Okamoto-MacPhail, Aiko. “A Mission between Two Missions: Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix’s History of Japan.” In “Circa Missiones: Jesuit Understandings of Mission through the Centuries (Proceedings of the Symposium held at Lisbon, Portugal, June 12–14, 2023),” ed. Alessandro Corsi, Claudio Ferlan, and Francisco Malta Romeiras, special issue, International Symposia on Jesuit Studies 3, no. 1 (2026): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.51238/ISJS.2023.10.
Research Article
Circa Missiones: Jesuit Understandings of Mission through the Centuries
Section 2. Asia
A Mission between Two Missions: Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix’s History of Japan
Okamoto-MacPhail, Aiko. “A Mission between Two Missions: Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix’s History of Japan.” In “Circa Missiones: Jesuit Understandings of Mission through the Centuries (Proceedings of the Symposium held at Lisbon, Portugal, June 12–14, 2023),” ed. Alessandro Corsi, Claudio Ferlan and Francisco Malta Romeiras, special issue, International Symposia on Jesuit Studies 3, no. 1 (2026): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.51238/ISJS.2023.10.
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Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, S.J. (Saint-Quentin, Aisne 1682–La Flèche, Sarthe 1761) was a prolific writer who compiled a work documenting two hundred years of the Society of Jesus’s missionary work, from the Renaissance to his day. He taught at the Jesuit college in Quebec from 1705 before returning to France in 1709 to continue his studies. He was ordained in France in 1712.[1] In 1715, during this interim time back in Europe, he also wrote his first book about Japan. His superiors then instructed him to see if the Saint Lawrence River and the Mississippi run into the Pacific.[2] He went back to North America and, after an adventurous raft ride on the Mississippi, returned to France and wrote his books on the Island of Hispaniola (the Island of Haiti and Saint Domingo) (published in 1730–31 and 1733), New France (published in 1744), and Paraguay (published in 1756 and 1757). But his most popular book was about Japan, a country he never visited. Charlevoix revised the book twice in 1736 and 1754. Falling between the Renaissance Jesuit mission during the Christian Century of Japan (1549–1639) and the modern mission after 1873 when Japan finally lifted its more than two-hundred-year proscription of Christianity, Charlevoix’s book on Japan is a mission between two missions. Our focus is on Charlevoix’s books on Japan published during the author’s lifetime in 1715, 1736, and 1754.
Structure
The paper begins with a preliminary clarifying the terminology used in this paper to refer to Charlevoix’s History of Japan; it also defines the concepts of “Catholic Encyclopedism” and Charlevoix’s “total history” and sets out the paper’s argument. The rest of the paper is divided into five parts. Part 1 is about Charlevoix’s History of Japan published in 1715, 1736, and 1754. The 1736 edition drew on two new sources: François Caron and Engelbert Kaempfer. The same sources were also used for the 1754 edition but with a different emphasis from the earlier editions, as we will see later. Part 1 also discusses the differences and similarities in Charlevoix’s work and the Encyclopédie compiled by Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert and the Dictionnaire œconomique (Dictionary of home economy) by the Catholic priest Noël Chomel. Part 2 situates Charlevoix in his socio-political context in order to explain why he needed a new Jesuit rhetoric to persuade Europeans of the value of Jesuit missions abroad. Part 3 goes on to discuss the Jesuits in Trévoux and Charlevoix’s printer-publishers. Part 4 explores the maps produced by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin for Charlevoix’s history, a unique strength lacking from Diderot’s and Chomel’s encyclopedias. The paper concludes with a discussion of Charlevoix’s soul of history and how he unified the vertical aspiration in Catholicism with the horizontal complication of knowledge that characterizes encyclopedias.
Preliminary 1: Editions; Terminology
During his lifetime, Charlevoix published books on four regions in the world—Japan, New France, Hispaniola, and Paraguay—and these are listed in the appendix at the end of this article. This appendix is not a complete list. While looking at the appendix, a doubt crossed my mind about whether Charlevoix’s works were pirated; however, it is difficult to identify pirated editions. For Renaissance books, we often know what was pirated because in many cases the author complained, and the pirated editions do not reproduce the “Privilège du roy” (the king’s authorization to publish).[3] In the appendix, the books on Japan indicated in bold are cited by Charlevoix himself as his books as proof that he authorized them. Since the appendix is an indispensable reference for my article, I have placed emphasis on it here at the outset.
As Robert Darnton warns us, modern English terminology, like new “editions” to indicate revised content and “prints” to designate reprints of the same text, does not work for eighteenth-century French publications.[4] In his book, Darnton proposes loosely using the word edition as the eighteenth-century printers and publishers used it. However, in Charlevoix’s case, we need a new strategy due to his complex publishing style, which cannot be adequately covered by the meaning of today’s “edition” and “print” or by the eighteenth-century “edition” as Darnton uses it. I therefore propose calling all books published in the same year the “edition.” Multiple books published in the same year—two in 1715, three in 1736, and four in 1754—are different in a way that means we cannot always call them “prints” in the sense of a reproduction. To solve this issue, I refer to Charlevoix-Behourt 1715 and Charlevoix-Boullenger 1715 to differentiate two versions of the same 1715 edition published by two different publishers, Guillaume Behourt and Jacques-Joseph Le Boullenger. For the 1736 and 1754 editions, I follow the same combination of Charlevoix’s name hyphenated with the publisher’s name followed by the year of publication.
Both Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie and Chomel’s Dictionnaire œconomique, which I use as the touch-stone of my argument of Catholic Encyclopedism, have their own complex histories of publication, with a false place of publication in Neuchâtel for Diderot’s Encyclopédie, or, in the case of Chomel, the right to publish held by Étienne Ganeau after 1718 but with the work pirated in Commercy and Amsterdam.[5] As for Diderot’s Encyclopédie, I use the 1969 five-volume integral reprint capped with “Compact Edition” on top of the original title of the first edition of the Encyclopédie.[6] References to volumes and pages will be given both from the original Encyclopédie and the Compact Edition.
Preliminary 2: Catholic Encyclopedism and Total History
My argument now focuses on the new horizon of knowledge opening in the eighteenth century and its impact on Jesuit missionary rhetoric, which I call Catholic Encyclopedism. Catholic Encyclopedism is similar to Diderot’s Encyclopédie in many ways but differs in its purpose and its moral ground. Catholic Encyclopedism preserves the theological purposefulness to approach what is invisible and divine and founds knowledge on the moral ground of Christianity. Diderot’s Encyclopédie removes this religious purpose and anticipates today’s science, in which the truth is not founded on moral correctness.[7] Catholic Encyclopedism designates the geographic movement of information, objects, and technology from abroad to Europe and the chronological movement from historically cumulative Catholic knowledge to the Enlightenment. The vector of movement is the opposite of what Ulrich Lehner presents in The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement, especially in chapter 4, “Catholic Enlightenment in the Americas, China, and India,” which describes the influence emanating from the Enlightenment to Catholicism, and from Europe to other continents.[8]Catholic Encyclopedism and Catholic Enlightenment are complementary, and when joined together they make for a mutually strengthening chiasmic flow of exchange.
Catholic Encyclopedism includes the idea that Encyclopedism does not totally overlap with the Enlightenment. The book Tous les savoirs du monde (All knowledge of the world) gathered materials to exemplify how encyclopedic compilations existed in all times and all places.[9] If there is anything particular about the eighteenth-century Encyclopédie, it depended on the collection of objects and information gathered through trade and Catholic mission reports in such a way that it turned over the idea of what is universal descending from the height of a universal idea (like in Immanuel Kant’s Transcendental Deduction) toward earth, to a horizontal accumulation of objects, information, and manufactures from around the globe. In Diderot’s Encyclopédie, the universal became attainable by addition. Consequently, the axis of universalism was transformed from a vertical ascent to the divine, universal, and incorruptible to a horizontal expansion of the system of human knowledge[10] expressed in the tree of sciences called the “illustrated system of human knowledge.”[11]
Charlevoix’s Total History
True to this global nature of data collection, Diderot starts the article “Encyclopédie” in his Encyclopédie with the following statement: “The goal of an Encyclopedia is to assemble the diverse knowledge on the surface of the earth to make a system and transmit it to our contemporaries and to posterity, so that the works of past centuries will not be wasted for future generations.”[12] Charlevoix could not agree more with Diderot. But Charlevoix did not write an encyclopedia; he wrote an encyclopedic history that expands one entry of Diderot’s and D’Alembert’s encyclopedia about one country, Japan for example, into multi-volume books. In fact, Charlevoix not only sought to write the history of one country but to produce an independent history for each of the four continents, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Americas, in his “project of a body of history in the New World” with a “chronological calendar of the discovery of the New World” done by the Europeans “from the middle of the fifteenth century to today in Asia, Africa, and America.”[13] Charlevoix expands the New World from the Americas to all lands unknown in Europe before the fourteenth century and explains that he needs to write a separate history in each region because Asia, Africa, and the Americas share little common history.[14] In this “project,” Charlevoix, like Diderot, appeals to the need to conserve the information gathered from the New World to Europe so that future generations can receive it in a better organized way.[15]
To make this comprehensive history bibliographically comprehensive, Charlevoix announces the “exact catalog of all the authors” (catalogue exact de tous les auteurs) who wrote about each region.[16] In his History of Japan, Charlevoix adds an annotated bibliography or “List and Examination of the Authors Who Wrote about the History of Japan” at the end of the 1736 edition and expanded it as “Authors Who Wrote about the History of Japan” in 1754.[17] Through these books of Jesuit foreign missions cumulatively transmitted to Europe, Charlevoix describes the character of each nation, its origin, government, religion, good and bad qualities, climate, and main natural resources.
Japan for Charlevoix
Catholic Encyclopedism is a movement that revived its mission heritage of two hundred years to set the stage for an encyclopedic display of knowledge built on Christian foundations. Japan had a special meaning for Charlevoix because to talk about Japan meant returning to the beginning to extract a pure Jesuit way of proceeding in foreign missions. In the Portuguese Estado da Índia, Saint Francis Xavier encountered multiple issues with the Portuguese colonial authorities and adventurer merchants like Fernão Mendes Pinto. One was the challenge of bringing up as good Christians children born from local mothers and Portuguese fathers, for Portugal promoted local marriages following Afonso de Albuquerque’s conquest of Goa in 1510 and Malacca in 1511.[18] Above all, Xavier sought to evangelize local non-Christians while keeping pace with other Catholic orders inside the Catholic Church. In Japan, free from many of these factors, Xavier dealt directly with people governed by Japanese lords. Without any other Catholic order preceding the Society of Jesus, Xavier started his mission from scratch in a country whose population had never heard of Christianity and took him to be a sort of Buddhist because he came from India. Portuguese merchants came only once a year, with an eastward monsoon, and did not stay in the country.
In the annotated bibliography, Charlevoix writes that the Jesuit mission in Japan as it is described in the Litterae annuae Societatis Jesu Japonicae (Annual Japanese letters of the Society of Jesus) holds a special position for the Society of Jesus in writing the complete history.[19] Charlevoix points out that the Jesuits were the first to enter Japan and evangelized for nearly fifty years without any other Catholic orders working with them. The Jesuits were also the last to leave Japan and sent annual reports throughout their mission, which provide the materials to write a complete history of Japan.[20] Charlevoix does not allow any chronologically empty year in the sequence of history.
From the complete history preserved in Jesuit records, Charlevoix could extract the pure Jesuit style of foreign mission called accommodation, started in Japan with Xavier’s arrival in Kagoshima on August 15, 1549, and relayed from him to Alessandro Valignano, who moved to keep Japan as an exclusively Jesuit mission ground so that the Japanese people who had never heard of Christianity before Xavier’s arrival would not be confused by different and sometimes contradictory teachings among Catholic orders. However, this pure Jesuit way ended in 1593, when the mendicant orders reached Japan from the Philippines. By 1593, the Jesuit style of mission was in full swing. In 1585, the Tenshō Legation reached Rome and had audiences with two popes, Gregory XIII (r.1572–85) and Sixtus V (r.1585–90), and the news of Christendom in the Orient spread across Europe. In 1597, this bright news ended in martyrdom. Charlevoix writes that more had been written about Japan than China, which suggests that Japanese history in sixteenth- to seventeenth-century Europe was mainly promulgated as martyrdom stories. Starting from this initial period, Charlevoix compiled documents and updated them with Caron and Kaempfer, and with new events like the story of Giovanni Battista Sidoti, who entered Japan in 1708 (seven years before Charlevoix’s first book on Japan was published) and whose life ended as yet another martyrdom in 1714. Following the latest news in real time, Charlevoix tried to introduce the History of Japan to new readers in the evolving situation of eighteenth-century France.
Charlevoix’s History of Japan in 1715, 1736, and 1754
The 1715 Edition
Writing at a time when Japan was closed, Charlevoix’s first account of Japan, published in 1715, was written with the knowledge inherited from the Renaissance Jesuits. Charlevoix read one of the most prolific Renaissance writers, Luis Frois, through intermediary sources: Richard Hakluyt, who published “a quite long letter written by Jesuit Father Luís Frois, written from Miyako [Kyoto] in 1565,” and Frois’s annual reports published by Father Jean Bolland in the Acta sanctorum (Reports of the saints) for the sanctification of twenty-six martyrs in Japan in 1597.[21] The author on whom Charlevoix relied the most was Daniello Bartoli, S.J. (1608–85). In the annotated bibliography added in 1736 and expanded in 1754, Charlevoix lists the following book by Bartoli: Dell’historia de la Compagnia di Giesù (History of the Society of Jesus), published in Rome in three volumes, from 1653 to 1663.[22]
During Bartoli’s lifetime, the Jesuit mission in Japan transited from the expulsion of 148 European and Japanese Christians in 1614[23] to the final closure of the country to all European nations, with the exception of the United Provinces, in 1639. Bartoli’s book is already a synthetic compilation of all missions before his time, and Charlevoix continued Bartoli’s work. The following title of Charlevoix’s first edition shows that it is about the rise and fall of Christianity in Japan: “History of the Establishment, the Progress, and the Fall of Christianity in the Empire of Japan, Where We See Different Revolutions that Agitated This Monarchy for More than a Century.”[24] Both Bartoli and Charlevoix wrote ecclesiastical history.
However, Charlevoix uses Bartoli selectively.[25] As the apostolic nuncio in the province of India, Xavier instructed the missionaries to write on matters of edification in their reports to Rome and to keep the details to a regional level.[26] Valignano, the visitor of India, changed this policy to avoid any misunderstanding of Japan in Rome.[27] Yet the history of Japan was spread mainly in terms of heroic martyrdom in Europe, and the fact that Charlevoix consulted these accounts to write his history is proven by his bibliography.[28] While maintaining the history of the edifying and heroic deeds in the Japanese church, Charlevoix introduced an objective style of history. For instance, he criticizes Bartoli for writing as an orator rather than a historian.[29] This criticism indicates that the Jesuit education as set out in the Ratio studiorum (1599) was no longer sufficient. The Society of Jesus was still using this curricular frame in Charlevoix’s time, with Jesuits receiving an education in Latin rhetoric with examples drawn from Roman orators like Cicero. As Silvia Fabrizio Costa reminds us, Bartoli himself was an excellent student and practitioner of Latin oratory, celebrated for his ability to visualize the invisible with his eloquent language skills, producing “communication for conversion.”[30] Charlevoix’s comment on Bartoli suggests that in eighteenth-century France, Jesuit rhetoric alone was no longer adequate for persuading the public. For communicating the invisible through the visible, the Jesuits needed a new rhetorical strategy in addition to oratory.
The 1736 Edition
In 1708, Chomel published the Catholic encyclopedia entitled Dictionnaire œconomique. In 1751, Diderot’s Encyclopédie came out. These two encyclopedias have different strengths. Chomel is strong on botany, while Diderot is strong on applied science in arts and crafts, with an emphasis on mechanics illustrated in the planches (plates) of his Encyclopédie. Charlevoix integrates both strengths into his History of Japan.
Chomel’s Dictionnaire is a book of housekeeping that uses the word “economy” in the sense of home economy before Jean-Jacques Rousseau drew a distinction between political and domestic economy and used “economy” only for the modern meaning in Diderot’s and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie.[31] In his annotated translation of a lecture delivered by Jean Meuvret, the Japanese ethnographer Ninomiya Hiroyuki observes that eighteenth-century France stabilized the exploitation of large properties consolidated in the seventeenth century by the French aristocracy and the monastic orders.[32] The domains owned by Catholic churches, for example Notre-Dame and Saint-Denis, started in the Middle Ages, and the administration and management of their large properties were one of the marked features of large-scale farming and exploitation of land in the Paris region and northern France.[33] Chomel was in charge of one such property. With the spirit of the father of God’s house combined with the skill of the gardener of the king’s house and his family practice of medicine in mind, Chomel wrote his book of housekeeping entitled the Dictionnaire œeconomique to keep a very special house. For Chomel, the purpose of a Catholic dictionary is the well-being of the people in his parish, and encyclopedic knowledge is the best means to achieve this goal.[34] The Jesuits worked in accordance with the same principle and expanded their care across the globe and, as we shall soon see, for that reason they needed maps.
Diderot emphasizes practical sciences applied in industry with mechanical arts. Though still a deist, in his 1726 book Pensées philosophiques (Philosophical thoughts) he already states that “if the religion which you announce is true, its truth should be proven by evidence and demonstrated by invincible reasons.”[35] In his 1754 book Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature (Thoughts on the interpretation of nature), the triumph of reason in Diderot would develop into the superiority of experimental physics over rational and speculative philosophy, and the application of science to arts and crafts.[36] In Diderot’s Encyclopédie, the entry on porcelain written by Chevalier Louis de Jaucourt (1704–79)[37] is a good example of the transfer of technology from East Asia to Europe. Jaucourt’s source is the report written by François-Xavier Dentrecolles, S.J. (1664–1741), who had a church in the porcelain production center “King-te-tching” in China.[38] In 1753, the construction of the factory in Sèvres started, and in 1756 the manufacture moved from Vincennes to Sèvres; in 1759, Louis XV (r.1715–74) purchased the total stock of the factory to designate it officially the Royal Manufacture of Porcelain, and finally in 1769 Sèvres successfully achieved its much-awaited technological transition from soft-paste to hard-paste porcelain.[39] The articles in the Encyclopédie closely followed the development of French manufacture to its full operation and the completion of the transfer of technology. Diderot’s first volume of the Encyclopédie and Charlevoix’s third edition, simultaneously prepared for publication in Paris, moved in the same cultural stream in their emphasis on industry in 1754, when Charlevoix shifted to stress industrially beneficial plants useful for domestic crafts. European Enlightenment was made possible by the contribution of non-European regions in the world, the very opposite movement to the Catholic Enlightenment sketched in chapter 4 of Ulrich Lehner’s The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement. Charlevoix integrated Chomel’s strength in botany and Diderot’s in industry in his History of Japan. We can see what was necessary to persuade Charlevoix’s contemporaries of the value of Jesuit foreign missions from the title of his editions of 1736 and 1754, which read: “History and General Description of Japan, in which Will Be Found All that which We Could Learn about the Nature & Production of the Country, about the Character & Customs of the Inhabitants, about the Government & Trade, about Revolutions which Occurred in the Empire & in the Religion; And the Examination of All the Others Who Wrote about the Same Subjects; With the Chronological Chart of the Discovery of the New-World.”[40] In 1736, Charlevoix added to his new edition:
1. Natural history and the industry of the country
2. People’s customs and characters
3. Government system and trade
4. The social revolution in politics and religion.
For botany, Charlevoix relies almost exclusively on Kaempfer’s Amœnitatum […] fasciculi: V.[41] As for (2) and (3), Charlevoix took them from Kaempfer and Caron and (4) from Bartoli, since Charlevoix understood “the social revolution in politics and religion” as the Renaissance Jesuit mission’s dealings with Japanese political authorities.
Charlevoix kept the same title in his 1754 editions but changed the chapter order to put a stronger emphasis on the country’s industry. In the 1736 edition, Charlevoix still says he will relegate natural history to the end of the book because it requires a detailed description of commerce, manufacture, plants, animals, and pharmacy, which has little to do with the main body of history.[42] In 1754, he moved the plants for paper, lacquer, tea, and amber to the beginning of the first volume. The tree used to obtain the pulp to make paper was practical and useful information[43] because in eighteenth-century France paper was produced from rags; [44] lacquer[45] because it was a part of rococo decorative art; and the tea plant,[46] portrayed by Kaempfer and Charlevoix with the lacquer utensils used for the tea ceremony, introduced the custom of drinking tea in Europe. These plants are related to agriculture, industry, and the decorative arts, associated with the habit of drinking tea from teapots and cups in porcelain. In 1736, Charlevoix pronounced his intention to cover all topics announced in his title in the best order possible by including everything he knew about Japan.[47] In 1754, he changed the order of 1736 to emphasize manufacture, industry, and decorative arts. The changes Charlevoix was making consecutively in his three editions have meaning in the context of his time.
Contextualizing Charlevoix
The Society of Jesus is a missionary order authorized by Pope Paul III (r.1534–49) in 1540, and its Constitutions start with a vow to venture into the Indies (Asia and the Americas).[48] The rhetoric of persuading non-Christians in far-away lands is a part of the Jesuit way of proceeding. In the eighteenth century, this Jesuit rhetoric of persuasion faced a new challenge in their European homeland. The eighteenth-century French Society of Jesus needed to raise its guard in self-defense. The Rites Controversy and the subsequent prohibition of Christianity in China in 1723 was a domestic blow for the Society of Jesus in France because “China in Europe and particularly in France is essentially seen through the Jesuit prism,” and those who supported the Jesuits praised China while those who opposed the Jesuits criticized it.[49]
In 1735, Jean-Baptiste du Halde, S.J. (1674–1743), the editor of the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses (Edifying and curious letters [1703–76]), published his description of China[50] accompanied by many maps compiled by the land survey conducted by the Jesuits in China. Du Halde strove to restore the Jesuit image by countering the seven-volume Anecdotes sur l’estat [sic] présent de la religion de la Chine (Anecdotes on the present state of the religion in China) published from 1733 to 1742.[51] Charlevoix’s revised 1736 history of Japan was published a year after du Halde’s Description. In his Description, du Halde incorporated information on history, geography, society, culture, science, and religion together with maps.[52] The second edition of Charlevoix’s History of Japan moves in the same direction as du Halde, but this time for Japan. For or against China, philosophers of the eighteenth century needed China to develop their political ideals.[53] Montesquieu, for instance, used the same resources as Charlevoix: the Lettres édifiantes and du Halde’s Description,[54] as well as Kaempfer[55] and the Voyages au nord (Travel to the north) by Jean-Frédéric Bernard (c.1683–1744).[56] Two-thirds of Montesquieu’s reading notes on China, gathered today as Geographica (Geographics), draw heavily on Jesuit sources in order to define despotism.[57] Montesquieu’s Geographica demonstrates how information flowed from Asia to France through Jesuit sources to form one of the most important ideas in the French Enlightenment, which guarantees today’s democracy by the separation of three powers. This flow of information from the New World into Europe, massive since the Renaissance, is a part of an encyclopedic movement evolving with the accumulation of knowledge gathered from the four corners of the world.
Charlevoix in Trévoux
Chomel and the Jesuits in Trévoux Inspire Chambers, Who in Turn Inspires Diderot
Catholic encyclopedias inspired Diderot’s Encyclopédie. Chomel and the Jesuits of Trévoux are cited on the first page of Ephraim Chambers’s Cyclopaedia as works he consulted to write his own encyclopedia. The authors Chambers cites are “the French Academists, the Jesuits de Trevoux, Daviler, Chomel, Savary, Chauvin, Harris, Wolfius.”[58][59] As we know, Diderot and d’Alembert started their project of the Encyclopédie from a translation of Chambers’s Cyclopaedia. In the “Discours préliminaire” in the first volume of the Encyclopédie, Diderot writes that he took the alphabetical order from Chambers, but their project expanded beyond the scale of Chambers’s Cyclopaedia.[60] On the first page of this “Discours,” Diderot mentions that his “Prospectus” was published in November 1750. In the “Prospectus,” he also explains a similar reference to Chambers, but Diderot provides a better and more detailed explanation of his relationship with Chambers’s Cyclopaedia in the “Discours préliminaire” that starts the inaugural volume of the Encyclopédie.
From this bibliographical record, it appears likely that Diderot not only knew Chambers’s Cyclopaedia but also carefully studied it. For, although Diderot does not name any French authors, he writes in his prospectus that “the limitless resources” of French works made Chambers’s international success possible.[61] Having thus established the indirect connection of Chomel’s Dictionnaire to Diderot’s Encyclopédie through Chambers, I will now suggest the intellectual proximity of Chomel and Charlevoix through their common publisher Ganeau and the Trévoux Jesuit publications in which Charlevoix also participated.
Etienne Ganeau in Trévoux
By far the most interesting of Charlevoix’s publishers is Étienne Ganeau (c.1667–c.1734). Ganeau played a central role in Jesuit publications in Trévoux after Sébastien Cramoisy (c.1584–1669) and Sébastien Mabre-Cramoisy (c.1637–87) in Paris.[62] Ganeau was the libraire juré[63] of the University of Paris after being apprenticed to André Cramoisy in April 1686 at the age of nineteen; on August 11, 1699, he became the printer in the Principality of Dombes at Trévoux.[64]
Eighteenth-century France was not yet a legally and linguistically unified country delineated by its current borders. The king’s publication laws did not apply to independent city-states like Avignon (an old papal city during the Schism) or the Principality of Dombes. The latter, with its capital in Trévoux since the Middle Ages, created its own printing house under the suzerainty of the prince of Dombes in 1695.[65] This town has a particular importance in the history of French editions for this autonomous printing house.[66] The principality was then governed by Louis XIV’s (r.1643–1715) son, the duke of Maines. The Society of Jesus created an exclusive printing house in the sovereign principality with the Parisian middleman-bookseller Jean Boudot in 1699,[67] who in the same year entered into a partnership with Ganeau before Ganeau took over the responsibility of the publishing house in 1707.[68] Trévoux owned a large printing workshop and the font casting house in Monchevel.68
Ganeau formed a company with the most dynamic Parisian publisher-booksellers, including Rollin père et fils, Giffart, Gandoin (Gandoüin), and Desaint,[69] who were Charlevoix’s publishers. The prince of Dombes’ court was free, eclectic, and religious. In the dedicatory epistle of the Dictionnaire universel français et latin (Universal dictionary in French and Latin [1704]), Ganeau writes that he collaborated with members of the French Academy, the Royal Academy of Sciences, and the Academy of Inscriptions and Medals, who had been gathering at the court of the prince of Dombes.[70] In Ganeau’s France, the publication of dictionaries soared between 1745 and 1760 and 1790 and 1820; and because of publication regulations and the granting of “privilèges” in Paris, the regional centers free from this “privilège,” such as Trévoux, flourished from 1720.[71] In 1701, the Society of Jesus in Trévoux started publishing the Mémoires pour l’histoire des sciences et des beaux-arts (Reports for the history of sciences and fine arts), known as the Journal de Trévoux. Ganeau took charge of this Jesuit journal from April 1702 to December 1728.[72]
Ganeau edited two types of dictionaries. One is the Dictionnaire universel, which takes the editorial format of a standard dictionary of language we use today. On the other hand, he uses the term dictionary closer to encyclopedia in his publication of Chomel’s Dictionnaire œconomique. Chomel published his Dictionnaire in Lyon in 1709 and re-edited it in 1712. After Chomel’s death, the edition of 1718 was printed by Jean Bruyset (1645–1726), and published and sold by Etienne Ganeau.[73] Bruyset Frères is the name of the publishing company that published the Journal de Trévoux alternatively with Ganeau between 1722 and 1728.[74] In other words, Ganeau inherited the publication of Chomel’s dictionary from the publisher with whom he worked on the Jesuit Journal de Trévoux.
Based in Trévoux, the Ganeau family prospered: after Étienne Ganeau the elder, his widow Marie Rubat (c.1684–1758) took over as “Veuve d’Etienne Ganeau,”[75] followed by their son Louis-Étienne or Étienne Ganeau the younger (1708–77).[76] Two generations of the Ganeau family’s publishing activities were covered by a publication law that acknowledged the exclusive right to the purchased manuscript on the part of the publishers and their heirs. Then a new law of 1777 acknowledged the intellectual rights of authors and their families.[77] One of Charlevoix’s publishers of the third edition of his history of Japan was Étienne Ganeau the younger in 1754. The Ganeau family also possessed the exclusive rights to Chomel’s Dictionnaire, starting with Ganeau the elder in 1718, passing through his wife Veuve Ganeau, before being handed over to their son Ganeau the younger.
The Society of Jesus, which published the Journal de Trévoux, based its anti-Dutch campaign in Trévoux.[78] The United Provinces offered a safe harbor for Protestants and Jansenists. Jesuit articles in their journal and Charlevoix’s books, as well as the types of books the Ganeau family published, are in the trend of Catholic Encyclopedism. Catholic Encyclopedism includes books that use Catholic and especially Jesuit sources, and it includes critical uses like Voltaire, who used Jesuit sources from China in favor of the Society of Jesus on the Chinese question, even though he often took a critical stance toward the Jesuits on other topics.[79] The Ganeau family in Trévoux also published the Dictionnaire latin et français de Trévoux (Latin and French dictionary of Trévoux), which knew many re-editions and reprints (1704, 1721, 1732, 1743, 1752). Trévoux is remembered as the Jesuit stronghold of publication.
In the issues of June, August, and October 1737, the Journal de Trévoux published three consecutive articles to give a summary of the 1736 edition of the History of Japan.[80] In the introduction to his book on New France published in 1744, Charlevoix himself mentions that his History of Japan was reviewed in the Journal de Trévoux.[81] Trévoux ceased all of its publication activities in 1762, when the principality became part of France.[82]
Charlevoix and his publishers’ names reappear in two modern books devoted to the printed maps of Japan: Japan: A Cartographic Vision edited by Lutz Walter,[83] and Japoniae insulae: The Mapping of Japan, written by Jason C. Hubbard.[84] Hubbard names Louis-Étienne Ganeau, Jean-Baptiste-Claude Bauche, and Laurent-Charles d’Houry as a “trio” of the “Company of Trévoux (Printing house of his Serene Highness).”[85] Pierre-François Giffart obtained the “Privilège du roy” to publish Charlevoix’s second edition on December 31, 1734,[86] and when it was published in 1736, the two booksellers Julien-Michel Gandoüin and Jean-Baptiste Lamesle were added to the privilege.[87] Hubbard explains that two more booksellers, Rollin fils (Jacques III) and Nyon fils (Jean-Luc), published Charlevoix’s second edition.[88] We will come back to Charlevoix’s maps, for Charlevoix published just two maps of the Japanese archipelago in his second edition in 1736 and revised them in his third edition in 1754, which left his name in the history of the maps of Japan. It was Charlevoix’s hydrographer Jacques-Nicolas Bellin (1703–72) who made these two maps and thus produced a separate type of cartographic Japan called “Bellin type (1736).”[89]
Cartographic Charlevoix
If Charlevoix was in the same cultural stream as Diderot with his shift of emphasis on arts and crafts, and if he shared the same interest in botany with Chomel, his strength lies in cartography. In Charlevoix’s time, three spots remained unmapped to delineate the major continents of the world: the northwest coast of North America from northern California to Alaska, the southeast coast of Australia, and the region north of Japan. While his first edition does not have any maps or illustrations, this is not the case with the second and third editions of the History of Japan, and this inevitably caused him to enter the cartographic debate. For, in the Journal de Trévoux, a debate erupted on the maps published in Charlevoix’s second edition.
Japan and the Region North of Japan in Maps
The Jesuits began mapping Japan and the north of Japan from the end of the sixteenth century. Jeronymo de Angelis, S.J. (1568–1623), the first European to set foot in Ezo, the old name for Hokkaidō, in 1618 and 1621, sent a map based on the hearsay of the inhabitants whom he met there.[90] Iacio (or Ignacio) Moreira, who accompanied Valignano to Japan and mapped it from 1590 to 1592, composed the first European map that resembles today’s Japan.[91] In 1735, the map of Tartary published in du Halde’s Description by cartographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville (1697–1782) included Japan and the lands to the north of Japan[92] because d’Anville wanted to fill the empty space in the map of Tartary to the east of Eurasia.[93] In 1736, a year after du Halde’s Description, Charlevoix published the map of Japan created by his cartographer Bellin.
During Charlevoix’s time, only two Europeans surveyed Ezo in situ: de Angelis in 1618 and 1621, and Maten Gerritsen Vries in the Dutch VOC ship Castricum in 1643.[94] The Jesuits in China mapped China, but they did not map the eastern shore of Eurasia, which was in Russian territory.[95] Therefore, Vitus Bering’s expedition from 1725 to 1730 was an important cartographic event.
One reason why de Angelis went to Ezo is that the Jesuit superior wanted to know the geography of the north of Japan in order to find a new route of evangelization between Europe and Japan on land through Siberia.[96] On the other hand, the Dutch VOC was preoccupied with the commercial possibilities of northern Japan. With Bering in 1730 and 1741, however, all three parties mapped only a part of this vast northern sea and could not sketch the whole disposition of multiple islands in a bird’s-eye view.
The cartographers’ task was to mathematically recalculate the survey data harvested by navigators to fit to the projection scale of maps. In 1737, when the debate occurred between Reverend Father Castel, S.J. and Bellin in the Journal de Trévoux, all cartographers, including d’Anville and Bellin, depended on the spot-survey of de Angelis, Vries, and Bering and filled in the vacant space with suppositions. The first navigator to achieve a comprehensive view of the entire region was Jean-François de Galaup comte de Lapérouse in 1787, yet he left many blank regions without latitude and longitude to fix the place in the mathematical grids drawn on the cartographic plane to pin-point the position.[97] Before this cartographic work was done on a global scale during the first two decades of the nineteenth century, no land dispute or land claim could be settled by the old maps, whose precision could not be trusted.
Maps Fashioned in a New Style
For the Society of Jesus, the measurement of longitude was particularly important. The route through the Indian Ocean was prone to shipwrecks and pirate raids. The overland route through Russian Siberia to Japan was an alternative to the sea route. In the period before the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the Jesuits were planning their global missions when the major continents on earth had yet to be properly mapped.
Bellin versus Reverend Father Louis-Bertrand Castel, S.J.
Bellin’s map published in Charlevoix 1736 stirred an inhouse debate. Father Castel wrote a twenty-six-page refutation of Bellin’s map for the Journal de Trévoux. Castel sided with d’Anville, whose maps of the region north of Japan were published in du Halde’s Description in 1735, a year before Charlevoix’s second edition. Castel’s article was published in the July 1737 issue of the Journal de Trévoux.[98] Bellin answered in the following month with a concise five-page article in the August issue of the Journal de Trévoux.[99] Bellin published two maps in Charlevoix’s second edition.[100] Bellin explains that both he and d’Anville based their maps on Bering’s survey and journal.[101] Bering came to the Kamchatka Peninsula in his first navigation from 1725 to 1730, but, prevented by the fog, he did not catch sight of the North American shore and so did not discover the Bering Strait at this point.[102] In his article, Bellin explains that his map of Kamchatka is more loyal to Bering than d’Anville’s. In other words, based on the same survey taken by the same navigator, two cartographers drew two different maps, and Bellin politely insisted that his map was truer to Bering’s survey and thus more accurate.
Bellin published two maps in 1736 and 1754: his first map is the map of Japan with Hokkaidō (Ezo),[103] and the second map takes Japan in a larger perspective extending from the island of Hokkaidō to the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia.[104] The first map, called the Bellin-type, did not change much between 1736 and 1754.[105] However, a major change in the second map occurred between 1736 and 1754 because Bellin revised it after Bering’s second expedition of 1740–41.[106] In Castel’s article written in 1737, what stirred discord was Bellin’s second map of 1736, before the revision of 1754. In his revised map of 1754, Bellin correctly placed all lands on the geographical space: Ezo, Sakhalin, the Kurils, and Kamchatka. From the vantage point of 1754, Bellin’s map of the region north of Japan is one of the most accurate before 1787, when Lapérouse would confirm the disposition done by Bellin in 1754 but by substantially elongating Sakhalin, one of the longest islands in a north–south axis on earth. As late as 1805, the Russian captain Ivan Fedorovich Krusenstern (1770–1846) came to the sea between the Japanese archipelago and the Asian continent with this Charlevoix-Bellin map of 1754 to survey the space left out by Lapérouse 1787.[107]
Castel and Bellin had two different purposes. Castel had in view the future Jesuit mission, whereas Bellin’s interest was in the science of cartography proper. For Castel, the science of cartography was simply a means to an end. Castel’s article is overarching; he is using the cumulative Jesuit knowledge of maps with nostalgia for many past Jesuit apostles, like de Angelis and Diogo Carvalho, S.J. (1578–1624), who died while on mission in Japan. The new possibility of finally knowing the precise geography of the region north of Japan revived in Castel’s mind the two hundred-year-old Jesuit ambition to evangelize Japan through the northern route. Castel repeatedly writes that for two hundred years[108] the Jesuits hoped to find a way to walk on land through Siberia or navigate through the Arctic Ocean from Europe to evangelize Japan and North America all connected in one route through the heartland of Ezo. Charlevoix himself was sent to North America to discover a water way to cross North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. For this reason, Castel talks about a vast geographical space from the entire Eurasian north to North America passing by the region north of Japan. To answer the hopeful Father Castel, Bellin focused his defense only on the Kamchatka Peninsula because that was the only region overlapping between the various maps mentioned in Castel’s article and Bellin’s two maps in Charlevoix 1736.
Conclusion
Charlevoix’s Soul of History
In the eighteenth century, the Jesuits faced the necessity of recording their two hundred-year-old foreign missions abroad in order to inform future foreign missions. At the same time, back home they faced the challenge of persuading their contemporaries in Europe of the value of the Jesuit foreign missions. These are not separate issues, because their successes and failures abroad resonated in Europe and influenced the Jesuits’ reputation. The mission in Japan ended in 1639 and China in 1723. While the Japanese mission spread as heroic deeds of martyrdom, the Chinese Rites Controversy provoked theological conflicts in Europe. Against the contesting voices, the Society of
Jesus was protected by the papal bull Unigenitus issued by Clement XI (r.1700–21) in 1713 upon Louis XIV’s solicitation,[109] and Louis XV enforced Unigenitus for protecting the Society of Jesus through the ministry of Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury.[110] Charlevoix dedicated his History of Japan of 1736 to Cardinal de Fleury, and he kept this dedicatory introduction in 1754 even after the cardinal’s death in 1743.[111]
Charlevoix starts his preface or avertissement in the 1736 edition with the claim that after religion, history is the best discipline to nurture the soul.[112] Then asking himself the hypothetical question of whether he had written a curious history or a pious history of Japan, Charlevoix answers that he was aiming at both. “Ecclesiastical History is the foundation of this book because that is the only part for which we possess the complete documents.”[113] Besides Kaempfer and Caron, for this complete history of Japan Charlevoix used the resources he had previously used in the Dépôt de la Marine (government archives of the navy) for his book on the history of the Island of Haiti and Saint Domingo in 1730–31. In these archives, Charlevoix’s eye was opened to a new possibility. In the preface to his book on Haiti and Saint Domingo, Charlevoix explains that he found holes in the manuscript of the Jesuit missionary Jean-Baptiste Le Pers (1675–1735), who asked Charlevoix to write a book about his mission on the Island of Haiti and Saint Domingo; but Charlevoix could fill them with the documents found in the Dépôt de la Marine to make it a complete history.[114]
This archive unpacked what Charlevoix calls the soul (l’Âme) of history.[115] The documents in the navy archive made Charlevoix see the mechanism of production on a level different from Diderot’s. In Diderot’s Encyclopédie, the mechanism is the machine in the atelier to produce useful objects. In Charlevoix, the mechanism means the hidden spring of creation seen in history, which he calls the soul of history, because this hidden mechanism is what makes people, events, and society move.[116] On the other hand, the eyewitness documents sent by Le Pers, who had been working in foreign lands for twenty-five years, constitute the body of history.[117] Charlevoix explains his discovery in the following terms:
If the Writings, which we draw from those who were the eyewitnesses, or quasi contemporaries of the events which compose the detail, are, so to speak, the Body of History; one can say that the Pieces which I found in the Navy Archives, are like its Soul, since through these Pieces which I found in the Navy Archives one discovers the hidden springs of the movements, which those who witness them did not always understand.[118]
Charlevoix explains the exact nature of the documents he found in this archive as follows:
This Archive includes the Maps which belong to the Navy; all the letters of our Kings, Ministers, Governors, Intendents & other Persons in place; the Narrative Reports, the Instructions, the Minutes of meetings, & all that which issued from the [royal] Court at large, & everything people addressed to it & related to this archival Department. The Maps & memoranda related to the Maps, are trusted to the care of the Chevalier de la Blandinière the Ship Captain, decorated Officer & responsible for an important Negotiation at present. All those which are not in his care are placed under the direction of M. de Clairambault the Genealogist of the King’s Orders, who started this prodigious Collection under Minister Colbert & established the organization there, which we never tire of admiring.[119]
From this passage, it is clear that the Royal Navy archives gave Charlevoix access to the maps, hydrographic surveys, letters exchanged for instructions, reports to the kings, and other matters related to marine surveys. France started the office of the Dépôt des cartes et plans (Archives of maps and charts) by the Conseil de la Marine (Marine Council) under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–83) in which the first director was Captain Chevalier de Luynes, but maps and charts had been gathered for several decades from about 1660.[120] Bellin was one of the cartographers in this archive. Charlevoix called these documents the “Soul” of history, and its hidden mechanism blew life into Le Pers’s reports, which constitute the “Body of History.” Charlevoix is looking for the truth shining like the sun through history, which is the next best discipline after theology. To see this truth, however, he is not reading the Bible but looking at hydrographic surveys and what today’s historians call the primary documents of history, not yet interpreted by any historians. Charlevoix carried over his altered view of history acquired while writing the history of Haiti and Saint Domingo in 1730–31 to his revised History of Japan in 1736.
Charlevoix’s Catholic Encyclopedism
Charlevoix lived during a time when universal truth transformed from a vertically rising axis toward the divine to a horizontally expanding axis on the finite Earth sketched in maps and contained in the system of sciences that represent human knowledge. Charlevoix integrates and harnesses this horizontal expansion of knowledge under the control of the vertical axis by posing history on an ecclesiastical foundation. Catholic Encyclopedism precedes the Enlightenment encyclopedias and manifests its horizontal width in geographical area, and Charlevoix presented it as a history that serves to convert the horizontal axis of expanding knowledge into the vertical axis on the question of divine will asked in the temporal depth of history.
More importantly, Charlevoix’s history is a purposeful history founded on moral ground. The History of Japan is his first book, and in the revised History of 1736, Charlevoix says that his feeling toward his first book is like a father who cherishes his child though he sees his faults.[121] Charlevoix’s attitude toward Japan is an application of the “Presupposition” with which Ignatius of Loyola starts The Spiritual Exercises: one ought to put forward a “good interpretation” rather than “condemn” the other.[122] Charlevoix writes: “The astonishing progress of Christianity in Japan is assuredly one of the most beautiful chapters in the History of the Society of Jesus” in the annotated bibliography of Historia Societatis Jesu.[123] He applied Loyola’s caution to the interpretation of history even when that history belongs to the other who lived two hundred years ago on the other side of the Earth. With his ambitious and large-scale history of the New World, Charlevoix converted the alphabetic order of the encyclopedia to the chronological order of history, and he merges the geographical and horizontal axis of knowledge with the theological vertical hope for a future mission.
Notes:
[1] Micah True, The Jesuit Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix’s (1682–1761) Journal of a Voyage in North America: An Annotated Translation (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2019), 4–5.
[2] BNF Notice de personne: https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb124285434 (accessed November 21, 2025); Alain Rey, ed., Petit Robert 2 (Paris: Le Rebert, 1987), 381–82.
[3] For detailed explanations of how to distinguish pirated editions, see Roger Laufer, “Les espaces du livre” [Spirit of the books], in Histoire de l’édition française, ed. Henri-Jean Martin, Roger Chartier, and Jean-Pierre Vivet, 4 vols. (Paris: Promodis, 1984), 2:128–39, especially 130–32; for a definition of pirating, see Anne Sauvy, “Livres contrefaits et livres interdits” [Pirated books and prohibited books], in Martin, Chartier, and Vivet, Histoire de l’édition française, 2:107–19, 104–5.
[4] Robert Darnton, “A Note on Terminology and Spelling,” in The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1979), xiv.
[5] We know that Chomel was pirated because Ganeau complained about it. On the false address of Neuchâtel in Diderot’s Encyclopédie, see Pierre Rétat, “L’âge des dictionnaires,” in Martin, Chartier, and Vivet, Histoire de l’édition française, 186–97, here 188; the following link in BNF contains further information about the suspected but not one hundred percent certain real addresses hidden behind the false ones: https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb30340683w (accessed November 21, 2025).
[6] Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, eds., Compact Edition, reprint in 5 vols. (New York: Pergamon Press, 1969).
[7] About morality and science, see Michael Strevens, The Knowledge Machine (New York: Liveright Publishing, 2020).
[8] Ulrich Lehner, The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), especially chapter 4, 104–24. The term “Catholic Enlightenment” is only viable in English. The translation into French, le Siècle des Lumières catholiques, sounds so inherently contradictory that it does not sit well as French terminology. Another possible translation, les Lumières catholiques, conveys a totally different meaning of light as evoked at the beginning of the Bible. Le catholicisme des lumières is an acceptable compromise. For a discussion of the complex relationship between Catholicism and Enlightenment in French academia, see, for example, the book written by Catherine Maire, Église dans l’état: Politique et religion dans la France des Lumières [Church and state: Politics and religion in France of the Enlightenment] (Paris: Gallimard, 2019).
[9] Roland Schaer, ed., Tous les savoirs du monde (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France/Flammarion, 1996).
[10] Encyclopédie 1751, 1:xlvij; Encyclopédie 1969, 1:20: “système des connoissance [sic] humaines.”
[11] Encyclopédie 1751, 1:unpaginated; Encyclopédie 1969, 1:22: “Système figuré des connoissances humaines.”
[12] Encyclopédie 1755, 5:635–48A; Encyclopédie 1969, 1:1156–62: “Le but d’une Encyclopédie est de rassembler les connoissances éparses sur la surface de la terre; d’en exposer le système général aux hommes avec qui nous vivons, & de le transmettre aux hommes qui viendront après nous; afin que les travaux des siècles passés n’aient pas été des travaux inutiles pour les siècles qui succéderont.”
[13] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, “Projet d’un corps d’histoires du nouveau monde,” ix–xii, here ix.
[14] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 1:ix.
[15] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 1:x.
[16] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 1:ix.
[17] “Liste et examen des auteurs qui ont écrit sur l’Histoire du Japon,” Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 2:681–700; “Auteurs qui ont écrit sur l’Histoire du Japon,” Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 6:327–65.
[18] See the chronology in Geneviève Bouchon, Albuquerque le lion des mers d’Asie [Albuquerque the lion in the seas of Asia] (Paris: Editions Desjonquères Diffusion PUF, 1992), 259–60.
[19] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 2:694; Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 6:351–52.
[20] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 2:694; Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 6:352.
[21] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 2:683, 687: “une assez longue lettre du Père Loüis Froez Jésuite, écrite de
Méaco en 1565.”
[22] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 2:690–91; Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 6:345–46.
[23] Nihon Rekishi Gakkai [Society of History in Japan], ed., Nihonshi nenpyō [Chronology of the history of Japan] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1980), 156.
[24] Charlevoix-Behourt 1715 and Charlevoix-Boullenger 1715, title page: “Histoire de l’établissement, des progrès et de la décadence du christianisme dans l’Empire du Japon où l’on voit les différentes Révolutions qui ont agité cette Monarchie pendant plus d’un siècle.”
[25] Charlevoix-Behourt 1715, 3: “Preface,” rubric 4, unpaginated. As an example, I refer to pp. 161, 399 on the ambiguous identity and information about Thomas Araqui (Araki in today’s system of transcription).
[26] Francis Xavier, “To Father Juan de Beira and His Companions, in Macao, from Malacca, June 20, 1549,” Letters and Instructions of Francis Xavier, trans. with intro. by M. Joseph Costelloe, S.J. (Saint Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2009), 263–66, here 265.
[27] Gonoi Takashi, Luis Frois (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2020), 212.
[28] See note 22.
[29] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 2:691; Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 6:345–46.
[30] “L’écriture entre ‘visibilia’ et ‘invisibilia’: Daniello Bartoli,” in Baroque vision jésuite du Tintoret à Rubens, ed. Alain Tapié (Caen: Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, Somogy Édition d’Art, 2003), 79–85, here 81: “la communication pour la conversion.”
[31] Encyclopédie 1755, 5:337–49; Encyclopédie 1969, 1:1081–84.
[32] Jean Meuvret, “Propriétés et exploitations rurales dans la France du XVIIe siècle” [Rural properties and exploitations in France of the seventeenth century], trans. and annotated Ninomiya Hiroyuki in Ninomiya Hiroyuki, Ninomiya Hiroyuki chosakushū [The complete works of Ninomiya Hiroyuki] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2011), 4:394.
[33] Meuvret, “Propriétés et exploitations rurales,” 395.
[34] Noël Chomel, Dictionnaire oeconomique, contenant divers moyend d’augmenter son bien et de conserver sa santé […] [Dictionary of home economy, containing various means to improve one’s property and to keep good health], 2nd ed. (Lyon: E. Ganeau, 1718), “Avertissement du libraire” [Notice of the publisher], unpaginated. Chomel published his dictionary in 1708, followed by a supplement in 1712, the year of his death. The publisher worked posthumously on the second edition by adding an account of Chomel’s life at the beginning of the book as “Avertissement du libraire.” According to this publisher’s account, Chomel studied in the seminary of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, and while he worked in the Castle and Seminary of Avron in the vicinity of Vincennes in the Paris suburbs, he was instructed by Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinie (1626– 88), who was in charge of the king’s botanical garden in Versailles Castle. Chomel was a grand-nephew of the first physician of Henri the Great, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV, brother of Louis XIV’s physician, and uncle of two physicians who taught in the medical schools in the universities of Paris and Montpellier.
[35] Denis Diderot, Pensées philosophiques [Philosophical thoughts] (La Haye: aux dépends la Compagnie, 1746), 109, 123: “Si la Religion que tu m’annonces est vraie: sa vérité peut être mise en évidence & se démontrer par des raisons invincibles.”
[36] Denis Diderot, Pensées sur l’interprétation de la nature [Thoughts on the interpretation of the nature] (n.p.: n.p., 1754).
[37] About contributors, see Henri Berr, ed., L’Encyclopédie et les encyclopédistes (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1932), 25–28, here 26.
[38] “Porcelaine,” in Encyclopédie 1765, 13:105–22, here 106; Encyclopédie 1969, 3:33–37, here 33.
[39] Porcelaines de Vincennes: Les origines de Sèvres, Grand Palais, October 14, 1977–January 16, 1978 (Paris: Editions des musées nationaux, 1977), 6.
[40] Histoire et description générale du Japon, où l’on trouvera tout ce qu’on a pu apprendre de la nature & des productions du pays, du caractere [sic] & des coûtumes des habitans [sic], du gouvernement & du commerce, des révolutions arrivées dans l’empire & dans la religion; Et l’examen de tous les auteurs, qui ont écrit sur le même sujet; Avec les fastes chronologiques de la découverte du Nouveau-Monde.
[41] The lists of plants are: Charlevoix 1736, 2: “Supplément,” 558–616 and “Description des plantes du Japon et leurs usages” [Description of the plants of Japan and their uses], 617–81; Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 1:322–86 and 6:177–313, here 349: Charlevoix writes that “J’ai tiré de cet Ouvrage presque tout ce qui regarde l’Histoire naturelle du Japon, que cet Auteur a recuëillie [sic] avec grand soin” [I took from this book almost all that which concerns the natural history of Japan, which this author collected with a great care].
[42] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 1:ix–x.
[43] Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 1: between 338–39 and 346–47 for paper.
[44] Alix Chevallier [sic], “La matière première: Le papier” [Raw material: Paper], in Martin, Chartier, and Vivet, Histoire de l’édition française, 34–41
[45] Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 1: between 351–52 and 353 for lacquer.
[46] Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 1: between 345–55 and 374–75 for tea with lacquer utensils for the tea ceremony.
[47] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 1:v.
[48] The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus and Their Complementary Norms (Saint Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996), 3.
[49] “Introduction,” Société Montesquieu, Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, 16: Geographica (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2007), xxxvi–xxxvii.
[50] Jean-Baptiste du Halde, Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique et physique de l’empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie chinoise, 4 vols. (Paris: P.-G. Le Mercier, 1735).
[51] “Introduction,” Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, 16: Geographica, xxxvii.
[52] “Introduction,” Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, 16: Geographica, xxxvii.
[53] “Introduction,” Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, 16: Geographica, xxxv.
[54] “Introduction,” Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, 16: Geographica, xxxiii to xliv.
[55] “Introduction,” Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, 16: Geographica, xxxiii.
[56] “Introduction,” Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, 16: Geographica, 29–45.
[57] “Introduction,” Œuvres complètes de Montesquieu, 16: Geographica, xxxiv, and Montesquieu’s notes from du Halde’s Description, 131–284; Montesquieu’s notes from the Lettres édifiantes edited by du Halde, 347– 413.
[58] “The Preface,” Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia, 2 vols. (London: Printed for James and John Knapton, John Darby, Daniel Midwinter, Arthur Bettesworth [sic], John Senex [and thirteen others in London], 1728), :i.
[59] Denis Diderot, “Discours préliminaire,” Encyclopédie 1751, 1:j–xlv, here xxxjv–xxxvj; Encyclopédie 1969, 1:9–20, here 17.
[60] Denis Diderot, Prospectus, Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Paris: Briasson, 1751), 1–10, here 1–2. The entire passage is: “L’Encyclopédie de Chambers dont on a publié à Londres un si grand nombre d’Éditions rapides; cette Encyclopédie qu’on vient de traduire tout récemment en Italie, & qui de notre aveu mérite en Angleterre & chez l’Étranger les honneurs qu’on lui rend, n’eût peut-être jamais été faite; si avant qu’elle parut en Anglois, nous n’avions eu dans notre Langue des ouvrages où Chambers a puisé sans mesure & sans choix la plus grande partie des choses dont il a composé son Dictionnaire” (The Encyclopedia of Chambers of which they published in London so many expedited editions; this Encyclopedia, which was most recently translated into Italian, and that in England and abroad receives the honors we all admit, would never have been made if before its publication in English, we had not had in our language [French] the books from which Chambers drew without limit and without choice the majority of the things of which he composed his Dictionary).
[61] Cramoisy is known for publishing the Jesuit Relations from New France in the seventeenth century.
[62] The libraire juré is a category of publisher, along with the relieur (binder), enlumineur (colorist of books with decorative letters), papetier (paper maker), and other craftsmen, who were jurés (sworn to the office in service of the university) and whose work is related to books. See Rémi Jimens, “Le monde du livre et l’Université de Paris (16e–17e siècles: L’apport des Acta Rectoria,”Bulletin du bibliophile 2 (2017): 270–91. Jimens writes that the Registres des Recteurs record the names and the country of origin of new students registered in the Faculté des Arts of the University of Paris, in which the names of Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier are recorded.
[63] According to the article by Jimens cited above, François I (r.1515–47) inaugurated the office of the king’s printer by naming Geoffroy Tory for this inaugural position.
[64] Robert 2 (Paris: Le Robert, 1987), 1797.
[65] Henri-Jean Martin, “L’atelier de Trévoux,” in Martin, Chartier, and Vivet, Histoire de l’édition française, 299.
[66] Martin, “L’atelier de Trévoux.”
[67] Martin, “L’atelier de Trévoux.”
[68] Martin, “L’atelier de Trévoux.”
[69] Martin, “L’atelier de Trévoux.”
[70] “Epitre,” Dictionnaire universel français et latin (n.p.: n.p., 1704).
[71] Rétat (note 5 above), 186.
[72] About the bibliographical information, see “Notice de périodique”: https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb32813492j (accessed December 17, 2025).
[73] Noël Chomel, Dictionnaire œconomique (Paris: Etienne Ganeau, 1718). See the bibliography in BNF Gallica: https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb357055910 (accessed December 17, 2025).
[74] See note 72.
[75] BNF Gallica, “Notice de personne, Ganeau, Veuve d’Etienne,” https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb12230545r (accessed November 21, 2025).
[76] BNF Gallica, “Notice de personne, Lous-Etienne Ganeau,” https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb122244666 (accessed November 21, 2025).
[77] Henri-Jean Martin, “À la veille de la Révolution: Crise et réorganisation de la librairie,” in Martin, Chartier, and Vivet, Histoire de l’édition française, 517–25, especially 517 and 519.
[78] Martin, “L’atelier de Trévoux,” 299.
[79] “Introduction,” in Œuvres complètes, 16: Geographica, xv–xlvi, here xxxv.
[80] Charlevoix, Mémoires pour l’histoire des sciences et des beaux-arts (Paris: Chaubert, 1737): “Article LXIV,” June 1737, 274–82; “Article LXXX,” August 1737, 385–92; “Article XCVII,” October 1737, 465–71.
[81] Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, “Avertissement,” Histoire et description generale de la Nouvelle France, avec le journal historique d’un voyage fait par ordre du roi dans l’Amérique Septentrional Par le P. De Charlevoix, de la Compagnie de Jesus (Paris: Chez Pierre-François Giffart, rue Saint Jacques, à Sainte Therese, 1744), i–viij, here vj.
[82] Martin, “L’atelier de Trévoux,” 299.
[83] Lutz Walter, ed., Japan: A Cartographic Vision (New York: Prestel, 1994).
[84] Jason C. Hubbard, Japoniae insulae: The Mapping of Japan (Houten: Hes & Graaf, 2012).
[85] Hubbard, Japoniae insulae, 324.
[86] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 2: unpaginated, the second from the last page without page number.
[87] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 2: unpaginated, the last page without page number: “Je reconnois [sic] que les Sieurs Julien-Michel Gandoüin, & Jean-Baptiste Lamesle, ont chacun un tier dans le présent Privilege. A Paris ce 17. Février 1736. Signé, Giffart” (I acknowledge that Mr. Julien-Michel Gandoüin, and Jean-Baptiste Lamesle have each one-third in the present privilege. In Paris this February 17, 1736. Signed, Giffart).
[88] Hubbard, Japoniae insulae, 324. I could not verify these books.
[89] Walter, Japan, 46.
[90] Hubert Cieslik, Hoppō tankenki [Record of exploration in the North] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1962), 4, 8, 23. Besides de Angelis, Diogo Carvalho, S.J. (1578–1624) went to Ezo in 1620 and 1622 (Cieslik, Hoppō tankenki, 23).
[91] Hubbard, Japoniae insulae, 50.
[92] Du Halde, Description géographique, historique, chronologique. The map of Tartary is at the beginning of the fourth volume without page number.
[93] “Préface,” du Halde, Description géographique, historique, chronologique, 1:i–lij here xlviij.
[94] George Alexander Lensen, The Russian Push toward Japan, Russo-Japanese Relations, 1697–1875 (New York: Octagon Books, 1971) reproduced (London: Forgotten Books, 2018), 23. See the map in Leiden University digital collections: https://digitalcollections.universiteitleiden.nl/view/item/2026530 (accessed December 17, 2025)
[95] “Préface,” du Halde, Description géographique, historique, chronologique, xxxii; Louis Bertrand Castel, S.J. (1688–1757), “Article LXVIII: Dissertation de Kamtschatka & sur celle d’Yeço” [Dissertation on Kamchatka and Ezo], Mémoires pour l’histoire des sciences & des beaux arts, July 1737, 1177, reprinted in Journal de Trévoux ou mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des sciences et des arts, tome 37, 1737 (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1968), 294–319. Hereafter Castel followed by the original page and the reprint page after a solidus “/.” Du Halde writes that the emperor of China was not happy to hear that the vast land east of Nerchinsk was empty; the latitude the Jesuits took of this land is much too south to be the latitude of the Amur estuary; since they were mapping China, the Jesuits did not adventure onto the disputed border with Russia after the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689 (du Halde, Description géographique, historique, chronologique, xxxij–xxxiij). Castel writes: “Il est certain, que cette Tartarie Orientale n’est quere [sic] qu’un vaste désert, & que la Partie Septentrionale, qui est sous la domination des Moscovites, n’est pas à beaucoup près si habitée que le Canada” (It is certain that this East Tartary is but a vast desert, and the northern part, which is under the governance of Muscovites, is not any more inhabited than Canada).
[96] Cieslik, Hoppō tankenki, 28.
[97] About the spelling of his name, La Pérouse is more commonly used, but his hometown museum follows his own signature and spells his name Lapérouse. I follow this latter spelling.
[98] Castel, 1156–1256/294–319.
[99] Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, “Article LXXIV: Réponse de M. Bellin” [M. Bellin’s answer], Memoires [sic] pour l’histoire des sciences & des beaux arts, August 1737 (Paris: Chaubert, 1737), 1381–96, reprinted in Journal de Trévoux ou mémoires pour servir à l’histoire des sciences et des arts, tome 37, 1737 (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1968), 369–417. Hereafter Bellin followed by the original page number and the reprint page number after a solidus “/.”
[100] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 1: unpaginated at the beginning of the book; 2: unpaginated between 254 and 255.
[101] Bellin, 1385/382.
[102] Lensen, 44–48; Thomas Suárez, Early Mapping of the Pacific (Singapore: Periplus, 2004), 47. Bering and his team’s second voyage took a long time to prepare from 1733, with numerous halts in harbors; Bering surveyed the North American west in today’s Alaska and the Aleutian Islands starting in 1740, with the expedition ending with Bering’s death in 1741.
[103] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 1: unpaginated at the beginning of the book; Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 1: unpaginated at the beginning of the book.
[104] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 2: unpaginated between 254 and 255; Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 6: unpaginated at the beginning of the book.
[105] See the detailed features that make this Bellin map a distinct type in Walter, Japan, 46.
[106] Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 1: unpaginated at the beginning of the book; 6: unpaginated at the beginning of the book.
[107] Ivan Fedorovich von Krusenstern, Voyage autour du monde: Fait dans les années 1803, 1804, 1805 et 1806, par les ordres de Sa Majesté Impériale, Alexandre 1er, Empereur de Russie, sur les vaisseaux la Nadedjeda et la Neva/commandés par M. de Krusenstern, traduit de l’aveu et avec des additions de l’auteur; La traduction revue par M. J.-B-B. Eyriès (Paris: Librairie de Gide Fils, 1821), 1:295; von Krusenstern, Voyage round the World, in the Years 1803, 1804, 1805, & 1806. by Order of His Imperial Majesty Alexander the First, on Board the Ship Nadeshda and Neva, under the Command of Captain A. J. von Krusenstern, of the Imperial Navy, translated from the original German by Richard Belgrave Hoppner, Esq. (London: Printed by C. Roworth for John Murray, 1813), 1:289 and note * on the same page. The second volume is (London: Printed by T. Davison for John Murray, 1813).
[108] Castel, 1168/297, 1181/301, 1183/301.
[109] Dale K. Van Kley, “Plots and Rumors of Plots: The Role of Conspiracy in the International Campaign against the Society of Jesus, 1758–1768,” in The Jesuit Suppression in Global Context, ed. Jeffrey D. Burson and Jonathan Wright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 13–39, especially 21.
[110] Van Kley, “Plots and Rumors of Plots,” 22.
[111] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 1: unpaginated; Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 2: unpaginated, both at the beginning of vol. 1.
[112] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 1:iv.
[113] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 1:vi: “L’Histoire Ecclésiastique est ce qui fait en quelque façon le fond de cet Ouvrage; parce que c’est la seule partie, pour laquelle nous ayons des Mémoires complets.”
[114] Jean-Baptiste Le Pers and Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix, Histoire de l’Isle Espagnole ou de S. Domingue (Paris: F. Barois, 1730-31), 1:x–xi. Since Charlevoix wrote his history of the island today inhabited by the two countries of Saint Domingo and Haiti based on the documents brought from this mission ground by Le Pers who was too busy taking care of the people on this island to write a book, Charlevoix printed his name as his co-author.
[115] Le Pers–Charlevoix 1730–31, 1:xij.
[116] Le Pers–Charlevoix 1730–31, 1:xij–xiij.
[117] Le Pers–Charlevoix 1730–31, 1:xij.
[118] Le Pers–Charlevoix 1730–31, 1:xij–xiij: “Si les Mémoires, qu’on tire de ceux, qui ont été témoins, ou presque contemporains des évenemens [sic], dont ce détail est composé, sont pour ainsi parler, le Corps de l’Histoire; on peut dire que les Pieces [sic], que j’ai trouvées au Dépôt de la Marine, en sont comme l’Ame [sic], puisque c’est par elles qu’on découvre les ressorts cachés des mouvemens [sic], que ceux mêmes, qui les ont vûs de plus près, ne comprennoient [sic] pas toujours.” My emphasis.
[119] Charlevoix–Le Pers 1730–31, 1:xj–xij: “Ce Dépôt contient les Plans, qui dépendent de la Marine; toutes les Lettres de nos Rois, des Ministres, des Gouverneurs, des Intendans [sic], & autres Personnes en place; les Relations, les Instructions, les Procès-verbaux, & généralement tout ce qui émane de la Cour, & tout ce qu’on y addresse [sic 2 d’s], qui a rapport à ce Département. Les Plans, & les Mémoires relatifs aux Plans, sont confiés à la garde du Chevalier de la Blandiniere [sic], Capitaine de Vaisseau, Officier de mérite, & actuellement chargé d’une Négociation importante. Tout le reste est sous la direction de M. de Clairambault, Genealogiste [sic] des Ordres de Sa majesté, lequel a commencé cette prodigieuse Collection sous la Ministere [sic] de M. Colbert, & y a établi un ordre, qu’on ne peut se lasser d’admirer.”
[120] Etienne Taillemite, “Les cartes anciennes du service hydrographique de la Marine Conservées aux Archives Nationales,” in La carte manuscrite et imprimée du XVIe au XIXe siècle/Journée d’étude sur l’histoire du livre et des documents graphiques, Valenciennes, November 17, 1981, ed. Frédéric Barbier (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1983), 19–32, here 19.
[121] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 1:xij.
[122] Saint Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises, trans. and commentary George E. Ganss, S.J. (Saint Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992), 31. The Constitutions require all Jesuits to take the full Spiritual Exercises when starting the novitiate in the “General Examen,” Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, [65], 37.
[123] Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 2:681–700, here 687; Charlevoix-Ganearu 1754, 6:327–65, here 227.
Appendices
Editions of the Books on Paraguay
Author | Title | Place of Publication | Publisher | Year of Publication | Number of Volumes |
Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix | Histoire du Paraguay | Paris | Didot | 1756 | 3 vols. in 4 |
|
| Paris | Desaint | 1757 | 6 vols. in 12 |
|
| Paris | Didot | 1757 | 6 vols. in 12 |
Editions of the Books on the Island of Hispaniola or of Saint Domingo
Authors | Title | Place of Publication | Publisher | Year of Publication | Number of Volumes |
Jean-Baptiste Le Pers and | Histoire de l’isle Espagnole ou de S. Domingue | Paris | F. Barros | 1730–31 | 2 vol. in 4 |
|
| Paris | J. Guérin | 1730–31 | 2 vols. in 4 |
|
| Amsterdam | L’Honoré | 1733 | 4 vols. |
|
| Amsterdam | L’Honoré | 1733 | 2 vols. in 12 |
Editions of the Books on New France
Author | Title | Place of Publication | Publisher | Year of Publication | Number of Volumes |
Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix | Histoire et description generale [sic] de la Nou-velle France | Paris | François Giffart | 1744 | 6 vols. in 12 |
|
| Paris | François Giffart | 1744 | 3 vols. in 4 |
|
| Paris | François Didot | 1744 | 6 vols. in 12 |
|
| Paris | François Didot | 1744 | 3 vols. in 4 |
|
| Paris | Jean-Luc Nyon and Fils | 1744 | 6 vols. in 12 |
|
| Paris | Jean-Luc Nyon and Fils | 1744 | 3 vols. in 4 |
|
| Paris | Jacques Rollin and Fils | 1744 | 6 vols. in 12 |
|
| Paris | Veuve Ganeau | 1744 | 6 vols. in 12 |
Japan
Author | Title | Place of Publication | Publisher | Year of Publication | Number of Volumes |
Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix | Histoire de l’établissement, des progrès et de la décadence du christianisme dans l’empire du Japon1 | Rouen | G. Behourt | 1715 | 3 vol. in 16 |
|
| Rouen | J.-J. Le Boullenger | 1715 | 3 vols. in 8 |
| Histoire et description générale du Japon, où l’on trouvera tout ce qu’on a pu apprendre de la nature & des productions du Pays […]2 | Paris | E.-F. Giffart Pierre-François Giffart Rollin fils Nyon fils | 1736 | 2 vols. in 4 |
|
| Paris | J.-M. Gandouin | 1736 | 2 vols. in 4 |
|
| Paris | J.-M. Gandouin | 1736 | 9 vols. in 12 |
|
| Paris | Giffart | 1754 | 6 vols. in 8 |
|
| Paris | Rollin | 1754 | 6 vols. in 12 |
|
| Paris | Nyon Fils | 1754 | 6 vols. in 12 |
|
| Trévoux | Etienne Ganeau3 | 1754 | 6 vol. in 12 |
1. The following bibliography is listed by Charlevoix himself in his list of authors: Histoire de l’établissement, des progrès et de la décadence du christianisme dans l’empire du Japon, &c.A Rouën, chez Jacques-Joseph le Boulenger, Pierre le Boucher & Guillaume Behourt, trois volumes in-12. (Charlevoix-Giffart 1736, 2:699; Charlevoix-Ganeau 1754, 6:362–63). BNF Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k8557194/f430.item.r=Koempfer (accessed November 21, 2025).
2. The following publishers of the second edition in 1736 are listed in the article published in Mémoire de Trévoux (Mémoires pour l’histoire des sciences et des beaux-arts [Paris: Chaubert, 1737]: “Article LXIV,” June 1737, 274–82, here 274: Paris: Julien-Michel Gandouin, 2 vols. in 4, 9 vols. in 12, and Pierre-François Giffart, Rollin fils, Nyon fils. BNF Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k306696/f255.item [accessed November 12, 2025]).
3. Étienne Ganeau (1708–77) was the son of Étienne Ganeau (c.1667–c.1734) and his mother who published as Veuve Ganeau (Ganeau’s Widow), from whom he inherited his father’s publishing house in 1748 and published the Dictionnaire de Trévoux. Gallica: https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb122244666 (accessed November 21, 2025).
Metadata
- Title: A Mission between Two Missions: Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix’s History of Japan
- Author: Aiko Okamoto-MacPhail
Article Type: Research Article - DOI: 10.51238/ISJS.2023.10
Language: English - Pages: 1–24
- Keywords: Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix (1682-1761); History of Japan; Noël Chomel (1633-1712); Encyclopédie; Denis Diderot (1713-1784).
- Volume: 3
- Issue: 1, special issue
- In: Circa Missiones: Jesuit Understandings of the Mission Through Centuries
- Editors: Alessandro Corsi ; Claudio Ferlan ; and Francisco Malta Romeiras
- In: International Symposia on Jesuit Studies
- Publication Date: 06 March 2026
Last Updated: 06 March 2026 - Publisher: Institute of Jesuit Sources
- E-ISSN: 2766-0644
- ISBN: 978-1-947617-35-3
Cite
APA
Okamoto-MacPhail, A. (2026). A mission between two missions: Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix’s history of Japan. In A. Corsi, C. Ferlan, & F. M. Romeiras (Eds.), Circa missiones: Jesuit understandings of mission through the centuries (Proceedings of the symposium held at Lisbon, Portugal, June 12–14, 2023) [Special issue]. International Symposia on Jesuit Studies, 3(1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.51238/ISJS.2023.10
CMOS
Okamoto-MacPhail, Aiko. “A Mission between Two Missions: Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix’s History of Japan.” In “Circa Missiones: Jesuit Understandings of Mission through the Centuries (Proceedings of the Symposium held at Lisbon, Portugal, June 12–14, 2023),” ed. Alessandro Corsi, Claudio Ferlan and Francisco Malta Romeiras, special issue, International Symposia on Jesuit Studies 3, no. 1 (2026): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.51238/ISJS.2023.10.
MLA
Okamoto-MacPhail, Aiko. “A Mission between Two Missions: Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix’s History of Japan.” Circa Missiones: Jesuit Understandings of Mission through the Centuries (Proceedings of the Symposium held at Lisbon, Portugal, June 12–14, 2023), edited by Alessandro Corsi, Claudio Ferlan, and Francisco Malta Romeiras, special issue of International Symposia on Jesuit Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2026, pp. 1–24. https://doi.org/10.51238/ISJS.2023.10.