Charles-Eudes Bonin: the First French Person to Visit Dunhuang

From Beijing to Gansu

In March 1899, Bonin arrived in Beijing with a dozen Annamese soldiers that the Ministère des Colonies had charged to ensure his security, and two Chinese interpreters. Unlike many French explorers or diplomats in Asia, who had studied at the École des Langue Orientales [School of Oriental Languages] in Paris, Bonin did not have any Chinese (Malsagne, 2015: 16–17). Although he occasionally used Chinese characters in some of his reports, he did not speak Chinese and could not read Chinese texts without help (Malsagne, 2015: 17). He relied heavily on his interpreters during his entire journey. Departing from Beijing, Bonin and his men visited the Ming tombs, crossed the Great Wall at Nankou 南口 and went to Xuanhua 宣化, from where they reached the nearby city of Kalgan, known in Chinese as Zhangjiakou 张家口.

They travelled westward, following the Yang River 洋河³ to Guihuacheng 归化城 (Hohhot), in Inner Mongolia. Thus started Bonin’s journey to the northwestern regions of China on the so-called Silk Road, which he intended to retrace, walking in the footsteps of Marco Polo and others:

Only two Western explorers had travelled this route before: Père Armand David (1829–1900) in 1866 and William Woodville Rockhill (1854–1914) in 1891. Bonin’s itinerary deviated somewhat from theirs and enabled him to complete and correct their mapping for the upper course of the river valley, with the Dongyang River 东洋河and the Xiyang River 西洋河 (Bonin, 1901a: 284).

Two weeks after leaving Beijing, Bonin was in Hohhot, which he described as a cosmopolitan trading town between north China and Outer Mongolia for wool and leather (Bonin, 1901a: 285). He had already visited the ‘Blue City’ (the translation of the Mongolian name Hohhot) on his first mission to central Asia (1895–1897) and did not stay long. He followed the valley of the Dahei River 大黑河 and, after two days, reached the village of Hekou 河口, at the confluence with the Yellow River, on the northern curve of the Ordos loop. He located it:

Bonin’s identification of Togtoh as Tenduc was based on Rockville’s writings (1894: 18). As Malsagne noted (2015: 177), this fed a discussion that was had been initiated in 1871 by the Scottish orientalist Henry Yule (1820–1889), to whom Tenduc was Hohhot, and developed by Henri Cordier (1849–1925) and Yule’s daughter Amy Frances Yule (1852–1916) (Cordier, 1920: 62). Unfortunately, the photographs taken by Bonin and his description were insufficient to prove this identification, which is unconfirmed by archaeological surveys.⁵

In Dzungar, which possibly corresponds to the modern city of Ordos 鄂尔多斯市,⁶ Bonin visited a Mongolian official, 27^th descendant of Gengis Khan, who he had met during his first expedition (À Travers le Monde, 1897: 81). This ‘king’, as he called him, shared his growing concerns for the safety of foreigners in China, particularly missionaries established on his territory. On 20 May 1899, Bonin wrote to Stephen Pichon (1857–1933), who was serving as the French Minister to China in Beijing,⁷ to alert him to the rise of xenophobic movements:

Bonin nonetheless continued his journey and went to Baotou 包头, where he rented a boat and sailed up the Yellow River for 40 days. On the way, he carried out detailed hydrographic surveys. Only two explorers, George Littledale (1851–1931) and Montagu Sinclair Wellby (1866–1900), had navigated on the Yellow River before him. Both came from Tibet and, having lost their tools, were unable to record such information (Bonin, 1901a: 288). Bonin arrived at Yinchuan 银川⁸ on 29 June 1899. There, he completed a report on Christian communities in central Asia (Bonin, 1900b). He made an excursion to the Alashan 阿拉善山 and the Galpin Gobi, inhabited by Kalmyk people, and described by the Russian explorer Nikolai Mikhailovich Przhevalsky (1839–1888) as the ‘Valley of Death’ (1876: xxx). On his return to Yinchuan, Bonin visited the remains of the fortifications built by the Ming emperors to stop Mongol incursions (Bonin, 1901a: 288).

In late July 1899, equipped with a caravan of twenty camels, Bonin left via a ‘direct route’ that ‘no traveller had yet undertaken.’ It took him fifteen days to cross the Gobi desert from east to west, overcoming some particularly arduous sections:

Bonin reached Liangzhou 凉州, Gansu, around mid-August. He studied the city’s archaeological landmarks, especially the Dayun 大云 Buddhist temple, in search of remains of the Tangut (Xixia 西夏) empire. Bonin knew of the research of the French sinologist Gabriel Devéria (1844–1899) on the rubbings of a bilingual stele in Chinese and Tangut (Devéria, 1898: 53–74). He obtained translations of a further 18 inscriptions in Chinese, and took notes and photographs (Malsagne, 2015: 187). He also made several rubbings, which he shared with Edouard Chavannes (1865–1918), Professor at the Collège de France, who was charged by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres to examine the results of Bonin’s expedition from an epigraphic point of view (1901: 133–135; 1904: 193–295). Chavannes was later to work closely with Stein on his expedition finds (Fenet, 2023).

On 17 August 1899, Bonin went looking for a Tibetan tribe that he thought to be descendants of the Tanguts. He found a small community two days’ walk west of Liangzhou and compiled a report for the Ministère de l’Instruction Publique on 15 September 1899 (MAE, 26/PAAP/11: 230–239). He also made notes on their language. Bonin then travelled south towards Koko Nor (Qinghai Lake 青海湖). He proudly reported how this entirely new route had enabled him to explore the Nan Shan 南山 and given him the opportunity to study these mountains and their orography across a large area (Bonin, 1901a: 289). The next steps of the journey unfolded quickly. Having traversed the mountains through a high pass, which he estimated at 5000 meters, Bonin reached the valley of the Datong River 大通河, a tributary of the Yellow River.

Bonin arrived in Xining 西宁 on 25 August 1899. He visited the Kumbum Buddhist monastery (Ta’ersi 塔尔寺) and stayed for a few days in the house closest to the central temple. There, he took photographs and acquired some printed mantras:

Bonin then journeyed to the town of Tangkar (Tongka 同卡), where the local official refused to provide him with the escort required by his passport. Two days later, after narrowly avoiding an ambush by bandits, he safely reached the eastern bank of Koko Nor (Malsagne, 2015: 193). He was the first French traveller to camp there since Père Evariste Régis Huc (1813–1860) and Père Joseph Gabet (1808–1953), who travelled to Lhasa in 1845 (Huc, 1928). While the shores of the lake appeared to be uninhabited, Bonin noted that there were Tibetan settlements in the foothills of the mountains surrounding it (1901a: 292). Before leaving, Bonin took a sample of the lake water with the aim of comparing it to that of Lop Nor (Luobu Po 罗布泊). He set off northwards, bypassing Bagha Nor, a small lake that had separated from Koko Nor.

Bonin continued marching through gorges and desert plateaus, swept by snowstorms (1901a: 292). In the lower valley of the Datong River, the ice had melted and rendered the river impassable. Fortunately for him and his men, after almost a day, they encountered a group of Tibetans and their yak caravan, who sent them in the direction of a ford where the river allowed passage ‘with water up the withers of the horses’ (Bonin, 1901a: 292). They then crossed the mountain range located north of the Datong River. On 7 September, they arrived at the Chinese fort of Ebuzhen (Ebao zhen 峨堡镇), an ancient city considered the north gate of Qinghai. Two days later, Bonin reached the city of Ganzhou 甘州 (Zhangye 张掖), located in the centre of the Hexi Corridor, Gansu:

Bonin realised that it would be impossible for him to complete his mission to China and Central Asia on schedule, and on 20 September 1899 submitted an official request to the Ministère de l’Instruction Publique for an extension of three additional months, without pay (Malsagne, 2015: 195–196).

Bonin at Dunhuang and the Mogao Caves

On 23 September 1899, Bonin left Ganzhou and headed towards Lop Nor on the imperial road going through Jiuquan 酒泉, Anxi 安西, Shazhou 沙洲 and the Gobi desert. He continued to compile geographical data. He reported that the Yumen Pass 玉门关, the ancient frontier, was built in isolation in the Gobi Desert rather than connected to Han fortifications, as indicated on some maps (Bonin, 1901a: 293). He made notes about the numerous mineral deposits of western Gansu, including several gold mines and about a dozen oil sources. Most of these had been recently opened or discovered. After Jiuquan, Bonin arrived in Anxi on 12 October 1899. There, the local official refused to find the camels necessary to reach Lop Nor, and Bonin had to rent donkeys from a Turkic caravaneer (Malsagne, 2015: 197).

Due to this delay, he departed from Anxi on 17 October 1899, leaving the main road to travel southwest through the desert and arriving at Shazhou three days later (Bonin, 1901a: 294). The oasis-town of Shazhou, also known as Dunhuang 敦煌, had once been a strategic point on the old routes, but had gradually lost its importance. As Bonin noted:

On 24 October 1899, he set off for the Mogao Caves, known generally as the Qianfodong 千佛洞 or “Thousand Buddha Caves”, located about 20 kilometres to the southeast of Dunhuang. A small number of European travellers had already visited the caves and drawn attention to them. The Austro-Hungarian team of Count Béla Széchenyi (1837–1893), which included the cartographer Gusztáv Kreitner (1847–1893) and the geologist and geographer Lajos Lóczy (1849–1920), had visited in May 1879 (Russell-Smith, 2000). Przhevalsky arrived later that year. The British explorer George Littledale (1851–1931) and his wife Teresa, née Harris Scott (1839–1928) travelled there in July 1893, and briefly mentioned the Buddhist cave complex in their account (1894: 460).

On the way to the Caves, Bonin stopped at a stupa containing three small Buddhist statues, with a stele dated from 1802 recording that this was a resting place for pilgrims heading to the Caves. Next to it, he noted the remains of a recently built small square tower surmounted by five pillars, which he assumed probably replaced ‘an older one, similar to those which marked out through Central Asia the great road from Beijing to Bactria’ (Bonin, 1901b: 211). From there he walked another hour, and finally reached the long cliff-face with hundreds of Buddhist caves:

Bonin immediately understood the great value of the Mogao Caves to the study of Asian religions, in particular to the history of the transmission of Buddhism from India to China. He wrote:

Bonin felt that the European explorers before him had failed to give an adequate description of the Mogao Caves and set himself that task. He explained the arrangement of the caves over several irregular storeys, often three, sometimes four where the cliff was high enough to accommodate an additional level. This corrected Przhevalsky’s description, which said there were only two storeys (1901b, 212). Bonin added that the caves themselves were of varying dimensions, ranging from small square holes barely a metre deep to vast rooms up to twenty metres in width:

Bonin assumed, inaccurately, that there were no internal connections between the caves, built at different periods, and recorded that they could only be accessed from the outside.

He described the walls and ceiling of the caves as decorated with murals painted during different periods that were admirably preserved thanks to the dry air of the region. Some of the compositions included Chinese inscriptions, which he stated must have contained prayers or referred to the scenes depicted. The inscriptions were covered with a layer of brown paint, under which at least some of the characters were legible (Bonin, 1901b: 213). However, Bonin’s lack of Chinese meant that he could not read them. He mentioned that the main rooms were paved with large earthenware tiles decorated with raised rosettes reminiscent of the tiles separating the Buddhist images painted on the walls. Statues of deities could also be seen in some of the chambers. These were shaped around a wooden structure and made of polychrome clay with traces of gilding, and most seemed to have been previously restored:

Bonin noted in his report that the lower level of the caves in the cliff face was half silted up and would soon be completely blocked if no one took adequate precautions (Bonin, 1901b: 212). The irony of this insightful comment is that only eight months after his visit, in June 1900, the Daoist monk Wang Yuanlu 王圆箓, who had appointed himself caretaker of the site, accidentally stumbled upon a hidden cave when removing sand from the corridor of a large cave, Cave 16. The small room turned out to contain a cache of manuscripts, printed materials and other artefacts roughly dating from the fifth to the early eleventh centuries. The contents of this repository, now commonly referred to as the ‘Library cave’ or Cave 17, revolutionised studies of this region, and are comparable to the Dead Sea scrolls for their significance. Bonin therefore narrowly missed one of the world’s greatest archaeological discoveries. Nowhere in his report did he refer to Wang or to any other residents at the caves. In 1907, the British-Hungarian explorer Marc Aurel Stein arrived at Dunhuang and convinced Wang Yuanlu to sell him a large number of items to provide funds to continue restoring the caves. The following year, in 1908, the French sinologist Paul Pelliot arrived at the caves and acquired another large number of the contents of Cave 17.

Bonin did not leave the Mogao Caves completely empty handed. He took four rubbings of dated inscriptions from different periods. The first two are from both sides of a stele in the cave now known as Cave 148, which contained a statue of the parinirvāṇa Buddha measuring approximately 15 metres long (Bonin, 1901b, 215). These two rubbings are dated 776 and 894. The earliest praises a Buddhist follower, Li Taibin 李太宾 (dates uncertain), who commissioned religious murals; the later one recalls the memory of a member of the imperial family, son-in-law of Zhang Yichao 张义潮 (799–872), who swore allegiance to the Tang dynasty (618–907) (Chavannes, 1904: 202).

The other two rubbings come from two different steles erected during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) to commemorate the religious foundations of Sulaiman, the King of Xining (d. 1351). Bonin found both steles in a cave that he described as a ‘great hall with idols’ (1901b: 215). By the time of Stein’s visit, they were outside a shrine next to Cave 96, which houses a Buddha statue measuring 35.5 metres in height. Stein thus assumed that the stele originally belonged in the cave of the colossal Buddha (Stein, 1921: 799–801). One of the steles is dated to 1348 and features a four-armed bodhisattva Avalokitesvara surrounded by the six-syllable Om mani padme hum mantra in six scripts: Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Tangut, Phags Pa and Mongolian (Figure 3). Bonin was particularly proud of having taken a rubbing of this stele, which became an important document for the study of central Asian languages and scripts (1901b: 216). The other stele, dated to 1351, commemorated the restoration of the Huangqing Temple 皇庆寺.

Figure 3

Bonin also took some of the earliest known photographs of the Mogao Caves. This small corpus of under ten pictures bears no comparison, in terms of size and quality, to the hundreds of photographs of Dunhuang taken by Charles Nouette (1869–1910) in 1908 on Pelliot’s expedition. It constitutes nonetheless an invaluable source of information (Figures 4, 5, and 6).

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

From Gansu to Turkestan

From Dunhuang, Bonin undertook a topographical survey of the region. He headed northwest, as far as what he called the ‘Black Lake’ or Kara Nor in Mongolian (Hala’er hu 哈拉尔湖), a desert plateau that drained the waters of the Nan Shan 南山 and Altyn Tagh or Altun Mountains (A’erjin Shan 阿尔金山) to form a salt lake in the spring. At the time of his expedition, the lake had already considerably shrunk due to drying up of the Gobi desert and the construction of canals used for irrigation along the Shule River 疏勒河, which used to flow into it from the East:

Bonin continued his reconnaissance into the desert towards the west from the southern shore of the lake, but he soon had to interrupt his trip and return to Dunhuang owing to the lack of drinkable water:

With great effort, Bonin and his men managed to cross to the other side and camped between dunes, where they searched in vain for waterholes. Using the map he had drawn earlier, Bonin was able to direct his team to a previously identified spring. From there, they returned to the limits of the oasis of Dunhuang, which he had left a fortnight earlier.

The exploration was not a complete failure as it led to an important archaeological and historical discovery for Bonin:

South of the road, Bonin also found the enclosure of a small fortress that locals called Fangpangcheng 方旁城, the ‘square city’, as well as other fortifications built in the Tang dynasty. According to Bonin, these remains were, without doubt, traces of ancient trade routes. Stein was later to confirm his discovery:

On 8 November 1899, Bonin set out from Dunhuang with a new guide (Malsagne, 2015: 203). Heading southwest, he walked towards the Altyn-tagh, which he reached after four days in the desert. He crossed the rocky heights of the Kumtag Desert, which proved particularly difficult because of the instability of the sand under the action of the wind (Bonin, 1901a: 297). The route then closely followed the first ridgeline and traversed, for the most part, either the Tibetan plateau or a corridor between two parallel chains of the Altyn Tagh. The highest point of this itinerary was a pass located at 3600 metres:

Bonin reported that they suffered from the cold and the lack of food (1900a: 235). In addition, there were very few unevenly located water points along the way. Bonin and his men took a route that went past glaciers and peaks, which enabled them to find potable water.

Bonin reached Abdal, a village situated by the Tarim River, on 30 November 1899.¹² Rather than following the same road as most travellers, i.e. going south through Charkhlik or Ruoqiang 若羌, Bonin cut westwards in the direction of the north shore of the Kara Buran, a lake into which both the Cherchen and the Tarim rivers flow. On the way, he crossed the Tarim River twice on makeshift rafts. Bonin saw in the scattered ruins that they found in the course of the expedition a sign that the Lop Nor area was once populous and cultivated (1901a: 298). Stein would later confirm this observation. After arriving at the Kara Buran, Bonin followed the Tarim to the northwest, crossing the green stretch between the Taklamakan desert to the west and the marshy waters of Lop Nor to the east:

Bonin passed through Xingping 兴平 and Kurla (Ku’erle 库尔勒) and arrived in Karasahr (Yanqi 焉耆), at the foot of the Tianshan 天山, on 30 December 1899. Because he should have been back in France already, he decided not to visit Nikolai Fyodorovich Petrovsky (1837–1908), the Russian Consul in Kashgar, an important diplomatic post in western China, as it would take three months to make the journey there and back. Instead, he spent almost a fortnight in Karasahr and visited several nearby sites:

Bonin left no detailed notes about Ming-oi 明屋, a compound also referred to as Shorchuk or Qigexing 七个星. In 1907, Stein excavated some of the site’s Buddhist ruins in the course of his second expedition to central Asia. He found the remains of colossal statues, woodcarvings, paintings and stucco reliefs (1921: 1183–1244). Bonin also mentioned visiting the ancient city of Tanzer, located to the east of the road, as well as a place called Bagdad-shahri, to the southeast, on the edge of the Bosten Lake. Bonin suggested that the latter might have been an ancient Nestorian settlement of which there were no remains (1901a: 299). Stein explored the site later and established that it must have been a ‘town of importance’, possibly the old capital of Karasahr during the Tang dynasty (818–907) (1921: 1182–3).

To reach Urumqi, Bonin decided to follow a route that no western traveller had taken before him — ‘not even the Russians who always go through the road from Toksoun to Turfan,’ as he explained in a letter to the Ministère de l’Instruction Publique, 30 December 1899 (MAE, 26/PAAP/11: 297). He suggested crossing the Tianshan range directly from south to north between Karasahr and Urumqi. Although guides tried to talk him out of this itinerary because the mountain path freezes over in winter and snow covers the passes, the trip went smoothly (Malsagne, 2015: 207). Bonin left Karasahr on 8 January 1900, with three men and three pack-horses. He headed southeast along the bank of the Bosten Lake to visit the leader of the Koshuts (a Mongolian tribe), who supplied him with guides and letters of permission to cross his territory (Bonin, 1901a: 300). Continuing northeastwards, Bonin entered the mountains to emerge two days later on a plateau. He crossed a first pass at 3860 metres and then three other passes before reaching the Algoy valley near an abandoned fort. There, he observed a group of 200 Kyrgyz tents (Bonin, 1901a: 300).

Bonin kept going north and arrived at Urumqi (Ulumuqi 乌鲁木齐), capital of the newly created province of Xinjiang, on 17 January 1900:

From Urumqi, Bonin crossed the Kyrgyz steppe and went to Kulja, skirting the northern slope of the Tianshan. He arrived at Jarkent, Kazakhstan, in April 1900. He crossed the Russian border at Korgos, travelled through Semirechye, Russian Turkestan, across the Caspian and the Caucasus, from where he did reconnaissance work in Armenia. From there, he went to Batum and Constantinople, returning to France, which he had left two and a half years previously.

An enduring friendship: Sven Hedin

A few months after leaving Dunhuang, in December 1899, Bonin met the celebrated Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, who was conducting his second expedition to Central Asia (1899–1902). Hedin was resting in Yangi-kol, a small lake along the Tarim River, after an arduous eighty days of travel on a purpose-built boat down river from Yarkand (Shache 莎车) (Bonin, 1901a: 299). Upon hearing that Bonin was passing close to his winter camp, he wrote to him, in French, on 15 December 1899 suggesting they might meet, and offering to share interesting information and to show him some maps and routes:

Hedin specially chose one of his men, Parpi Baj, to act as a messenger because he had been with the Prince of Orléans and Bonvalot during their journey through Tibet and had witnessed Dutreuil de Rhin’s murder (Hedin, 1903:282). Parpi Baj returned with an answer on the 16 December 1899. Bonin had asked Hedin to meet somewhere halfway, on the Tarim River: ‘We could spend the evening together and the next day I will go to your camp, where I will stay all day if you accept my company’ (MAE, 26/PAAP/23: 272). Hedin rode at night to see Bonin, located just one mile to the north of his camp (Hedin, 1903: 282). Very few foreign travellers were venturing to these remote parts of Asia at the time, and Hedin was the first Westerner to cross Bonin’s path since he had left Beijing that spring. Bonin shared with him his discovery of the ancient trade route near Dunhuang, which Marco Polo had followed, with its perfectly conserved towers; and the Swedish explorer revealed that he had found the remains of similar structures near the confluence of the Tarim River and the Kongque River 孔雀河 or Konchi Darya.

According to Hedin, ‘nothing could be more pleasant during a prolonged journey in desolate regions than to meet a European, and now this was more than ever the case, for Bonin was a charming, cheerful, funny, and learned man, and it was an extraordinary pleasure for me to listen to his strange findings and hypotheses’ (1903: 283). After breakfast the following day, they made their way towards the village where Hedin was stationed. They reviewed Hedin’s map of the Tarim River and even took a short boat trip together (Hedin, 1903: 283). In the evening, they retreated to Hedin’s tent, where they dined and shared cigars until the early hours of the morning. Before they parted ways on 18 December 1899, Hedin took a picture of Bonin and his men by his cart, later published in the Swedish edition of his second expedition (1903: 284).

The brief encounter made a lasting impression on both of them and sealed their long friendship. According to Bonin, these two days would ‘remain the best of my journey’ (1900a: 236). He also considered that Hedin’s topographical survey of the Yarkand and the Tarim rivers would be a ‘revelation for the cartography of a region that we thought we knew’ (1901a: 299). As for Hedin, he wrote that they ‘had an unforgettably pleasant day and night together’ and described the Frenchman as ‘an uncommonly amiable and scholarly man’ (1926: 236), who resembled a lama pilgrim with his long red cloak and red bashlik (1903: 284). A photograph, dedicated in French by Sven Hedin ‘To my dear friend and colleague, Charles E. Bonin’ captured the two of them looking at a map at Yangi Kol (Figure 7). A copy of it, without the handwritten note, was also included in Hedin’s report (1903: 280).

Figure 7

The two men continued to exchange information throughout their expeditions and afterwards. In a letter dated 14 May 1900, Hedin wrote to Bonin of his discovery of the missing link between the eastern and western parts of the ancient trade routes in central Asia. He described the ruins of an old settlement, which he did not have time to excavate but was planning to revisit later in the autumn, after an excursion in the Tibetan mountains:

Bonin’s archives show that he was also in touch with Hedin’s family. For instance, Carl Hedin, Sven Hedin’s brother, wrote to him on 12 August 1900 to report that his family had ‘received some good news from my brother, Sven Hedin, a few weeks ago’ (MAE, 26/PAAP/23: 118–119).

Their friendship was put to the test in August 1910, when Bonin and Hedin exchanged several letters over the “Strindbergsfejden” [the Strindberg Feud], one of the most significant literary and political debates in Swedish history (Järv, 1968). Hedin had returned to Sweden to great acclaim, but the writer August Strindberg (1849–1912), who had launched a series attacks on popular conservative symbols, claimed that the explorer did not deserve to be hailed as a national hero. He expressed his criticism of the expedition’s costs and questioned whether Hedin was truly the first Swedish person to have discovered Lop Nor and the Tarim basin, accusing him of merely surveying a territory that was already well known. His argument was based on a map of Dzungaria including Lop Nor and the Tarim Basin, drawn 150 years earlier by the soldier and cartographer Johan Gustaf Renat (1682–1744) (Stringberg and Meidal, 1988: 123–124).

On 10 August 1910, Bonin informed Hedin that he had heard in the press about the ‘controversy concerning the accuracy of the account of your explorations.’ He kindly offered to give a testimony on his behalf, ‘since I am the only European, as you declared, that you met during your mission in Central Asia and as such I can confirm better than anyone the veracity of your accounts’ (MAE, 26/PAAP/11: 182). A few days later, Hedin graciously accepted the unsolicited support coming from his ‘French best friend’:

Bonin chose to defend Hedin in La Dépêche Coloniale, the main daily newspaper for foreign matters. The article summarised the information previously supplied by Hedin:

In addition to this, Bonin relied on a French translation, dated to 1737, of the original memoirs of the Swedish prisoners in Siberia during the war between Sweden and Russia to demonstrate that previous Swedish accounts did not mention Lop Nor.

In a draft letter dated 15 September 1910, Bonin told Hedin that he had written a column about the Swedish explorer’s expedition to Lop Nor, ‘according to [his] wishes and following [his] indications.’ He also warned his correspondent that the publication had caused ‘the famous Savage Landor [to write] that he discovered the Trans-Himalaya before you’ (MAE, 26/PAAP/11, 185). A couple of days later, on 17 September 1910, Hedin sent his most effusive thanks for this intervention and used the opportunity to expand on the attacks from the British explorer Arnold Henry Savage Landor (1865–1924):

In this reply, Hedin provided Bonin with all the elements needed to publish another article in the French press should his own response not see the light of day:

A letter from Hedin to Bonin, dated 5 October 1910, indicates that the French explorer may have produced another piece for the press (MAE, 26/PAAP/11: 192–193). The following year, Bonin contributed an article to the Annales de Géographie, where he discussed an ancient map of the sources of the Ganges, thus backing Hedin’s geographical discoveries in the Trans-Himalayan region regarding the origin of the great Asian rivers that flow down from Tibet to northern India (1911, 338–350). The archives of the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] do not contain any correspondence between the two men beyond 10 June 1911 (MAE, 26/PAAP/11: 226). The Hedin archives contain a black and white photograph representing Bonin dedicated ‘To the Doctor Sven Hedin, [by] his admirer and friend, C.E. Bonin’, as well as nine letters from Bonin, dated from 1908 to 1912. In a letter dated 2 March 1912 and written onboard the cruise liner SS La Provence, Bonin informed his Swedish friend that he was moving to Canada:

At the end of 1912, he sent a short note to wish Hedin a happy New Year 1913. Whether they kept in touch beyond this point is unknown. In 1914, the council of the Société de Géographie [Geographical Society] voted unanimously to remove Hedin from the list of its correspondents for he had been leading a very Germanophile campaign since the beginning of the First World War (1914–1918) (La Dépêche Coloniale, 18 November 1914: 1).

A French rival: Paul Pelliot

A photograph, now missing, in the archives of the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] was catalogued as representing the Muslim leaders in Beijing, with Bonin, Pelliot, Casenave and Vérondart (MAE, 26/PAAP/13). It would not be surprising for Bonin to have encountered the French sinologist Paul Pelliot. If not then, there would have been more opportunities for the two men’s paths to cross. At the time, very few French people travelled to China and Central Asia, and it is likely that they navigated the same social circles. Pelliot certainly knew that Bonin had visited the Mogao Caves before him, and mentioned his work in his travel diaries (1906–1908, published 2008: 277). He also briefly acknowledged him in a presentation he gave at the Sorbonne on 10 December 1909:

Returning to France from his own expedition to Central Asia in October 1909, Pelliot was the victim of a virulent campaign. Although this also targeted Edouard Chavannes and the École Française d’Extrême-Orient, the spotlight was on Pelliot. Not only was doubt cast on the account he had given of his trip to Dunhuang and his examination of the contents of Cave 17, but he was also accused of wasting public money and returning with forged manuscripts (Monnet, 2013: 154–172). One of Pelliot’s main detractors, Fernand Farjenel (d. 1918), was a member of the Société asiatique, professor at the Collège libre des sciences sociales and librarian at the Ministère des Finances [Ministry of Finance]. He wrote several articles criticising Pelliot in French newspapers and periodicals. Tensions rose, and after Pelliot struck Farjenel at a banquet on 7 July 1911, the latter took him to court with a charge of assault (Monnet, 2013: 193–194).

Ten days after the incident, on 17 July 1911, Pelliot wrote to Bonin:

Indeed, Pelliot’s account that Cave 17 was carved into the corridor of one of the caves could be seen to contradict the following statement in Bonin’s 1901 report on the Mogao Caves:

Bonin replied a few days later, in a letter to Pelliot dated 20 July 1911:

This document provided the evidence Pelliot needed in order to prove that Farjenel’s accusations were unfounded. However, it is not signed and may have been only a draft. We do not know if Bonin ever ended up responding to Pelliot. In any case, this would not have made much difference for his defence. On 25 October 1911, the court condemned to pay a fine of 5 francs and 1 franc damages for assaulting Farjenel (Monnet, 2013: 194). Pelliot’s name was not cleared until the following year, when Aurel Stein published Ruins of Desert Cathay (1912: 217–218). In this book, Stein supported Pelliot’s account and made it clear that he had left manuscripts behind at Dunhuang after his visit, thereby silencing Pelliot’s critics. Why would Bonin have decided not to post the letter? It is possible that he feared that it would not reach Pelliot in time for the trial. However, there may have been another reason.

The letter records that Bonin had personally given a copy of his text “Les Grottes des Milles Bouddhas” to Pelliot before the latter embarked on his expedition to Central Asia, confirming the two of them must have met prior to 1906 and been on relatively friendly terms. Malsagne has suggested (2015: 200) that Bonin was perhaps upset to be eclipsed by his compatriot. He had been the first person in France to highlight the immense importance of the Mogao Caves, only for his own contribution to be marginalised within a matter of months by the discovery of the Library Cave, for which Pelliot had received all the attention. Bonin’s archives reveal that he followed the activities of Pelliot in relation to Dunhuang with a keen interest. He kept several newspaper clippings about the Bonin-Farjenel case, as well as handwritten notes of the presentation delivered by Pelliot on 10 December 1909 in which he underlined the following section: ‘We promised ourselves to devote to their study, which no archaeologist had yet undertaken, all the time that their importance demanded’ (MAE, PAAP, 18: 178).

However, it is clear that Bonin (and Farjenel) were not the only people concerned about the attention being showered on Pelliot. Another letter in the same folder in the Bonin archives, dated 22 July 1911 and written on headed paper from the Direction des Affaires Politiques et Commerciales [Direction of Political and Commercial Affairs] of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, shows that Bonin had sought advice as to how he should handle the Sinologist’s request:

The letter is signed ‘Philippe.’ This was certainly the diplomat Philippe Berthelot (1866–1934), who was a close friend of Bonin and his wife (Fenet, 2010: 45). In the end, Pelliot had the last word in his obituary of Bonin in the preeminent sinological journal T’oung Pao, of which Pelliot was the co-editor (1930: 235–236). Although he expressed the gratitude of the scientific community for his work, his introductory statement described the career of Bonin as ‘quite erratic’ and later comment that he did not produce any major publications, may bear witness to the fact that the two men had a fraught relationship.

Bonin and other French orientalists

Bonin demonstrated his keen interest in the ethnography, geography, history and archaeology of central Asia during his second expedition. The paper that he gave at the Société de Géographie de Paris on 11 January 1901 was very well received. He also wrote a series of articles and reports about his second mission to China and central Asia, as well as purely historical and geographical texts in important newspapers and periodicals. These were intended for a learned audience and did not help to popularise the results of his research, which means that he remained unknown to the wider public. However, it appears that Bonin was closely connected to the intellectual and political elites of his time.

He made about 90 copies of inscriptions in the course of his voyage (Malsagne, 2015: 209–210). As mentioned earlier in the article, Edouard Chavannes studied these and noted their importance to the scholarly community:

The two men exchanged several letters as part of this work. In 1901, at Bonin’s request, Chavannes shared a number of bibliographic references on Islam in China (MAE, 26/PAAP/13: 7–8), a topic about which Bonin was particularly passionate. In a letter dated 22 March 1902, he suggested that Bonin should perhaps collect Islamic inscriptions (MAE, 26/PAAP/13: 11–12). Bonin also gave Chavannes dedicated copies of his book Les Royaumes des Neiges and of a couple of his articles (Fenet, 2010: 45).

Bonin was in contact with Henri Cordier (1849–1925), who was President of the Société de Géographie [Geographical Society] and played an important role in the development of East Asian and central Asian scholarship in France. Cordier included all of Bonin’s relevant publications in his Dictionnaire Bibliographique des Ouvrages Relatifs à l’Empire Chinois [Bibliographic Dictionary of Works Relating to the Chinese Empire] (Cordier, 1904–1907). The archives of the Institut de France [French Institute] also contain 31 items dated from 1897 to 1915 that relate to the correspondence between Bonin and Cordier. These are catalogued under the shelfmark Ms 5444/Pieces 225–256.¹⁶ In addition, Bonin was linked to the archaeologist and researcher Louis Finot (1864–1935), who graduated from École des Chartes the same year as him in 1888 and specialised in Southeast Asian cultures, as well as to the Indologist Emile Senart (1847–1928) (Fenet, 2010: 45).

During his second expedition to China and central Asia, Bonin had become a channel through which virtually much of the political information relating to the region transited (Broc: 2003: 68; Gorshenina, 1998: 368). Building on this success, he now aspired to a diplomatic career. In the second half of 1900, he submitted a typewritten report entitled “La création d’un consulat français en Asie centrale” arguing the necessity to establish a French consulate in central Asia (MAE, 26/PAAP/18: 329–345). When the position of vice-consul in Kashgar opened, he immediately submitted an application (Malsagne, 2015: 216). On 28 March 1901, he was appointed second class Consul of the French embassy in Beijing, a position which he occupied until 1904, becoming one of the rare witnesses of the collapsing Qing Empire. In the years that followed, Bonin was successively appointed Chargé d’Affaires in Cairo, Secretary of Embassy in Constantinople, Consul General of France in Montreal, and finally Minister Plenipotentiary in Persia.

Bonin did not seem to have attended the Congress of Orientalists, first held in Paris in 1873. The Congress provided a forum for European ‘oriental’ scholars, including the French Chavannes and Lévi, to announce their findings and discuss their work. This is perhaps because Bonin’s efforts primarily aimed at supporting France’s colonial interests, as reflected by his contribution to the Comité de l’Asie Française [Committee of French Asia], established in 1901 to focus on the country’s expansion in Asia (L’Asie française, 1930: 2). He was one of the first subscribers of the journal published by the Committee and joined as a member in 1925 (L’Asie française, 1925: 144). In his capacity as a French diplomat, he provided crucial support to the mission of the French archaeologist, philologist and art historian Alfred Foucher (1865–1952) in Afghanistan, a country which he had visited twice (Fenet, 2010: 45; 172–175).

The two of them knew each other through their common friend, Phillippe Berthelot (Fenet, 2010: 42, 171).¹⁷ However, in a letter addressed to Stein on 1 January 1922, Foucher referred in passing to Bonin as ‘the man who may have first pointed out Touen-houang [Dunhuang]’s interest, but did not even stop there’ (Bodleian Library, Ms. Stein 77: 127–128; Fenet, 2022: personal communication). This untrue and somewhat pithy addition, written in the margin, was not in the original draft of the letter dated to the end of December 1921 (Fenet, 2010: 189–190). It may have been an indirect form of flattery towards Stein. This comment may also reflect the opinion Foucher and other French orientalists had formed about Bonin’s expedition, twenty years after he explored the Mogao Caves – the implication being that the impact of his visit to the site and associated report was considered negligible in their time.¹⁸