Jesuit China Challenges Rome. Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s Description de la Chine between Jesuit knowledge and Roman Condemnation

This essay examines Jean-Baptiste Du Halde’s Description de la Chine (1735) as a pivotal text in the construction of eighteenth-century European knowledge of China and as a key episode in the Chinese Rites Controversy. Drawing on newly uncovered inquisitorial documents, it analyzes the tension between Jesuit epistemic authority and Roman censorship, showing how Du Halde’s work challenged papal decisions while reshaping Enlightenment debates on religion, morality, and governance. The article highlights the Jesuits’ editorial strategies, their portrayal of Confucianism as a rational and moral system, and their minimization of Chinese atheism. Despite official condemnation, Du Halde’s Description achieved extraordinary success and profoundly influenced European philosophers and encyclopedists. The study ultimately reveals how Enlightenment Europe constructed its own modernity through a contested and politicized image of China.