Luce Boulnois

Lucette Boulnois (1931–2009) was a French historian of the Silk Road and trans-Himalayan trade. Her career was book-ended by her seminal 1963 book ''La route de la soie'', which was translated into nine languages, and her 2001 elaboration on that work titled ''La route de la soie-dieux, guerriers et marchands''. UNESCO described her as "a world-renowned authority on the history of the fabled trade route".

Early life

Lucette Boulnois was born in France in 1931.Boulnois, Luce, with additional material by Bradley Mayhew & Angela Sheng. (2004) ''Silk Road: Monks, warriors & merchants on the Silk Road''. Trans. Helen Loveday. Hong Kong: Odyssey Books & Guides. p. 2. She studied Russian and Chinese at the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations (INALCO) in Paris.

Career

After graduation, Boulnois spent seven years as a translator and it was through the professional contacts and travel that this afforded that she became interested in the Silk Road and trade along it. She was able to visit communist countries when few Western visitors were admitted, and used her language skills to access sources overlooked or inaccessible to most Western scholars. She became an authority on the history of central Asia and particularly of Nepal and Tibet and Sino-Nepalese relations. "Lucette Boulnois was one of the most important scholars of Tibetan economic history. Her 1983 'Poudre d'or et moneys d'argent au Tibet (principalement au 18eme siecle) old Dust and Silver Coins of Tibet (Mainly in the 18th Century) is one of the earliest, still among the most important, and unfortunately one of the least cited monographs on the subject." She worked at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) for nearly 30 years in Nepalese and Himalayan studies before retiring in 1992.

Boulnois's first book was the seminal ''La route de la soie'', published with a preface by renowned sinologist Paul Demiéville in Paris in 1963. It was published in English in London and New York in 1966. The book has since been translated into nine languages in all, including Chinese and Japanese. The first edition received only a qualified welcome, being praised for its scope and enthusiasm but also criticised for not being up to date with the latest scholarship, poor referencing, the lack of an index and the omission of references to some authorities in the field. Cammann, Schuyler
''Pacific Affairs''
Vol. 40, No. 3/4 (Autumn, 1967 - Winter, 1967-1968), pp. 369-370.

In 2001, Boulnois published her summation of her researches as ''La route de la soie-dieux, guerriers et marchands'', which was translated into English by Helen Loveday and published in 2004 as ''Silk Road: Monks, warriors & merchants on the Silk Road''.Luce Boulnois.
Odyssey Books. Retrieved 11 November 2015.''Silk Road; Monks, Warriors and Merchants''.
UNESCO. Retrieved 11 November 2015.

Death

Boulnois died in 2009. UNESCO described her as "a world-renowned authority on the history of the fabled trade route".

Selected publications

*''La route de la soie''. Preface by Paul Demiéville. Arthaud, Paris, 1963. (Signes des temps. No. 16.)
*
The Silk Road
'. Translated by Dennis Chamberlin. Allen & Unwin, London; Dutton, New York; 1966.
*''Cartes du Népal dans les bibliothèques de Paris et de Londres''. Éditions du centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris, 1973.
*"Démons et tambours au désert de Lop. Variations Orient-Occident" in '' Médiévales'', No. 22-23, pp. 91–115, 1992.
*''La route de la soie-dieux, guerriers et marchands''. Editions Olizane, Geneva, Switzerland, 2001.
*''Silk Road: Monks, warriors & merchants on the Silk Road''. Translated by Helen Loveday with additional material by Bradley Mayhew & Angela Sheng. Odyssey Books & Guides, Hong Kong, 2004.
*"Gold, wool, and musk: Trade in Lhasa in the Seventeenth Century" in Gray Tuttle & Kurtis R. Schaeffer (Eds.) (2013) ''The Tibetan History Reader''. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 457–476.

See also

*Edgar Knobloch

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boulnois, Luce
1931 births
2009 deaths
French non-fiction writers
Silk Road
Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales alumni
Historians of Asia
History of Tibet
History of Nepal
20th-century French translators
20th-century French historians