Minxiang, Y ON THE ACQUISITION OF BOOKS BY RUSSIAN MISSIONARIES IN BEIJING IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY. Proceedings of Petrozavodsk State University. 2024;46(8):27–38. DOI: 10.15393/uchz.art.2024.1107


World history


ON THE ACQUISITION OF BOOKS BY RUSSIAN MISSIONARIES IN BEIJING IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE 19TH CENTURY

Minxiang
Yan
Sant Petersburg State University
Keywords:
Russian Orthodox Mission
N. Bichurin
P. Kamensky
V. Vasiliev
Summary: In the early 19th century, due to the growing interest in China, the Russian government began to send special instructions to the members of the Russian Orthodox Mission in Beijing. According to the instructions, the missionaries were to establish close contacts with representatives of the nobility, as well as to acquire various books to enrich the Russian library collections. This article is devoted to a detailed study of the contacts of members of the Russian Orthodox Mission with members of the Qing imperial house, Mongolian princes, Tibetan lamas, booksellers, and Korean envoys in Beijing in order to acquire materials in various fi elds of knowledge. The study, based on Chinese and Russian sources, shows that the collection of printed and manuscript publications by the members of the spiritual mission was closely connected with their interaction with the Beijing nobility. This work raises for the fi rst time the question of the peculiarities of the formation of the corpus of library collections in Chinese and minority languages of China at an early stage. The relevance of the study is due to the growing scientifi c interest in the activities of members of the Russian Orthodox Mission in Beijing and Russian-Chinese relations of this period.




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