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history. His famous essay, 'The Century of Louis the Fourteenth', concludes — and this was a logical step — not with an assessment of the state of French affairs, but with a chapter which had apparently nothing to do with France, a chapter entirely devoted to the Manchu Emperor Kangxi, whose reign almost exactly corresponds in China to the equally long years of Louis XIV in France. Long before UNESCO, Voltaire compiled under the misleading title Essai sur les Moeurs — an essay on human manners and ways
a long and detailed comparative history of the world as it was known to him, making a point of keeping a proper balance between the chapters dealing with Europe, the Arab civilisations, India and of course China.
China had enabled the French Philosophe to approach the problems of mankind at the highest possible level, and in most general terms. China had indeed been the occasion of a major intellectual advance, but probably at the expense of China itself. One should wonder whether the Westerner ever gave up this attitude, namely dealing with China as an abstraction, almost as Utopia. The French eighteenth-century intellectuals may well have a responsibility for this major incapacity of ours, even today, to face China as a more complex and more concrete reality, not an abstract construction.
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For French intellectuals, China was indeed a philosophical abstraction. But it was also a cultural fashion, almost a cultural gadget. Chinoiseries were very popular, through tapestries, lacquers and silks, porcelains and ceramics. Pagodas were built in many aristocratic gardens and parks. China was a popular theme for aquatint engravings. The success of the rococo style in architecture and decoration had a distinct Chinese flavour, the shady and gracefully vanishing colours and shapes of Watteau's landscapes displayed a remote but definite Chinese influence. China was everywhere, even on the stage with a play by Voltaire, L'Orphelin de la Chine. The monarchy itself had engaged in the Chinese fashions. The ageing Louis XIV celebrated the first New Year of the eighteenth century with refined, if fake, Chinese-style festivities. Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV's mistress and a declared supporter of Voltaire and Diderot, was keen to give the Chinese touch to her banquets, feasts and dances à la chinoise. This Chinese