The Chinese Empire was the longest-lasting civilization in world history and has the longest tradition of historical documentation (historiography, pre-modern). In addition, China is a highly developed and complex world civilization. This makes it an ideal benchmark for the West to compare itself with. Leibniz already referred to China as the "Europe of the East".

The first studies on Chinese history in the scholarly Europe of the 17th and 18th centuries were the numerous Jesuit publications. At the height of their mission to China, some of these Je…