance the tendency towards isolated perspectives that arguably dominate Chinese linguistic historiography. The strong focus on the history of linguistic ideas and concepts and their application to Chinese clearly necessitates a broader and more complex analytical framework. Vice versa, the field of linguistic historiography is as yet marked by a strong focus on European traditions (cf. Swiggers 2010Swiggers, Pierre 2010 “History and Historiography of Linguistics: Status, Standards and Standing”. Revista Eutomia 3:2. 1–18.: 2, fn. 7). The broadening of perspectives towards non-European traditions is one possible response to this trend. By contrast, the approach taken here is the exploration of the intercultural intersections of the historiography of linguistics.