Yongle Encyclopedia

Its sheer scope and size made it the world's largest general encyclopedia until it was surpassed by Wikipedia in late 2007, nearly six centuries later.

[6] Clerical duties were relegated to Imperial officers, whereas the Hanlin Academy, now full of elite scholars, began to work on literary projects for the Emperor.

[7] The Yongle Emperor assigned his personal advisor, Dao Yan, a monk, and Liu Jichi, the deputy minister of punishment, as co-editors of the encyclopedia, supporting Yao Guangxiao.

It comprised 22,937 manuscript rolls[1] or chapters, in 11,095 volumes, occupying roughly 40 cubic metres (1,400 cu ft), and using 370 million Chinese characters[2][10] — the equivalent of about a quarter of a billion English words (around six times as many as the Encyclopædia Britannica).

The Yongle Emperor was so pleased with the finished encyclopedia that he named it after his reign, and personally wrote a lengthy preface highlighting the importance of preserving the works.

[11] It was larger in size, used special paper, and was bound in a "wrapped back" (包背裝, bao bei zhuang) style.

[12] Unlike other encyclopedias, it was not arranged by subject, but by 洪武正韻 (Hongwu zhengyun), a system by which characters are ordered phonetically or rhythmically.

[12] At the end of the Ming, scholars began to question the Yongle Emperor's motives for not commissioning more copies of the encyclopedia, instead of keeping them in storage.

[8] At the time, Neo-Confucians were refusing to take civil service exams, or participate in any imperial duties, due to the Yongle Emperor's violent usurpation of the throne.

In 1860, the Anglo-French invasion of Beijing resulted in the majority of the encyclopedia being burnt or looted, with British and French soldiers taking large portions of the manuscript as souvenirs.

During the Boxer Rebellion and the 1900 Eight-Nation Alliance occupation of Beijing, allied soldiers took hundreds of volumes, and many were destroyed in the Hanlin Academy fire.