Earliest European Accounts of Chinese Secret Societies in the Beginning of the 19th Century

Abstract

The paper examines the earliest information by the Europeans concerning activities of the secret societies – traditional public organizations that have played a significant role in history of China and continues to be a phenomenon of public life in China and abroad. Identification of the 1811 report on secret societies in Dutch, which had been considered the earliest, was succeeded in the 1811 Belgian publication. Its attribution to French naturalist L. T. Leschenault de la Tour (1773–1826) is proven. The French original of this account is identified; its text larger version and divergences from the Dutch translation are indicated. The circum-stances of Leschenault's obtaining information of the Chinese secret societies in China on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies are examined. A linguistic commentary is given on the dialect names of the secret societies and the Chinese personal names of its leadership reported by him. The Russian explorer I.F. Kruzenshtern is described as the first European to report on secret societies in China in Part 2 of the Russian edition of his Voyage Round the World ... of the 1810. The exact time of the original German edition publication of this book is specified. Variety of assessments of secret societies’ nature by Kruzenshtern and Leshenault are elucidated. Their difference from later assessments by Protestant missionaries W. Milne and R. Morrison, who proposed the ‘Masonic paradigm’ is demonstrated. The four original texts by Kruzenshtern and Leshenault with their accounts of secret societies in China are provided as Supplements.