Acquisition of books by Russian missionaries in Beijing during the first half of the XIX century

In the early XIX century, due to the growing interest in China, the Russian government began to send special instructions to the members of the Russian Orthodox Mission in Beijing. According to the instructions, the missionaries were to establish close contacts with representatives of the nobility, as well as to acquire various books to enrich the Russian library collections. This article presents a detailed study of the contacts of the members of the Russian Orthodox Mission with the members of the Qing imperial house, Mongolian princes, Tibetan lamas, booksellers, and Korean envoys in Beijing, all with the goal of obtaining materials across a range of knowledge areas. Drawing on both Chinese and Russian sources, the study shows that the collection of printed and manuscript publications by the members of the ecclesiastical mission was closely linked to their interactions with the Beijing nobility. This work is the first-of-its-kind inquiry into the peculiarities of forming the corpus of library collections in Chinese and minority languages of China at an early stage. The study’s relevance is underscored by the growing scholarly interest in the activities of the members of the Russian Orthodox Mission in Beijing and Russian-Chinese relations of this period.