Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, born in 1674 and died 1743, was a French Jesuit historian specializing in China. He did not travel to China, but collected seventeen Jesuit missionaries’ reports and provided an encyclopedic survey of the history, culture and society of China and “Chinese Tartary,” known nowadays as Manchuria.
Voltaire said of Du Halde’s work: “Although it is developed out of Paris, and he hath not known the Chinese, [he] gave on the basis of the memoirs of his colleagues, the widest and the best description the empire of China has had worldwide.”
Reference:
Jean-Baptiste Du Halde to Hans Sloane, 1733-12-11, Sloane MS 4053, f. 108, British Library, London.
Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, Wikipedia, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Du_Halde, accessed 23/08/17]
Dates: to
Occupation: Unknown
Relationship to Sloane: Virtual International Authority File: