Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China during the years 1844-5-6. Volume 1

Huc, Evariste Régis, 1813-1860Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.0
Word count
726K words
Chapters
73

Tags

English Originals Travel Human GeographyGeography ScienceExpeditionTravel GuideDocumentary Narrative19th CenturyReligious ObservationExotic CultureFolk CustomsCross-Cultural View

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China during the years 1844-5-6. Volume 1 by HucAuthor: Huc, Evariste Régis, 1813-1860,Language: English, Class: DS: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Asia, Release Date: Jun 8, 2010

Editor's review

This is Volume 1 of the travelogue by the French Vincentian missionary Evariste Régis Huc, recounting his journeys through Mongolia, Tibet, and the Chinese interior between 1844 and 1846. It is a significant nineteenth-century Western travel narrative and work of Asian observation. Writing as an eyewitness, the author records geographical features, ethnic customs, religious life, and local society along the route with rich detail; the narrative carries a missionary perspective with its observations and biases, which makes it, for today's readers, both a historical source and a cultural text requiring critical reading. The Project Gutenberg edition is a public-domain English e-book, convenient for searching and citation. Its value lies in allowing readers to understand mid-Qing frontier and interior society by consulting maps and historical context, and to use it as supplementary material for comparative literature, travel writing, and the history of Sinology. It suits readers interested in Tibetan studies, Mongolian studies, and the history of modern East-West exchange, and also serves as a casebook for nonfiction writing and cross-cultural observation. Readers should maintain critical distance, distinguishing eyewitness records and hearsay from the author's evaluations.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Begin with the introduction and table of contents, mark chapters on geography and religion, then read selectively according to interest.
  2. Keep a nineteenth-century map of China and Tibet on hand to check place names and routes as you read.
  3. Note the difference between the author's observations and evaluations, distinguishing factual description from missionary judgment.
  4. Read alongside contemporary Western travelogues or Chinese historical sources to gain multiple perspectives.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or English? This is a public-domain English e-book released by Project Gutenberg, with the main text in English. It suits readers with some English reading ability and can also serve as a text for searching and citing English historical sources.
What background knowledge is needed before reading? Some familiarity with the basic geography and political-religious landscape of mid-nineteenth-century Qing China, Mongolia, and Tibet will help. Readers unfamiliar with Tibetan Buddhism or the history of missionary activity may wish to start with a concise introduction or relevant reference entries before entering the main text.
Can the accounts in this book be taken directly as historical fact? They should not be taken directly as objective historical fact. The author offers eyewitness observations, but also missionary stances, period biases, and hearsay. It is advisable to separate specific descriptions from the author's evaluations and to use them in comparison with other historical sources.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Huc, Evariste Régis, 1813-1860 Author · French · 1813–1860

Evariste Régis Huc (1813–1860), known in Chinese as Gu Boya, was a French Vincentian missionary and traveler. Between 1844 and 1846 he journeyed through Tartary, Tibet, and the Chinese interior, and based on his firsthand observations he wrote the travel account Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China. The two works held in this collection are the first and second volumes of that account. Written from a missionary's perspective, the book records the geography, ethnic customs, and religious life along his route, combining travel narrative with historical source material. It is regarded as one of the important nineteenth-century Western texts on western China and the Tibetan regions. Public information on the details of his life is limited; his reputation rests chiefly on this travel account.