Bohai guo zhi 渤海國志 [Treatise on the Bohai Kingdom]

78; 82 folding leaves. Three parts in two vols. 8vo, orig. wrappers, orig. block-printed title labels on upper covers, orig. stitching. Beijing: Wen hua zhai, Third Preface dated 1935.

Early edition of this notable history of the Bohai Kingdom, written by Weihan Huang (d. 1929-31), government official and historian. The Bohai (or Parhae or Balhae) Kingdom (698-926) occupied the Manchurian plains to the north of the Korean peninsula. Korean and Chinese historians began to take an interest in the Bohai kingdom in the eighteenth century, partially because the Manchus had begun their rise to the dominant political power in East Asia in an area that partially overlapped with the ancient Bohai. In the early 20th century, the region was again made a focal point of historical research, as Korea and Manchuria were brought together under the Japanese imperialist umbrella. Scholars of the wider region, on opposite sides of the political spectrum, made efforts to write the history of the region into-or out of-the national histories of China, Korea, and, after 1932, Manchukuo, the "Manchu state." In our book, the author, Huang, was not entirely dependent on Chinese histories but used many Korean and Japanese works of reference and history.


Fine set, preserved in a hantao.