20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

William Rockhill's observationsof Inner Mongolian tribal rituals in 1889-1892Alicia CampiThe Mongolia Society,Indiana University – BloomingtonThis year I completed writing my book, The Impact of China andRussia on United States-Mongolian Political Relations in the 20 th Century.So, when I was asked to give a paper at this conference, I decided to reporton one of the fascinating people I discovered, U.S. diplomat WilliamWoodville ROCKHILL (1854-1914), who it happens was Ambassador toRomania in 1898 and 1899. ROCKHILL usually is known both as the U.S.Department of State official who authored the famous Open Door Policyfor China in 1900 and as the first American to learn to read, write, andspeak Tibetan fluently, which is why he is called the “Founder of TibetanStudies” in the U.S. His June 1908 visit to the Wu T’ai Shan monasteryin China to meet with the exiled 13 th Dalai Lama, who was fleeing theBritish Younghusband mission to Tibet, also is remembered. However, thisenterprising scholar official, who served as U.S. Minister or Ambassadorto Greece (1897-1899), Serbia (1897), China (1905-1909), Russia (1909-1911), and Turkey (1911-1913), was a travel writer and explorer who wroteseveral lesser known publications 1 based his two unique journeys throughInner Mongolian territories and the Tibetan plateau under the sponsorshipof the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC at the end of the1W. Woodville ROCKHILL (November 1890), “An American in Tibet – AnAccount of a Journey Through an Unknown Land”, The Century Magazine, Vol. XLL,No. 1, 3-17; William W. ROCKHILL (December 1890), “The Border-land of China:a journey through an unknown land,” Century 19, 250-263; William W. ROCKHILL(January 1891), “Among the Mongols of the Azure Lake”, Century 19, 350-361; WilliamWoodhill ROCKHILL (June 1895), “A Pilgrimage to the Great Buddhist Sanctuary ofNorth China”, The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LXXV, No. 452, 758-769.