Abstract
In their attempt to structure the history of China, early modern European authors very soon adopted the scheme of the dynasties as first transmitted to Europe by Philippe Couplet in the Tabula chronologica Monarchiae Sinicae . This chapter presents a table which introduced the presentation perpetuated by encyclopaedias from the late-seventeenth century up to the 1830s. The European 'republic of letters' broadly discussed questions relating to universal chronology. From the very beginning of presenting Chinese history to their European contemporaries, the Jesuits saw the necessity to synchronize Chinese and biblical chronology. Only in referring to historical and contemporary events in China, European encyclopaedias had to deal extensively with Chinese personal names. Keywords:Europeans; history of china
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