In Search of Origin: Music, Missionaries, and a World History in Eighteenth-Century China and France

Wang Lansheng, a music scholar serving the Chinese Emperor Kangxi, boldly asserted that what appeared to be the Western system of music originated in China. Curiously, Pierre-Louis Ginguené, a French music critic, made almost exactly the same claim in describing Chinese music to his French audience. He stated that Chinese music was the foundation that gave rise to all subsequent musical developments in the West. The parallels and connections between Wang's and Ginguené's remarks are striking. Both authors claimed a Chinese origin of Western civilizations; both drew on the writings of Jesuit missionaries; and both attempted to construct a world history based on a new understanding of the foreign cultures. In this paper, I trace the development of this claim and explore its significance in both Chinese and French contexts. I argue that the Jesuit missionaries were crucial in transmitting knowledge between China and the West as well as in raising the possibility of creating a world history. Moreover, the question of origin became paramount in the construction of such a history. In this process, the Chinese and French intellectuals realized that truth could no longer be derived from textual analysis alone but needed to be confirmed by observable and repeatable experiments. Ultimately, the search of origin reflects a deeper connection between China and the West than previously thought, in which their encounter resulted not only in the transmission of goods and information but also in new ways of conceptualizing the world.