Jean Potocki rentré de Chine trop tôt...

Jean Potocki : Mémoire sur l'ambassade de Chine. Presented by Daniel Beauvois, Alexandre Stroev and Dominique Triaire. In 1806, Jean Potocki returned from China furious and disappointed. He had been the scientific director of the mission sent to Pékin a year earlier by Alexander I of Russia, which had just failed miserably, having got no further than Ulan-Bator. According to Potocki, it was clearly the fault of the Russian personnel, who were self-important and incompetent. On the way, he wrote a Mémoire addressed to the Foreign Minister, in which he recounted the story of the mission and analysed the reasons for its failure. The incomplete draft he kept was until now the basis for the various editions of the work. We provide here the complete original Memoire sent to the Minister, discovered in the Foreign archives of the Russian Empire. Annexed is a summary written in 1808, from the Paris Archives, showing that there was for a time a more or less official cooperation between Napoleon and Alexander.Beauvois Daniel, Stroev Alexandre, Triaire Dominique. Jean Potocki rentré de Chine trop tôt.... In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°31, 1999. Mouvement des sciences et esthétique(s) sous la direction de Christine Rolland, François Azouvi et Michel Baridon. pp. 345-376