Maspero, Henri

Maspero, Henri 

Born Dec. 15, 1883, in Paris; died Mar. 17, 1945, in Buchenwald. French Sinologist and specialist in the languages and history of Indochina.

Maspero was the son of the French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero. In 1920, he became a professor of Chinese language and literature at the Collège de France. In 1935 he became a member of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and its president in 1944. He wrote a large number of works on China and Indochina, including the book Ancient China (1927), which covers the history and culture of China from the 12th to the third centuries B.C. Maspero died in a fascist death camp.

WORKS

Mélanges posthumes sur les religions et l’histoire de la Chine, vols. 1-2. Paris, 1950.
Histoire et institutions de la Chine ancienne. Paris, 1967. (With E. Balazs.)