| Editor | Arthur W. Hummel, Sr. |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Biographical dictionary |
| Publisher | United States Government Printing Office |
Publication date | 1943 |
| Publication place | United States |
Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1644–1912) (ECCP) is abiographical dictionary published in 1943 by theUnited States Government Printing Office, edited byArthur W. Hummel, Sr., then head of the Orientalia Division of theLibrary of Congress.[1] Hummel's chief collaborators were Dr.Tu Lien-che (杜聯喆) and Dr.Fang Chao-ying (房兆楹), Chinese scholars who were married to each other.[2] The work was republished in 2018 by Berkshire under the nameEminent Chinese of the Qing Period: 1644-1911/2.[3]
Pamela Kyle Crossley, professor of Chinese history atDartmouth College, wrotefree software to either search and read the articles online or to download the text for offline use. Since the original work uses theWade-Giles system, which is now unfamiliar to many readers, the software also suppliespinyin romanization.[2] Crossley is also author of the historiographical preface to the new pinyin edition of the work published in 2018,[3] which changed the book's title from "Ch’ing" to "Qing".[4]
The two volumes in approximately 1100 pages comprise some 800 biographical sketches on leading figures of theQing dynasty (1644–1912) in China. The articles coverHan Chinese,Manchu,Mongol, and otherInner Asian figures, as well as some Europeans. Each article includes a short list of sources and secondary scholarship. There are three indices—personal name, book names, and subjects.[5]
Hummel, who had developed his Chinese language skills while a missionary in China, was Chairman of the Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Studies of theAmerican Council of Learned Societies from 1930 to 1934. He worked with Mortimer Graves, executive director of the council, to plan a biographical dictionary of the Qing, and gained financial support from theRockefeller Foundation. Plans were put into action when Hummel joined the Library of Congress in 1934. A younger colleague recalled that Hummel's concern with clarity and precision led him to read the entire text ofECCP aloud to search for better language.[6]
The printer for the volume did not know Chinese. Dr. Tu compiled a master file of every Chinese character in the text. These characters were then cast in Hong Kong, one for each time a character appeared. The characters were then placed in individual wooden frames and numbered by Dr. Tu. The printer put them one by one into the typesetter by hand. TheECCP is nonetheless nearly free of errors.[2]
The preface byHu Shih, a leading scholar who had been China's Ambassador to the United States, praised Hummel and the more than fifty scholars who worked for nine years on the project[7] These scholars came from the United States, Europe and Taiwan. Among them wereKnight Biggerstaff;Meribeth E. Cameron; Ch'i Ssu-ho;John K. Fairbank;L. Carrington Goodrich;Hu Shih;George Kennedy;Li Man-kuei; Hiromu Momose;Nancy Lee Swann;Teng Ssu-yu, who prepared many of the articles on theTaiping Rebellion;Earl Swisher;C. Martin Wilbur;Hellmut Wilhelm; J.C. Yang.[8]
The review in the journalPacific Affairs said "In genuine scholarship, in the wide range of events covered, in intimate accounts of leading happenings, in the voluminous amounts of Chinese source materials employed, the ambitious scale and the success of these two volumes surpass any other single attempt made by the Western world to understand China in over half a century.[9]
