Loss of a Recorded Heritage: Destruction of Chinese Books in the Peking Siege of 1900

Huanwen, Chen; Davis, Donald G., Jr.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/3705 Copy

Description

Title

Loss of a Recorded Heritage: Destruction of Chinese Books in the Peking Siege of 1900

Author(s)

• Huanwen, Chen
• Davis, Donald G., Jr.

Issue Date

2007

Keyword(s)

• Libraries and society
• Libraries in China
• Peking Seige

Date of Ingest

2008-02-28T17:20:01Z

Abstract

Late-nineteenth-century China suffered from a weak and declining central government, the incursions of Western interests, and a necessity to grapple with the demands of a modern national state. For sixty days in the summer of 1900 the legation quarters of Western governments in Peking came under siege by the Qing government and Boxer forces until finally relieved by an international military expedition. During the siege, the Hanlin Academy, a repository of Chinese bibliographical treasures representing centuries of cultural accumulation, suffered destruction through fire and pillage. From the immediate aftermath of the siege and throughout the century following, questions have been raised as to what actually happened and who was to blame for the atrocity. The observations of the British and other Western government officials differed from those of the Chinese participants. A variety of sources, some recently rediscovered, make fresh conclusions possible.

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

ISSN

0024-2594

Type of Resource

text

Genre of Resource

Article

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/3705

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2007 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

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