Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes

[1] In 1794-95, de Guignes served as interpreter for Isaac Titsingh, the Dutch ambassador to the court of the Qianlong Emperor of China.

The Titsingh delegation also included the Dutch-American Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest,[4] whose description of this embassy to the Chinese court were soon published in the U.S. and Europe.

In the year following the emperor's rebuff to the 1793 mission headed by LordGeorge Macartney, Titsingh and his colleagues were much feted by the Chinese because of what was construed as seemly compliance with conventional court etiquette.

[5][6] In 1808, de Guignes published his account of the Titsingh mission, which provided an alternate perspective and a useful counterpoint to other reports which were then circulating.

Shortly after the publication, it was discovered that the dictionary was nothing more than a copy of an older work composed by the Franciscan friar, Basilio Brollo of Gemona (1648–1704).