 Drawn from the Jesuit and unpublished reports containing translations of Chinese texts of various origins, Du Halde's "Geographical, Historical, Chronological, Political, and Physical Description of the Empire of China and Chinese Tartary" appeared in Paris in four volumes in 1735; it was reprinted in the Netherlands the next year and translated into English as "The General History of China" two years after that.Besides a very detailed geographical description based on work by the Jesuits, the book gave encyclopedic coverage of all aspects of Chinese civilization