Gabriel 's Diplomacy And Sinology Research

Joseph Marie Callery, an Italian national, was one of the most active European sinologues during the mid of 19th century, and played a major role in the negotiations of Sino-French Whampoa Treaty, the toleration of Christianity and the Sino-Belgium Treaty in 1844-1846. At the same time, Callery was the first western scholar to study the phonetics of Chinese characters and the first one to translate the’Book of Rites’ into a European language. In addition, during his years in China, he sent a large number of Chinese plants, birds, herbs, mineral specimens back to Europe which helped Europeans to have a better understanding of Chinese natural sciences. However, his reputation could not withstand the test of time, nowadays his name becomes unknown to the public.This work, based on a large number of original documentation, is trying to restore Callery’s career, both on diplomacy and on sinology, and aims to recover the missing pieces in the History of Sino-French relations, as well as the ones in western sinology.This study is divided into two parts.With four chapters, the first part will focus on Callery’s diplomatic career. The first chapter will be centered on those days when Callery served as French Consulate’s interpreter in Macao between 1842 and 1844. The second chapter mainly discusses Callery’s role during the Sino-French negotiation. His diary written in 1844 was one of premier sources for historical studies on that event, but was only made known in the 1950s, the author of this thesis tried to understand the reason behind this delay. The last chapter is about Callery’s royal Chinese language interpreter life in Paris from 1847 till his death in 1862, a position somehow ’bizarre’ for a country who did not have many relations with China at that time.The second part concerns Callery’s sinological work. The Systema Phoneticum Scriptures Sinicce was the first western work on the phonetics of Chinese characters, in which Callery established several important theories on Chinese language, especially on its ideo-phonetical aspect, as well as on the word construction under this monosyllabic language. The following chapter discusses his unfinished Dictionnaire Encyclopedia de la Langue Chinoise, the translation of ’Book of Rites’and other works. Due to his abundant knowledge of China and being the only one in France fluent in Chinese at that time, Callery was consistently a target of jealousies from Paris sinology community which was dominated by Stanislas Julien. The last chapter will use some undisclosed documents to show the rivalries between Julien and Callery, and to provide new evidences to support what Cordier once said ’Julien was an ugly man’.Several Callery’s sinological work, as well photos of original documents, will be provided in the appendix.