Created by Louis XVIII by order of November 29, 1814, the Chair of " Chinese and Manchu Tartar languages and literature " at the Collège Royal (later Collège de France) was entrusted to a young, largely self-taught scholar, Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat (1788-1832).
During his all-too-short career at the Collège, Abel-Rémusat founded what might well be called " professional sinology ", reviving the knowledge accumulated over some two centuries by missionaries and their European correspondents, while at the same time thoroughly renewing it and applying a new scientific rigor to it.
This celebration of the bicentenary of the Chair of Chinese Studies at the Collège de France will duly honor the impressive work of Abel-Rémusat. It will also evoke the contributions of his successors at the Collège, and look at the exchanges between French and Chinese sinology over the past two centuries.
