Orient contra China: Eusèbe Renaudot's Vision of World History (ca. 1700)

One of the most important Orientalists, EusèbeRenaudot (1648-1720), was central in at least three major debates of his time: the late confessionalist anti-Protestant debate about the conceptions of the Eucharist; the hundred-year-long clash between the Jesuits and their enemies during the controversy of rites; and the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes. Analyzing Renaudot's large collection of unpublished manuscript treatises, it is argued that the early modern concept of ‟world history," with its actors, civilizations, and even historical or cultural regions like the "Middle East," emerged as something of a by-product of competing visions within those debates.