An Investigation on Giuseppe Ros’s (1883–1948) Book Collection

Giuseppe Ros, an Italian diplomat in China during the period of the Republic of China (1912–1949), was famed for his book collection, which was very rich but only seen by few. During the years of turmoil in China, Ros’s collection went through great hardship and was lost, remaining an unsolved issue today, it could not be found anymore in its entirety. Nevertheless, according to the diaspora course of the collection, the overview and the storage place of the collection at present can still be speculated at a certain extent of precision. After years of study the author has come up with the conclusion that Ros’s collection can be grouped into five categories: 1) The earlier collection, stored in the National Library in Beijing, made up of books written in foreign languages; 2) A number of Chinese maps of the collection are retained in Dalian Library; 3) Ros’s partial collections stored in Guangzhou, now conserved in Guangzhou and Taiwan; 4) A special section on Hainan historical data is kept in the Sun Yat-sen Library in Guangzhou; 5) Scattered parts of the collection are currently stored outside China. This paper offers an insight on the usually neglected figure of Giuseppe Ros by outlining the main features of his outstanding collection of books.