Первые европейские сообщения о китайских тайных обществах начала XIX века

Восток. Афро-азиатские общества: история и современность. 2023. № 6. С. 182–192.

Stezhenskaya L.

The article examines the earliest information by the Europeans concerning activities of the secret societies – traditional public organizations that have played a significant role in the history of China and continue to be a phenomenon of social life in China and abroad. Identification of the 1811 report on secret societies in Dutch, which had been considered the earliest, was established in the 1811 Belgian publication. Its attribution to a French naturalist L. T. Leschenault de la Tour (1773–1826) is proven. The French original of this account is identified; its divergences from the Dutch translation are indicated. The circumstances under which Leschenault obtained information on the Chinese secret societies in China and 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 their leadership as given by him. A Russian explorer I.F. Kruzenshtern is described as the first European to report on secret societies in China in Part 2 of the 1810 Russian edition of his Voyage Round the World. The exact date of the original German edition of this book is specified. Various 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.

Keywords: историография, historiography, китаеведение, Chinese studies, secret societies, тайные общества, L.T. Leschenault de la Tour, I.F. Kruzenshtern (A.J. von Krusenstern), Л.Т. Лешено де ла Тур, И.Ф. Крузенштерн