St. Petersburg Copies of the Main Geographical Treatise of the Qing Dynasty China <i>Yu zhi Da Qing yi tong zhi</i>

The article presents the data on the editions of official Corpus “The Imperially Commissioned Complete Description of the Great Qing Empire” (Yu zhi Da Qing yi tong zhi 御製 大清一統志), currently housed in St. Petersburg. The history of existence of this most important work on the geography of Qing China in Europe and Russia shows how highly it was rated by foreign Sinologists as a bibliographical source. They used the Corpus for writing their own works, and there was even a certain rivalry between the largest European manuscript collections striving to find and acquire it. The presence of several of its copies in St. Petersburg proves that Russian Sinologists perfectly understood the influence of the comprehensive work on “history and geography” (lishi dili 歷史地理) on the further development of historical science about China.