Academia Sinica has signed an agreement with an abbey in Belgium to digitize historical documents and photographs of the Republic of China’s (ROC) first minister of foreign affairs, who died in 1949 as a Catholic monk in Belgium.
The agreement was signed on Friday in the European nation by Academia Sinica Institute of Taiwan History director Hsieh Kuo-hsing (謝國興) and Rene Fobe of Belgium’s Abbey of St Andre.
Under the agreement, the abbey is to give the documents and photographs left by Lou Tseng-tsiang (陸徵祥) to Academia Sinica, which is to digitize them and create a database on the ROC’s first minister of foreign affairs for the purposes of academic research, education and cultural exchanges.
The signing of the agreement followed a visit last year by an Academia Sinica team to the Belgian abbey to take a look at the condition of the preserved artifacts and discuss details of bilateral cooperation.
Born in 1871, Lou was appointed as the ROC’s first minister of foreign affairs in 1912 and remained at the post until 1920. He moved to Belgium in 1927, one year after his Belgian wife died, he began serving as a monk at the Catholic abbey until he died in 1949.
Since Lou’s death, the abbey has preserved the diaries, letters, photographs and other documents he left behind.
Lou was an important figure in the history of the ROC, helping to lay the groundwork for the nation’s diplomatic system.
He was the head of the ROC delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, which was called to establish the terms of peace after World War I.
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