Modern China Biographical Database
The MCBD aims to collect biographical data on any individual active in China, both Chinese and non-Chinese, through systematic data mining in source books such as directories, biographical dictionaries, Who’s who’s, etc., in newspapers and periodicals, and in the academic literature.
The origin and function of MCBD are to lay the grounds for the collection of massive amounts of biographical data and information on historical actors in modern Chinese history.
The Modern China Biographical Database (MCBD) constitutes a core initiative to establish a long-term publicly accessible resource for historical research in the China field. The database is the major instrument developed by the ENP-China project. ENP-China stands for Elites, Networks, and Power in Modern Urban China. It is an ERC-funded Advanced Research Grant (no. 788476). MCBD, however, is designed to serve a much broader purpose. Its object is not limited to elites; it means to include all historical actors who were active in modern China. Its usage is not limited to the ENP-China project. It is a platform made available to the whole scholarly community of historians of modern China. Our hope is to make it the most essential biographical resource for the study of modern Chinese history.
MCBD sits at the heart of the project of breaking through the current constraints of historical research. The massive transformation of historical documentation into digital full-text format presents a formidable opportunity for historians. Except for manuscript archives, almost anything else can be turned into a searchable digital document: newspapers, periodicals, books, academic literature, not to mention the millions of pages on the Internet. The challenge is precisely to design the methods and the tools to make a profitable use of the vast quantity of information at the historians’ fingertips. The digital transformation of historical sources opens the way to exploring and exploiting documents to a scale unimaginable in the past. For historical research, it means establishing new practices that will enable the production of data-rich history.
The temporal coverage of the database is 1830 to 1949, namely it includes all the individuals born between 1800 and 1930 who were active in China during this period, regardless of their origin, nationality and the duration of their presence in China. The year 1949 represents the current terminus ad quem of MCBD because our primary purpose is to document the history of modern China before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Yet the database documents the selected individuals, as much as possible, from their birth to the time of their death, beyond the 1949 divide.