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A French Jesuit and missionary to China, Antoine Gaubil (1689–1759) spent half his life in Beijing. His rigorous translations and studies in the fields of history, geography, astronomy and cartography made him one of the finest sinologists of his day. Thanks to his remarkable mastery of Chinese language, he also became the official interpreter to European embassies for the imperial court. Respected throughout Europe, he was a corresponding member of the Royal Society of London, the French Académie Royale des Sciences and the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Edited by the French philologist and orientalist Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838), this work was published posthumously in 1814. In it, Gaubil comments on Chinese chronology from the beginning of time until 206 BCE and the start of the Han dynasty. Expertly examining the sources on which this chronology is based, this remains an important contribution to Chinese historiography.
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