European ethnotypes in Chinese words : the translation and negotiation of some Western national characters in early nineteenth-century China

Abstract

The "World Geography" ("Wanguo dili quanji" 萬國地理全集) published in 1844 by the Protestant missionary Karl F.A. Gützlaff was the first geographical account to introduce some European ethnotypes to China. Based on recent archival findings, my article compares this book with both its presumed Western source and its rendering in the 1847 edition of Wei Yuan 魏源's "Maps and Documents of the Maritime Countries" ("Haiguo tuzhi" 海國圖志). It thus explores the role that interlingual and intralingual transfers respectively played first in negotiating and then renegotiating two European stereotypes in their early travels to and within the Qing empire