Joseph de Guignes (October 19, 1721 - 1800), French orientalist, was born at Pontoise. October 19 is the 291st day of the year (292nd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Events Pope Innocent XIII becomes pope Johann Sebastian Bach composes the Brandenburg Concertos April 4 - Robert Walpole becomes the first prime minister of Britain September 10 - Treaty of Nystad is signed, bringing an end to the Great Northern War November 2 - Peter I is proclaimed Emperor of All the Russias... 1800 was a common year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar). ... Orientalism is the study of Near and Far Eastern societies and cultures, by Westerners. ... Pontoise is a suburban commune of the Val-dOise département, in suburban Paris in France. ...

He succeeded Fourmont at the Royal Library as secretary interpreter of the Eastern languages. A Mémoire historique sur l'origine des Huns et des Turcs, published by de Guignes in 1748, obtained his admission to the Royal Society of London in 1752, and he became an associate of the French Academy of Inscriptions in 1754. The Royal Society of London is claimed to be the oldest learned society still in existence and was founded in 1660. ...

Two years later he began to publish his learned and laborious Histoire générale des Huns, des Mongoles, des Turcs et des autres Tartares occidentaux (1756-1758); and in 757 he was appointed to the chair of Syriac at the College de France. He maintained that the Chinese nation had originated in Egyptian colonization, an opinion to which, in spite of every argument, he obstinately clung. Syriac is an Eastern Aramaic language that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. ...

The Histoire had been translated into German by Dahnert (1768-1771). De Guignes left a son, Christian Louis Joseph (1759-1845), who, after learning Chinese from his father, went as consul to Canton, where he spent seventeen years. On his return to France he was charged by the government with the work of preparing a Chinese-French-Latin dictionary (1813). He was also the author of a work of travels (Voyages a Pékin, Manille, et l'île de France, 1808). Guangzhou (Traditional Chinese: 廣州; Simplified Chinese: 广州; pinyin: Guǎngzhōu; Wade_Giles: Kuang_chou; Jyutping: Gwong2zau1; Yale: Gwóngjaū) is the capital of the Guangdong Province in southern China. ...

See Quérard, La France littéraire, where a list of the memoirs contributed by de Guignes to the Journal des savants is given.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ... The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) in many ways represents the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ...