Shu yu zhou zi lu 殊域周咨録 [Record of Information Broadly Acquired from the Various Regions]
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Eight vols. 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. stitching. [Beijing]: Gu gong bo wu yuan 故宮博物院, 1930.
An important edition of this Chinese work on foreign countries from the late 16th century.
Ming China was a well-connected player in the elaborate international exchange known as early modern globalization. The Ming court dispatched ships to far-away places, Ming merchants traded in East and Southeast Asia, and numerous countries regularly sent embassies to the Ming court. Our book draws on these exchanges. Foreign states covered include Korea, Japan, Ryūkyū, the oasis polities of eastern Central Asia, the “Tartars,” and other tribes on the northern border.
Yan Congjian (b. 1529) was a scholar-official from Zhejiang. Upon passing the highest-level civil service examination in 1559, he was assigned to the Messenger Office, “a central government agency attached to the Ministry of Rites.” The office’s “principal function was to deliver formal, non-routine documents to important dignitaries such as Princes (wang) and foreign chiefs” (Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China, 245). Yan’s work in the Messenger Office gave him access to a wealth of material on China’s foreign relations, which became the basis for our book.
Yan wrote that his book “contains a lot of current events of our day, but only cursory information about older times.” The reason for this, he explained, was that “each of the barbarians has since the Han and Tang periods had their own histories [i.e., their own treatises in the dynastic histories],” which the reader could easily consult by themselves. More recent information, by contrast, was not easily accessible, giving Yan impetus to write the present book.
The book contains an author’s Preface dated 1574 (Wanli jiaxu) and one by Yan Qing 嚴清 (1524-90) dated 1583 (Wanli guiwei).
Fine set, preserved in a hantao.
References
Hucker, Charles O. A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985.
An important edition of this Chinese work on foreign countries from the late 16th century.
Ming China was a well-connected player in the elaborate international exchange known as early modern globalization. The Ming court dispatched ships to far-away places, Ming merchants traded in East and Southeast Asia, and numerous countries regularly sent embassies to the Ming court. Our book draws on these exchanges. Foreign states covered include Korea, Japan, Ryūkyū, the oasis polities of eastern Central Asia, the “Tartars,” and other tribes on the northern border.
Yan Congjian (b. 1529) was a scholar-official from Zhejiang. Upon passing the highest-level civil service examination in 1559, he was assigned to the Messenger Office, “a central government agency attached to the Ministry of Rites.” The office’s “principal function was to deliver formal, non-routine documents to important dignitaries such as Princes (wang) and foreign chiefs” (Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China, 245). Yan’s work in the Messenger Office gave him access to a wealth of material on China’s foreign relations, which became the basis for our book.
Yan wrote that his book “contains a lot of current events of our day, but only cursory information about older times.” The reason for this, he explained, was that “each of the barbarians has since the Han and Tang periods had their own histories [i.e., their own treatises in the dynastic histories],” which the reader could easily consult by themselves. More recent information, by contrast, was not easily accessible, giving Yan impetus to write the present book.
The book contains an author’s Preface dated 1574 (Wanli jiaxu) and one by Yan Qing 嚴清 (1524-90) dated 1583 (Wanli guiwei).
Fine set, preserved in a hantao.
References
Hucker, Charles O. A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985.
Details
Title
Shu yu zhou zi lu 殊域周咨録 [Record of Information Broadly Acquired from the Various Regions]
Author
YAN, Congjian 嚴從簡
Condition
Unknown