Ferdinand Avguštin Hallerstein

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Ferdinand Avguštin Hallerstein (Allerstein) was a Slovene Jesuit missionary in China. He was born in Ljubljana in 1703, and died in China, in 1774.

[edit] Life

His mathematical and astronomical acquirements recommended him to the imperial court at Beijing, where he won the esteem of the Emperor Qianlong. who made him a mandarin, and Chief of the Department of Mathematics, a post he held for many years.

He made a census of China for the 25th and 26th years of the reign of Qianlong. His list and the Chinese translation reached Europe in 1779. The Manchu rulers objected to census-taking, or at least to census-publication, lest the Chinese might recognize their strength and grow restless. It confirms all the calculations of one of his predecessors, Father Amiot and affords a proof of the progressive increase of the Chinese population. In the 25th year he found 196,837,977 souls, and in the following year, 198,214,624. Hallerstein's census is to be found in "Déscription Générale de la Chine", p. 283.

This article incorporates text from the entry August Hallerstein in the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.