University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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

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
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
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/3705
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2007 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

Owning Collections

Library Trends 55 (3) Winter 2007: Libraries in Times of War, Revolution, and Social Change PRIMARY
Library Trends 55 (3) Winter 2007: Libraries in Times of War, Revolution, and Social Change. Edited by W. Boyd Rayward and Christine Jenkins.