The Angus Ivan Ward Collection of Russian accounts of Mongolia and China.

[MONGOLIA and CHINA].

Edité par Various places -1914, 1764

A propos de cet article

Collection of 15 titles, in 18 vols. Extensive collection of Russian works focusing mostly on Northern China and Mongolia, including important and rare travel, trade and exploration accounts. Assembled by Angus Ivan Ward, us consul in China and Russia during troubled times, and ambassador in Afghanistan. Ward (1893-1969) served in the U.S. Army during World War I and then became U.S. Vice Consul in Mukden, China, in 1926; then in Tientsin in 1927-29 and again in 1932. He was sent to Moscow in 1938, and served as U.S. Consul General in Vladivostok during WWII, in 1943. Before becoming U.S. Ambassador in Afghanistan in 1952-56, he was back in Mukden as Consul in 1948, where he became the subject of the Ward Incident (1948-49). During the final years of the Chinese Civil War, Ward and the consulate staff were imprisoned and held under house arrest by Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army for almost a year, creating a diplomatic rift with the United States. Ward's collection is remarkable for its wide range, comprising 150 years of Russian approach to China and their neighbouring region, Mongolia, before the Russian revolution. Including important as well as lesser works, most in first editions and all rarely found on the market, the collection not only presents an excellent panorama of Russian exploration of the region, but also allows a rare understanding of the commercial and diplomatic relations between these two giant states. It is completed by scholarly works on local languages and cultures. Although Russian envoys and merchants were visiting and residing in Mongolia and China in the 17th century, printed accounts of the relations between these countries became available to Russian readers only in the mid 18th century. At first they were Russian translations of works by Chinese authors, such as An Account of the Chinese Mission to the Kalmyk Khan on the Volga in 1714 and Their Journey through Russia by Tulishen (1667â "1741), which describes in detail the first official diplomatic mission of China to a European State. This early and important work, later published in English by Staunton himself, is represented here by a fine example of the first edition in Russian. One of the first Russian scholars of China is the celebrated and prolific monk Iakinf Bichurin (1777-1853). Leader of the 9th Russian Mission to Peking, he spent 14 years in China, learning the language and exploring the region. His Notes on Mongolia (1828), illustrated with fine hand-coloured plates, is the first fundamental study of Mongolia by a Russian sinologist. When Bichurin's mission left Beijing, the smooth transition with the new mission was under the control of the diplomat Egor Timkovskiy (1790-1875). His 3-volume Travels through Mongolia to China in the years 1820 and 1821 (1824) became the first significant travel account of a Russian to China, collecting material on Eastern Turkestan, Mongolia, Tibet, China and Korea. The 1860 Beijing agreement, ending the Second Opium War, brought a new turn to the Russian exploration of the region. It was the result of Russian diplomatic efforts to facilitate negotiations between China on one side and Britain and France on the other, and it allowed the establishment of a permanent Russian diplomatic presence in Beijing. The negotiations and Russia's role are described in detail in Baron Buksgevden's Russian China (1902). The last quarter of the 19th century was the most fruitful period for Russian exploration and the Ward collection includes some of the most important accounts published at that time. Due to an extension of the Great Game to the East, many scientific Russian expeditions to Tibet and China were subsidized by the Russian Imperial Geographical Society, with often a hidden agenda focusing on mapping the region and gathering intelligence data. An excellent example is given by Mikhail Pevtsov (1843-1902), a Russian army officer and student of Nikolay Przhevalskiy. His Account of a Travel around Mongolia.

N° de réf. du vendeur 90438

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: The Angus Ivan Ward Collection of Russian accounts of Mongolia and China.
• Éditeur: Various places -1914
• Date de parution: 1764