Political agendas and study of Chinese astronomy in eighteenth-century Britain

by University of Chicago

Credit: AI-generated image

In the eighteenth century, from opposite ends of the world, a debate raged between two scholars over a seemingly esoteric question: did Chinese history predate Judeo-Christian antiquity?

Antoine Gaubil, a French Jesuit operating a mission in Beijing, posited that it did, aligning himself with the official Chinese government chronology, and using the state's astronomical records as his evidence. George Costard, meanwhile, a clergyman and academic working in the south of England, attempted to discredit that same astronomical history in order to disprove China's antiquity.

A new paper in Isis, "Oriental Chronology: Chinese Astronomy and the Politics of Antiquity in Eighteenth-Century Britain," articulates the political strategy animating each man's position, and demonstrates how the study of Chinese astronomy was shaped by European political interests.

From the mid-seventeenth century, Jesuit missionaries had supported China's official chronology, based on the nation's long history of astronomical observations. Antoine Gaubil, writes article author Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh, had many diplomatic reasons for doing so: His mission in Beijing, founded in the 1680s by Louis XIV, was faltering after the departure of its lead astronomer, and was facing intensified scrutiny under a new Chinese emperor who was unsympathetic to Catholicism. Aligning with China's sanctioned chronology was necessary for missions in the country to survive.

Gaubil's argument for the accuracy of Chinese chronology was also rendered precarious by a sect of Jesuit missionaries inside of China known as the "figurists," who believed that ancient Chinese narratives and texts did not belong to Chinese history but, rather, anticipated Judeo-Christianity. The figurists eventually shortened their timeline of Chinese history, creating difficulties for fellow Jesuits like Gaubil.

Despite these political pressures, Gaubil's position was also rooted in scientific inquiry. In a collected volume published in 1732, the Jesuit argued that "since the ancient Chinese 'did not know the proper movement of the fixed stars' (i.e., precession), there was no way that they could have retrospectively fabricated ancient observations."

George Costard, writing in England in 1747, disagreed. He dismissed Gaubil's and other Jesuits' Chinese sources as "fictitious and without Foundation." Deeply distrustful of "oriental despotism," Costard argued that under China's "authoritarian" conditions, astronomers would be incentivized to alter their results to please the emperor, and, as such, their records could not be relied upon.

Costard, as a Low Church Anglican and a parliamentarian, was also driven by political and religious interests. His animosity towards Chinese absolutism additionally extended to the similar strain of authoritarianism he perceived in the French government and the Catholic Church.

Giovannetti-Singh writes, "Costard's project to discredit Chinese astronomy cohered with contemporary ethnological efforts to demonstrate an innate, inherited love of liberty among the British people.

"The controversy between Costard and Gaubil highlights the ways in which European analyses of the credibility of 'oriental' astronomical measurements served to promote disparate political projects."

Ultimately, this little-known episode in the history of science illustrates how "British and French scholars' divergent interactions with Chinese astral and historical sciences were conditioned by pressing local concerns and involved sophisticated study of Chinese cultures of knowledge."

More information: Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh, Oriental Chronology: Chinese Astronomy and the Politics of Antiquity in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Isis (2024). DOI: 10.1086/733145

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