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ChinaResourceNews No.10 (1 Aug 2002)
http://chinaresource.org/news.htm
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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

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With kind regards,

Hanno Lecher ([log in to unmask])

ChinaResource.org -- Content manager
http://chinaresource.org

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