The Pelliot Collection of Local Histories from Western China.

FAIN: FT-57553-10

Joseph Raymond Dennis
Davidson College (Davidson, NC 28036-9405)

In 1908 Paul Pelliot collected local histories from areas of western China populated by Tibetans, Uighurs, and other minorities. His collection is little known and virtually unused. My project's goals are to make it more accessible by writing and publishing abstracts of individual works, and to use the local histories in a study of book publishing, circulation, and reading in western China. A major question in Chinese history is how do we understand the place of peripheral regions in the Chinese world? Most sources on imperial China come from the core regions of eastern China dominated by people who are culturally and linguistically "Chinese." This skews our understanding of the whole. The history of publishing in Chinese borderlands provides a window for understanding how minorities fit into the greater Chinese empire. Books were central to ethnic Chinese identity and cultural reproduction, but little is known about their production and consumption in western China.