CHINA in PRINT: Hong Kong Rare Book, Photograph & Map Fair 2018 30 November - 2 December Hong Kong Maritime Museum
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CHINA IN PRINT: Hong Kong Rare Book, Photograph & Map Fair 2018 30 November - 2 December Hong Kong Maritime Museum BOOKVICA 1 F O R E W O R D Dear friends and colleagues, We would like to present our catalogue for the Hong Kong Book Fair 2018 with 28 rare items. Our main focus is books on China in Russian, Japanese and even Armenian. Among Russian items the most fascinating are travel books, for example, notes on travel along the Nenjiang River Route from Tsurukhaitu to Beijing in 1736 (#1), first Russian book about Tibet (#5), travel across China in 1874-75 by Pyasetsky (#6), Russian circumnavigation account with illustrations of Singapore and its Chinese and East-Indian inhabitants (#8). Two items from the first section were printed by Russian emigrants in Shanghai which is an another interesting side of Russian-Chinese relations. The section is ended with two items in Japanese - #16 is a novelistic account on the First Opium War and #17 is a collection of views of the Far East and South-East Asia, including Japan, China, Vietnam, and Singapore. The second section of the catalogue dedicated to two beautiful manuscripts - a journal recording a travel from Beijing to Hankou from 1903 (#18) and album with photographs, plans and drawings illustrating the Third Battle of the Taku Forts during the Second Opium War in July- August 1860 compiled by and portraying British military officers (#19). We selected rare and attractive items for Photoalbums and Maps sections all with reference to China. The most interesting map is a custom-made wall map of China, Central Asia and Russian Far East printed in 1890s in Russia (#25). The last book on North Korean Army is a rare propaganda album full of photographs of North Korea in 1960s (#28). Bookvica team Historical research by Alisa Washke, PhD 2018 www.bookvica.com [email protected] BOOKVICA 2 I BOOKS IN RUSSIAN, JAPANESE & ARMENIAN 01 [FIRST RUSSIAN PLAN OF BEIJING] [Lange, Lorenz] Dnevnye Zapiski Karavannomu Puti cherez Naunskuyu Dorogu ot Tsurukhaitu do Pekina, 1736 godu / [i.e. Daily Notes on the Caravan Travel along the Nenjiang River Route from Tsurukhaitu to Beijing in 1736]. In: Akademicheskiye Izvestiya na 1781 god, Soderzhashchiye v Sebe Istoriyu Nauk i Noveyshiye Otkrytiya Onykh… [i.e. Academic Newsletter for 1781, Containing the History of Sciences and the Latest Discoveries in Them…]. St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1781. Parts 7 & 8 bound together. 942 pp. 20,5x12 cm. With one folding copper engraved plan and three folding copper engraved plates, bound without one copper engraved plate (a blueprint of a handmill). Contemporary Russian full leather with green title label on the spine, and blind stamped volume number “7-8”. Copper engraved 19th-century library paper label on the front pastedown endpaper. Binding rubbed on extremities, corners slightly bumped, paper very mildly age toned, pp. 17-18 with a loss of the lower blank margin neatly repaired with old paper, a few words slightly affected, but overall a very good copy of this rare Russian periodical in very original condition. First and only edition. First publication of an important Russian early 18th-century account of a caravan travel to China along the unusual route via Eastern Siberia and Manchuria. The manuscript describes the travel of a Russian diplomatic and the trade caravan to Beijing in July 1736 – May 1737, under command of Siberian merchant Yerofey Firsov and an important Russian diplomat of Swedish origin Lorenz Lange (ca. 1690s-1752). The caravan didn’t have the traditional stopover in the tea-trading town of Kyakhta, but proceeded further east and crossed the Russian-Chinese border near Tsurukhaitu (now Priargunsk, Zabaykalsky Kray); later moving over the Greater Khingan Range and along the route of the Nen River, and stopping in Naun (Nenjiang, Heilongjiang province). The diary includes a detailed description of Naun and the Great Wall of China; a separate part of the narration is titled “What happened on our BOOKVICA 3 arrival to Beijing.” The publication is supplemented with a folding copper engraved plan of Beijing – the first such plan in a Russian book. The plan shows Beijing within the 18th-century city border, with the Forbidden City in the centre, as well as its vicinity with the nearby wells, rivers and monasteries; in the north the plan marks the first Russian cemetery outside the city wall. The plan is supplemented with a list of 30 objects also shown by the compiler, including the Emperor’s Palace, several city gates, the Jingshan Hill, French and Portuguese embassies, “the house where elephants are lodged,” Russian Embassy and church, the Temple of Heaven, and others. The annotations to the plan were compiled by a noted Russian sinologist Ilarion Rassokhin (1707/1717- 1761). The original manuscript was found in the famous “Mueller’s Portfolios” (i.e. Portfeli Millera) – an enormous collection of original and copied documents from Siberian archives collected by the famous Russian historian, traveller and pioneer ethnologist Gerhard Mueller during the Great Northern Expedition (1733-43); the documents bound in 34 gigantic volumes comprise of the largest in the world archival collection on Siberian geography, ethnography, and history of Russian exploration. The “Mueller’s Portfolios” are now stored in Moscow in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents (RGADA). The original Russian text of the “Daily Notes on the Caravan Travel” was published in parts VII and VIII of the “Academical Newsletter” (pp. 466-505, 602-631); the German text was published the same year in P.S. Pallas’s famous “Neue Nordische Beitraege” (Bd. 2, St.-Pbg. and Leipzig, 1781, pp. 160-207). A prisoner of war after Sweden’s defeat in the Great Northern War (1720-21), Lorenz Lange “was a military engineer in German service. He entered Russian service in 1712, and accompanied the British surgeon Thomas Garvine on an expedition to China. In all he appears to have made six journeys to China. He remained in Siberia and in 1739 was appointed vice-governor of Irkutsk. He wrote six diaries: one of them covering the years 1720-22, was published in French and German in 1726” (Howgego, To 1800, S198). Overall an important first publication of a Russian travel to China, with the first plan of Beijing published in a Russian book. 8,500USD / 66,500HKD BOOKVICA 4 Binding. No 01 Title page. No 01 Plan. No 01 BOOKVICA 5 02 [AMUR RIVER: NEW RUSSIAN TERRITORIES] Maksimov, S.V. Na Vostoke: Poezdka na Amur (v 1860-1861 godakh). Dorozhnye Zametki i Vospominaniia [i.e. On the East: A Travel to Amur in 1860-1861. Notes and Memoirs]. St. Petersburg: Obschestvennaya Polza, 1864. [4], 588 pp. Octavo. Contemporary gilt tooled quarter leather with blind stamped brown cloth boards. Head and tail of spine with minor chips, first few pages with some mild water staining of upper outer corner of blank margin of pages, mild foxing throughout and a couple of mild stains in text, but overall a very good copy. This is the first edition of the travel notes by a prominent Russian ethnographer made during his journey to the newly annexed Russian Amur Province – the area of over 600,000 sq. km between the Stanovoy Mountains and the left bank of the Amur River - former Chinese Outer Manchuria - had been handed over to Russia by the Quing Empire government just two years prior to Maksimov’s trip, as a result of the Treaties of Aigun (1858) and Peking (1860), both of which were qualified as “unequal treaties” by China in the 20th century. Weakened by the unsuccessful Second Opium War, Chinese Empire agreed to the loss of a large part of its Outer Manchuria in order to avoid the war with Russia whose military and naval presence in the Far East had been steadily growing since the 1850s. Title page. No 02 BOOKVICA 6 Maksimov’s route went through Kazan, Ekaterinburg, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, and Nerchinsk; from there down the Shilka River to its confluence with the Ergune River where the Amur River proper starts. The chapter about his travel along the Amur River describes the legs from Ust-Strelka to Blagoveshchensk, then to Khabarovsk, and to Nikolaevsk located near the Amur liman in the Pacific Ocean. Separate parts are dedicated to the Russian colonization of the Amur River valley, and to the life of Nikolaevsk and Russian settlers in the mouth of the Amur. The other chapter titled ‘On the Eastern Ocean’ describe Maksimov’s voyage on a steamer through the Strait of Tartary, with stops in De Castries Bay (now Chikhachyov Bay), the Emperor’s Harbour (now Sovetskaya Harbour), St. Olga’s Bay, and recently founded Russian settlement in the Posyet Bay. The next chapters describe his subsequent travel through Japan (Hakodate), Manchuria (with an interesting description of the city of Aigun), and China (Maimaicheng – now Altanbulag). There are also descriptions of the Russian fair in Blagoveshchensk and famous tea trade in Kyakhta. Overall a very interesting first hand account of the early years of Russian colonization of the Amur River, and bordering territories of Japan, Manchuria and China. Sergei Maksimov (1831-1901) was a Russian ethnographer and traveller, an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He took part in the 1855 expedition to the Russian Arctic, organised by the Naval Ministry, and wrote his major book A Year in the North (1859) based on his impressions during the voyage. In 1860-61 Maksimov participated in the next expedition organised by the Naval Ministry to study the inhabitants of the just annexed Amur territories. Maksimov’s most famous works were related to his travels to the Siberian katorga.