Étienne Balazs
French sinologist
Étienne Balazs (born István Balázs; 24 January 1905 – 29 November 1963) was a Hungarian-born French sinologist.
Major works
Le traité économique du "Soueichou", (Leiden: Brill, 1953). Google Books.
Le traité juridique du "Soueichou", 1954.
Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy; Variations on a Theme. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964). Translated by H. M. Wright. Edited by Arthur F. Wright. Google Books. Reprints a selection from Balazs' major articles:
Pt I INSTITUTIONS: • Significant Aspects of Chinese Society • China as a Permanently Bureaucratic Society • Chinese Feudalism • The birth of capitalism in China • Fairs in China • Chinese Towns • Marco Polo in the Capital of China • Evolution of Landownership in Fourth and Fifth Century China • Landownership from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century
Pt II HISTORY • History as a Guide to Bureaucratic Practive • Tradition and Revolution in China
PT III THOUGHT • Two Songs by Ts' ao Ts' ao • Political Philosophy and Social Crisis at the end of the Han Dynasty • Nihilistic Revolt or Mystical Escapism • A Forerunner of Wang Anshi.
“Étienne Balazs” enters the record as french sinologist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Étienne, Balazs and French can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q289356. VIAF identifies the subject as 4960398. The Library of Congress control number is n79059868. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1905, 1963, 1953 and 1954.
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This entry incorporates text from “Étienne Balazs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.