Benjamin Franklin Papers

To Benjamin Franklin from Michel-Ange-André Le Roux Des Hautesrayes, [c. 22 July 1781]

From Michel-Ange-André Le Roux Des Hautesrayes3

ALS: American Philosophical Society

[c. July 22, 1781]4

Deshautesrayes, Professeur au College Royal Suplie Monsieur franklin de lui faire dire Sil a remis au Sieur favier5 le prix des onze volumes de lhistoire de la Chine et de la Soumission pour le douzieme. Il obligera son très humble et très obeissant serviteur

Deshautesrayes

Addressed: A Monsieur / Monsieur franklin, ministre / plénipotentiaire / à Passi

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

3Des Hautesrayes (1724–1795), professor of Arabic at the Collège royal de France, knew Chinese as well as several Semitic languages. He undertook with the abbé Jean-Baptiste-Gabriel-Alexis Grosier to publish and annotate the Jesuit missionary Joseph-Anne-Marie de Moyriac de Mailla’s Histoire générale de la Chine, ou, Annales de cet empire; traduites du Tong-Kien-Kang-Mou (13 vols., Paris, 1777–85), the first comprehensive history of China to appear in Europe. The first eleven volumes came out between 1777 and 1780, volume 12 in 1783, and volume 13 in 1785. See under Des Hautesrayes and Grosier in the DBF and the Catalogue général des livres imprimés de la Bibliothèque nationale (231 vols., Paris, 1897–1981).

4On July 22, 1781, BF paid 164 l.t. 5 s. for Des Hautesrayes’ Histoire (Account XVII, XXVI, 3).

5On Feb. 1, 1781, Des Hautesrayes wrote Le Roy asking him to recommend to BF “sieur favier compagnon imprimeur” who planned to go to Boston. He was intelligent and had worked on the Histoire générale de la Chine for the past five years. APS. Appended to this is a second recommendation for Favier signed by Cousin, probably the mathematician Jacques-Antoine-Joseph Cousin (1739–1800), professor of physics at the Collège royal and a member of the Académie royale des sciences since 1772: DBF.

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