Several years ago, Pat Ebrey, founding editor of this journal, solicited the board for ideas for special issues. I have long been interested in the historiography of different national Sinological traditions and suggested a series of essays on this topic from a host of such historiographical backgrounds. Pat agreed and enthusiastically supported the idea. I had spoken about such a topic in a vague, roundabout manner some twenty years earlier with Martin Kern (Princeton University), and so I consulted him and was extremely fortunate to be given by him a handful of names of scholars who might perform such a task for their countries of origin, mostly in Europe. I was able to gradually compile a list that runs now to fifteen essays. Most of the authors are senior scholars in their fields, although some are mid-career or even junior; one is written by a graduate student. It was, of course, also essential that these authors all be able to write in English.

A form of Sinology emerged in Vietnam in the early twentieth century during the period of colonial rule as Western learning came to replace the traditional curriculum of the Confucian classics. At first, scholars sought to preserve traditional learning by translating Confucian and Buddhist texts into the Vietnamese vernacular. Then in the 1930s and 1940s, scholars produced works on Chinese history, philosophy, and literature that engaged with the works of modern scholars from China and the West. The development of this body of Sinological scholarship was then disrupted by periods of revolution and war. This article traces the development of Sinology in Vietnam through these periods up to the present.

The tale of Korean Sinology is as dramatic as that of Korea itself, which has moved from being a faithful periphery of the Chinese civilization to a newly rising economic power in the modern world. This article begins with a survey of some distinctive features of premodern Korean scholarly works by the end of the Chosŏn dynasty from the perspective of Sinology. Then it moves on to modern scholarship, focusing mostly on the field of Chinese history, which I think is the most active and innovative among the several different fields in today's Korean Sinology. The history of Korean Sinology is a telling case study that illustrates how humanistic learning is deeply connected to fundamental aspects of a society's politics, economics, and culture at a given moment in time.

In this essay, to make the best use of the limited space available, I concentrate on elements that have not yet received much attention in English, particularly the aspects that scholars outside Japan have found bewildering and the ones that I have knowledge of myself. 1 Thus after sketching in a cursory way the earlier stages of Japanese sinology, I focus on the last forty years. I also look primarily at the study of history, largely leaving to the side the study of literature, philosophy, and the social sciences. Readers who want to know more about earlier stages of Japanese Sinology can turn to many informative and insightful works on the subject.

Despite the long Dutch presence in Taiwan (1624–1662) and the active trade between Batavia and China in the eighteenth century, the Dutch tradition of academic Sinology got underway only in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the training of future officers for Chinese affairs in the Dutch East Indies was moved to Leiden. This training (often including an extended period of stay in China) remained the main task of Chinese teaching at Leiden until 1949, when Indonesia achieved independence. The earliest phase of Chinese teaching at Leiden has received an encyclopedic coverage in the work of Koos Kuiper. Scholars of the second generation who have received monographic treatment include J.J.M. de Groot and Henri Borel. The best-known Dutch Sinologist of the middle of the twentieth century was Robert Hans van Gulik who was not only a successful diplomat and highly original scholar, but also established an international reputation with his Judge Dee crime novels. His work has given rise to considerable scholarship in English and Chinese.

This account of Sinology in the United Kingdom, in part incorporating personal reminiscence, starts with an analysis of the growth of the British library resources necessary to the practice of Sinology, followed by a sketch of the marginality in Britain in the early twentieth century of this type of scholarship. The changes brought about by the military requirements of World War II are seen as foreshadowing an era during which large-scale funding in Asian and other studies briefly allowed Sinology to flourish, after which a failure to understand the benefits of training in a non-spoken language reduced the opportunities for British students to the point where British Sinology is virtually extinct, and the willingness of scholars from elsewhere in Europe to engage with British university life is being sorely tried. The contributions of British Sinology, supported by Chinese and other incomers during its efflorescence, are briefly surveyed.

For centuries, Italy was in the forefront of studying and spreading knowledge on China in the West. Some of the leaders of the exceptional cultural exchanges of the seventeenth century were Italian. After a period of decline, from the second half of the twentieth century, there has been a revival of China studies. Following the growth of China's international impact, the traditional research fields have been supplemented by new specializations. Studies on modern China, its language, politics, institutions, society, economy, media etc., have enriched the Sinological panorama and multiplied university courses.

After an overview of Italian Sinology of the past, this study will focus on the recent developments: the universities, the research fields, the scholars, the associations and journals involved. The challenges the Sinologists are facing, due to the current Chinese political situation, will be highlighted, together with some consideration of the future of Italian Sinology.

This article narrates the history of Belgian Sinology both before and since the birth of Sinology (1814) and of Belgium (1830). The overview also embraces a broader group of scholars by including Sinologists who were from Belgium but did not necessarily work there. The first part of the article focuses on Sinological practices by the early missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The second part covers the nineteenth and twentieth centuries until the Open-Door Policy of the 1970s. This part combines a broad chronological perspective with the history of individual persons and institutions. It includes topics such as the development of oriental studies and studies of religion, the teaching of Chinese language for commercial reasons, and the establishment of Chinese and Oriental institutes within and outside the universities.

In the second half of the twentieth century, Czechoslovak Sinology gained international recognition and, beginning in the late 1970s, has sometimes been referred to as the “Prague School of Sinology.” This paper will contextualize the achievements of Czechoslovak Sinologists in the broader historical context of the study of China, in the end summarizing the present situation in the Czech Republic. It discusses both Czechoslovak and Czech Sinology as the product of a specific intellectual environment that has nourished academic interest in China and shaped a specific understanding of what “Sinology” (side by side with other “Oriental studies”) means, including its situatedness in specific moments of history.

This article gives an analytic survey of Sinology in the Swedish-speaking world from the mid-seventeenth century through the present and it draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources from the same time period. It argues that while Swedish Sinology has been characterized by strong individuals who have made consequential contributions to the study of China, Swedish Sinology now faces important challenges of an institutional and linguistic nature.

Research into traditional China at German universities began in the early nineteenth century. It took several decades, however—until after the unification of Germany in 1871—positions at the universities of first Leipzig and then Berlin and Hamburg to be established in order to professionalize traditional China studies. The third and fourth decades of the twentieth century saw a rapid expansion, but Nazi rule between 1933–1945 led to massive emigration of German sinologists. This article looks into the details of this development and the disastrous consequences it had for German sinology. It then proceeds to the new beginnings made after World War II when some emigrants returned to Germany from China. East Germany lost many sinologists, who left the GDR when the Berlin wall was built. The article finishes with the challenges that a politically important China presents to traditional sinology.

The history of French Sinology—that is, of scholarly research on things Chinese by French-speaking authors working from Chinese sources—goes back to the seventeenth century and can be divided into several periods determined in large part by sociopolitical factors, and marked by different approaches and emphases: I propose to describe them as the missionary age (seventeenth–eighteenth centuries); the first academic efflorescence (nineteenth century); the advent of field research and the impact of colonialism and the social sciences (first half of twentieth century); and the postwar era of specialization and internationalization (second half of twentieth century), which marked the end of a certain French domination of Chinese studies in the West.1

This article traces the origins and developments of Chinese studies in Austria. In addition to factors and institutions that were instrumental in the development of these studies, the lives and works of individuals important to this development are revisited, starting with brief remarks on the scholarly interest in China in eighteenth century Austria and on early efforts to obtain Chinese books and Chinese printing types in the nineteenth century. The achievements of individual scholars are examined against the backdrop of their institutional affiliations and their experiences, if any, in China. In addition, the reasons for the delayed institutionalization of Sinological studies at university level are highlighted.

This paper follows the developments in Chinese studies in Moscow and Leningrad–Saint Petersburg during the Soviet and post-Soviet decades. It provides an overview of institutions and key currents in research conducted in these two cities, while also contextualizing the general political conditions under which Sinology existed. The paper examines the ways researchers responded to the ideological requirements placed upon them in the early Soviet period, then outlines the main trends in Chinese studies after the establishment of the PRC and during the Sino-Soviet split, and, finally, traces the continuities and changes of the late Soviet and post-Soviet years. This article provides some information on existing bibliographical publications, conferences, and journals as an aid for following China-related research conducted in Russia. It also demonstrates that, while many problems continue to hamper the development of Sinology in Russia, this field has sound foundations and many promising tendencies.

The earliest pieces of knowledge and research on China in Poland reflected development of Sinological studies in Western Europe. Being located on the sidelines of trade routes through which Eastern ideas and goods reached Western Europe, Poles used to get their information about China mostly from intermediaries: medieval travelers, merchants, and envoys, and since the sixteenth century, letters, writings, and books by Jesuit missionaries. The Poles contributed the very first comprehensive description of Chinese flora, and were important in spreading mathematical knowledge among Chinese scientists. A Pole established Monumenta Serica, still published today, and another Pole applied formal logic to the research of Chinese classical texts for the very first time. Despite all that, regular Sinological research in Poland did not take off until the twentieth century, and even then it was interrupted by political upheaval in Poland and by researchers’ fight either for freedom or with ideology.

The development of Sinology in Australia was contingent upon, and serves as a lens through which to view, a number of transformations to Australian society in the middle decades of the twentieth century, as the country sought independence from the “Mother Country,” Great Britain, and reoriented itself towards Asia. These include Australia's first forays into independent international diplomacy and the introduction of the Ph.D. degree and postgraduate research in the university system—culminating in the first Australian postgraduate work on China in the 1950s. While government support has always been crucial to the enterprise, from the early years until today scholars have defended the Chinese humanities against the utilitarian “national interest” proclivities of governments. Adopting a broad definition of Sinology, one which encompasses post-war trends in “Chinese Studies,” this article surveys the universities that have been important to Sinology, the scholars who worked in them and the ongoing challenges to the discipline.