---------------------------------------------------- ChinaResourceNews No.10 (1 Aug 2002) http://chinaresource.org/news.htm ---------------------------------------------------- Taixi xinshi lanyao / by Robert Mackenzie ; Timothy Richard [tr.] ?????? / ????? ; ????? Shanghai: Guangxuehui, 1898 Timothy Richard's translation of Robert Mackenzie's book "The 19th century : A history" was the most influential translation of a Western history in the 19th century, reaching the highest circulation and sales figures of all books published by the Guangxuehui. It was first translated in 1895 as "Taixi di shijiu zhou da shiji" but is mostly known under ist latter title "Taixi xinshi lanyao". The English book represents the optimistic believe in historical progress widely shared in 19th century and describes different aspects of European and American politics, economics, society and culture, but also new technologies and inventions. According to Paul Cohen Mackenzie's book "was a vulgar hymn to the conquests of science and the dogma of progress", and yet it was most widely circulated of all missionary translations of secular works (Cohen, 581). The introductory remarks explain the structure of the book and explains the editorial policy. The translators added comments to the translation for things unfamiliar to the Chinese reader, like measures, different customs or Chinese datings of the Western calendar, attempted to keep the original text intact and did only change text sections for stylistic reason. The book, neatly divided into 23 volumes with more than 20 subsections, is very broad in content and starts with major political and social institutions and the political history of the countries, followed by a description of the economic sectors, the educational system, military and industrial affairs and also scientific and technological issues. It covers the period from the French Revolution up to the 1870's and propagates political reforms and the dissemination of Western sciences. The book begins with a coloured map of the world and an index of proper translations of names and places used in each chapter by Mackenzie. The first section is devoted to France as the political model for Europe, followed by England, Germany, Austria, Italy and Russia. One section is devoted to America since its history is so closely connected to European history, and one to the pope. The progress of each country is explained by the introduction of new policies, like governmental reforms, parliaments, educational institutions or also new postal services, and in the preface Timothy Richard presents the book as a model textbook for reforms in China. Its broad acceptance might also be due to the fact that it propagated peaceful reform instead of violent revolution; the broad content is also the reason why it advanced to "the book" on Western knowledge within a few years. Already during the translation process in 1893 the book was promoted and financially supported by Zhang Zhidong. Some sections were published in the "Wanguo gongbao" prior to the book publication between March 1894 and May 1895, and the first edition in 1895 of 30 000 volumes was quickly sold out. 4000 of the 5000 books of the revised edition of 1898 were sold out in two weeks. The Guangxuehui itself advertised it as the most important of all its translations. There existed so many illegal copies of the book that Timothy Richard urged the Shanghai Daotai to officially ban the black editions, and yet 6 different editions could be found in Hangzhou and until 1898 19 different editions existed in Sichuan (Xiong, 601). It was one of the three books that Kang Youwei presented to the Emperor during the Hundred Days Reform of 1898, and was highly estimated also by Wang Tao and Liang Qichao. After having read the book the emperor ordered 100 copies of it for the Hanlin Academy. Thanks to Natascha Vittinghoff (Goettingen) for the above text! For bibliographical details and shelfmark please visit www.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/cgi-bin/acwww25/regsrch.pl?recnums=49300&db=kat _______________________________________________________ With kind regards, Hanno Lecher ([log in to unmask]) ChinaResource.org -- Content manager http://chinaresource.org _______________________________________________________ An archive of this list as well as an subscribe/unsubscribe facility is available at: http://listserv.uni-heidelberg.de/archives/chinaresource-l.html