Françoise Aubin

Françoise Aubin, CREOPS, Sorbonne, Paris

Working in a classic European tradition – in the mold of Pelliot but also of Joseph Fletcher and his teacher, Francis Cleaves (a student of Pelliot’s, as was Aubin’s teacher, Louis Hambis) – Aubin has eschewed the research monograph in favor of the article and the learned review.  In this regard she is virtually without peer, for in addition to several score articles, she has published in the neighborhood of 1,000 reviews, comptes rendues, and review essays.  One year ago, in July, she was awarded a medal by the Mongolian government for her contributions. 

Professor Aubin’s original training was in Asian languages, mainly Chinese and Japanese, but also Russian, which was considered an “Oriental language” at the time.  In Paris she studied with Balazs, Demiéville, Grousset and Hambis, among others, and specialized in Yuan history.  In 1961 she spent a year at Jinbunken at Kyoto University studying the foundational text of Mongol law, the Yuan dianzhang, on which she is one of the few non-Japanese experts.  In 1962 she won an appointment to CNRS and in 1965 she submitted her thesis for a degree (as Doctor of Laws) on juridical aspects of the early Mongol invasions of north China.  Soon after, she found herself one of four scholars chosen to take part in the initial academic exchange between France and the PRC.  Having stopped in Mongolia on the way to Beijing, she found her stay involuntarily prolonged when the political unrest of the Cultural Revolution prevented their proceeding to China.  Aubin took advantage of the opportunity to gain first-hand familiarity with contemporary Mongolia, becoming a full-fledged Mongolist, in addition to being already a Sinologist.  

Aubin returned to Mongolia in 1967, but a disabling illness contracted in 1974 prevented her from travelling thereafter for a very long time.  Concentrating her efforts on scholarship, she expanded her range, up to then focused mainly on Mongolia, to Central Asia and Islam in China (and also Japan), on which subject she began publishing in 1975, not ceasing, however, her work on earlier subjects.  By the 1980s she had broadened her interests further to include the history of Christianity in China, and in 1984 made her first visit to the United States in over two decades, although, sadly, two of the people she had most hoped to meet –Father Henry Serruys and Joseph Fletcher, passed away just before she came.  These must be among the very few Altaicists that she has not known personally; talking with her about her acquaintances is to run one’s fingers through fifty years of a Who’s Who in Inner Asian Studies. 

In 1998 she was compelled to give up her formal position at CNRS, but this neither slowed her production of articles and reviews nor prevented her from continuing to maintain contact with students.  Mentoring younger scholars has always been an important part of her activities, and if we find so many talented scholars of Central Asia in France today this owes in no small part to her efforts to encourage and inspire.   One hopes that her visit here will inspire Harvard students similarly, if nothing else then inspire them to learn French, so that they may take advantage of the very significant literature in that language, to which Aubin is such a formidable contributor.  Meantime, there are many articles in English, as well as a number also in Chinese, Russian, Turkish, German, and Mongolian.  Aubin has also been very occupied in recent years with gathering and publishing the life’s work of her late husband, the noted Persianist Jean Aubin.