The Politics of Historical Production in Late Qing and Republican China
hon&culp_pp i-iv.indd i 5/23/2007 6:13:29 PM Leiden Series in Comparative Historiography
Editors Axel Schneider Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik
VOLUME 2
hon&culp_pp i-iv.indd ii 5/23/2007 6:13:29 PM The Politics of Historical Production in Late Qing and Republican China
Edited by Tze-ki Hon and Robert J. Culp
LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007
hon&culp_pp i-iv.indd iii 5/23/2007 6:13:29 PM This book is printed on acid-free paper.
ISSN: 1574-4493 ISBN: 978 90 04 16023 1
Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
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hon&culp_pp i-iv.indd iv 5/23/2007 6:13:29 PM CONTENTS
Preface ...... vii Fan-sen Wang List of Contributors ...... xiii
Introduction ...... 1 Tze-ki Hon and Robert J. Culp
PART ONE THE NEW SCHOOL SYSTEM AND NEW EDUCATED ELITE
The New Schools and National Identity: Chinese History Textbooks in the Late Qing ...... 21 Peter Zarrow
Classifying Peoples: Ethnic Politics in Late Qing Native-place Textbooks and Gazetteers ...... 55 May-bo Ching
Educating the Citizens: Visions of China in Late Qing History Textbooks ...... 79 Tze-ki Hon
PART TWO GENERAL HISTORY AND WORLD HISTORY
Discontinuous Continuity: The Beginnings of a New Synthesis of “General History” in 20th-Century China ...... 109 Mary G. Mazur
Zhang Yinlin’s Early China ...... 143 Brian Moloughney
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Contending Memories of the Nation: History Education in Wartime China, 1937–1945 ...... 169 Wai-keung Chan
“Weak and Small Peoples” in a “Europeanizing World”: World History Textbooks and Chinese Intellectuals’ Perspectives on Global Modernity ...... 211 Robert J. Culp
PART THREE NATIONAL HISTORY AND ITS CHALLENGES
Archives at the Margins: Luo Zhenyu’s Qing Documents and Nationalism in Republican China ...... 249 Shana J. Brown
How to Remember the Qing Dynasty: The Case of Meng Sen ...... 271 Madeleine Yue Dong
Liberalism and Nationalism at a Crossroads: The Guomindang’s Educational Policies, 1927–1930 ...... 295 Chiu-chun Lee
Index ...... 317
hon&culp_f1_prelims.indd vi 5/17/2007 4:27:10 PM PREFACE
Fan-sen Wang
Current studies of Chinese historiography cover well-known historians, major historical writings, and key historical ideas. Indeed, this approach offers valuable insights into how the educated elite conceptualized and wrote history. But it pays little attention to the historical knowledge of the populace, who learned about the past, not from reading scholarly writings, but from going to theater, listening to stories, and gossiping in tea houses or at market places. Certainly, the high and the popular cultures were not completely separate, and scholarly writings did nd ways to reach the general public. Nevertheless, current studies of Chi- nese historiography do not explain how historical ideas of the educated elite were transmitted to the populace, and how the populace circulated and recreated the historical knowledge they received. In late Qing China, history textbooks became a major medium for disseminating historical knowledge. During the late imperial period, history textbooks took the forms of early-childhood readings (e.g., Sanzi jing 三字經, Youxue qionglin 幼學瓊林, and Yunshi 韻史) and popular historical writings (e.g., Gangjian yizhi lu 綱鑒易知錄 and Lishi gangjian bu 歷史綱鑒補). Diverse in content and exible as teaching tools, these popular writings were much more in uential than the assigned readings in the academy such as Guoyu 國語, Zhanguo ce 戰國策, Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑒, and Santong 三通. After 1900, there were signi cant changes to the educational system. In order to build a nation-state, the late Qing government tried to expand its control over education. It established a national school system, created a standard curriculum, and scrutinized textbooks. The purpose of these measures was to promote a national identity among young Chinese, transforming them from distinct indi- viduals into loyal and patriotic citizens. From the beginning of the educational reform, the late Qing govern- ment chose to supervise the production of textbooks through a system of “screening and authorization” (shending 審定). The system took years to develop. It was rst established in 1903, with the goal of creating a mechanism to publish government-approved textbooks. But the Qing government soon realized that it could not compete with private presses
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in publishing textbooks. Thus, in 1906, the Qing government issued an order requiring publishers to submit textbooks to the Ministry of Education for review. To make certain that private presses would fol- low government policies, the screening decisions were published in The Of cial Announcements of the Ministry of Education (Xuebu guanbao 學部官報). In the remaining years of the Qing, the Ministry of Education did cen- sor a number of textbooks. In 1908, it forbade the publication of He Qi’s 何琪 Chudeng nuzi xiaoxue guowen 初等女子小學國文, because the book included the term pingdeng 平等 (equality). In the same year, it stopped the publication of Mai Dinghua’s 麥鼎華 Zhongdeng lunlixue 中等倫理學, on the grounds of the “outrageous writings” in Cai Yuan- pei’s 蔡元培 preface. In 1910, an order was issued by the governor of Zhili 直隸 to censor textbooks that criticized Confucian teaching, promoted equality, and advocated freedom of marriage.1 One result of this screening and authorization was that history textbooks became inextricably connected to state propaganda, political discourse, and commercial pro t. A case in point is the drastic changes in textbooks after the 1911 Revolution. Before the revolution, most text- books (particularly those published by the Commercial Press) supported the late Qing reforms and avoided discussing revolutionary ideas. But Lufei Kui 陸費逵, a staff member of the Commercial Press, together with others who supported revolutionary ideas, secretly prepared a new set of textbooks that supported republican ideals of equality. After the revolution, publishers such as Lufei Kui’s Zhonghua Book Company brought out these new textbooks, which discussed the rise and fall of imperial power, the concept of democracy, and the evolution of people’s rights. Adopted in schools throughout the country, these new textbooks sold like hotcakes, and the textbooks published by the Commercial Press lost their market immediately. But considering that Lufei Kui was the author of the Putong jiaoyu zhanxing banfa tongling 普通教育暫行辦法通令 (Temporary Orders for General Education), which de ned the cur- riculum of the new school system, it seems clear that Lufei Kui used his in uence in the government to serve his private interest. Yet during the 1910s and 1920s, the Beiyang government did not have the manpower and the resources to control education. Not every government policy was fully implemented, with vagueness and “wiggle room” for negotiation always an option. Not until 1927, after the estab-
1 See Guan 2000: 376–85.
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lishment of the Nanjing government, did the state re-exert its power over education. The well-known example of the suppression of Gu Jiegang’s Benguo shi 本國史 in 1929 clearly demonstrates the Guomindang’s inten- tion of using textbooks as a means of political propaganda. Needless to say, publishers and authors were quick to adjust to government policies. They recycled old materials to t the new guidelines, and hid materi- als that were deemed controversial. From 1905 to 1931, for instance, the Commercial Press produced 15 versions of the same textbook to please the censors. Each time the Commercial Press produced a new version, the company earned more pro ts, because the textbook was sold to millions of students throughout the country.2 In narrating—and rewriting—the past, history textbooks not only provide facts and dates, but also distinguish the subjects and objects of history. The subjects of history are the heroes who serve the community and protect the interest of “us.” By contrast, the objects of history are the villains who harm the community and advance the interest of “others.” This distinction between subject and object, us and them, is crucial in fostering a collective identity among readers. Regardless of the storyline—a heroic saga, a tragic tale, a redemptive venture—read- ers are encouraged to identify with the heroes and condemn the vil- lains. In the textbooks of the early 1900s, for example, the subjects of history were “our imperial dynasty,” “the sagely government,” “our great Qing.” The objects of history were the “the rebels,” particularly the leaders of the Taiping Rebellion. After the 1911 Revolution, the subjects of history were changed to “the Republican government,” “our country,” and the revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen. The objects of history were the Manchus, who had committed numerous atrocities in China throughout their 300 years of rule. Ineluctably these changes in perspective required different narrations of the nation and different selections of historical facts. Having grown up in Taiwan, I have had direct experience with selective narration of the past. In the 1950s and 1960s, to counter communism and to prevent Taiwanese independence, the textbooks of the times conveyed the impression that Chiang Kai-shek was anti-Com- munist in the early 1920s. But those who were able to read “restricted materials” knew that Chiang was a “red general” whose speeches were full of quotations from Marxism-Leninism. The same is true of
2 Zhuang 1987.
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Sun Yat-sen. For much of the 1910s and early 1920s, Sun had limited in uence in national politics. Yet in textbooks, he was depicted as a dominant political player after the 1911 Revolution. For a long time, these selective and distorted accounts were taken as historical truth in Taiwan. Not until the 1980s were alternative views of history allowed to circulate. Similarly, in PRC history textbooks, little is said about the Guomindang’s contributions during the Sino-Japanese War. In their narratives, the CCP is described as the leading force in ghting the Japanese, although in reality, its power was limited to small areas in northwestern China. Ironically, what is taken for granted in Taiwan is totally missing in the PRC narratives. It is as if most people know nothing about the history that is not contained in their textbooks. Because large numbers of students are affected, history textbooks play a crucial role in shaping collective memory. In the 1990s, contentious debates erupted among educators in Taiwan when Taiwanese history was included in the history curriculum. The debate became so tense and emotional that in 1997, the Ministry of Education had to take unprecedented actions to stop an editorial board meeting on high school textbooks. The bone of contention at the time was merely how much 17th-century Taiwanese history should be included in the curriculum. After a decade of change, approximately one third of the materials in today’s Taiwanese history textbooks are devoted to the history of Taiwan. Because of the new curriculum, today’s Taiwanese who are 20 or younger know a lot more about Taiwanese history than do their elders. As a result, their collective memory is quite different from that of the older generations. Despite their importance, not much attention has been paid to the roles of history textbooks in disseminating historical knowledge and shaping collective memory. This collection of articles is intended to ll the lacuna. The germination of the idea of publishing a collection of articles about the textbooks took place at the panel “War and Politics of Memory: History Education in Early 20th-Century China” at the 2004 annual conference of the American Historical Association. After two years of hard labor, Professors Tze-ki Hon and Robert Culp have assembled 10 articles that examine the politics of remembering the past, competing visions in narrating the nation, and the social and moral functions of history education. Readers who are interested in the forma- tion and transformation of historical knowledge and collective memory will nd this collection of articles enriching and enlightening.
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References Cited
Guan Xiaohong 關曉紅 (2002), Wanqing xuebu yanjiu 晚清學部研究 (Studies of the Late Qing Ministry of Education). Guangzhou: Guangdong jiaoyu chubanshe. Zhuang Yu 莊俞 (1987), “Tantan woguan bianji jiaokeshu de bianqian 談談我舘編輯 教科書的變遷 (Reminiscence on the Changes in Editing Textbooks in Commercial Press),” in Shangwu yinshuguan jiushinian 商務印書館九十年 (Ninety Years at Com- mercial Press). Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 62–72.
hon&culp_f1_prelims.indd xi 5/17/2007 4:27:10 PM hon&culp_f1_prelims.indd xii 5/17/2007 4:27:10 PM LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
SHANA J. BROWN is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Her forthcoming book Pastimes: Chinese Historical Studies at the Intersection of Art, Commerce, and Politics, 1870–1928 analyzes the in uence of 19th-century antiquarianism and collecting practices on modern Chinese historical studies.
WAI-KEUNG CHAN is a Lecturer in Liberal Studies, College of Professional and Continuing Education, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Concurrently, he is a part-time lecturer in World History at Hong Kong Shue Yan College. He was elected a Scouloudi Fellow in 2002 at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. His research interests include modern Chinese intellectual and educa- tional history. He has recently published an article on the intellectual interaction between H.G. Wells, Fu Sinan and Hu Shi in re-writing world history.
MAY-BO CHING is Professor of History at Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou, China). Her major research interest is the social and cul- tural history of modern China. Her book Regional Culture and National Identity: The shaping of “Guangdong Culture” since the late Qing (in Chinese) discusses changes in the articulation of regional identity against the rise of nationalism at the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. Her current projects include a study of the introduction of natural history drawings and knowledge into China since the late 19th century and a social his- tory of Cantonese opera from the 1860s to the 1950s.
ROBERT J. CULP is Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies at Bard College. His rst book is Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912–1940 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, forthcoming 2007). His current work focuses on publishing and cultural production in early 20th-century China.
MADELEINE YUE DONG is Associate Professor of History and International Studies at the University of Washington. Her most recent publications include Republican Beijing: The City and its Histories, and she
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is a co-editor (with Joshua Goldstein) of Everyday Modernity in China, and (with Tani Barlow, Uta Poiger, Priti Ramamurthy, Lynn Thomas, and Alys Weinbaum) of The Modern Girl Around the World. She is currently working on a book on popular histories of the Qing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
TZE-KI HON is Associate Professor of History at State University of New York-Geneseo. His research interests cover both pre-modern and modern China. His book, Yijing and the Chinese Politics (SUNY Press, 2005) examines the Yijing commentaries of the Northern Song period. He is an editor of a volume on the May-Fourth New Culture paradigm. Currently, he is completing a book on the Guocui xuebao (1905–1912).
CHIU-CHUN LEE is Associate Professor of History at National Tai- pei University, Taiwan. His research focuses on the intellectual history of modern China, especially the changes in the Chinese worldview in the past hundred years. He has done research on the formation of the discourse on liberalism in late Qing China, and China’s foreign policies at the United Nations during the Second World War. His most recent publications include “Debates on the Republican System in 1912: A Re ection of the First Democratic Experiment in Modern China” (in Chinese) and “China’s Delegation to the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945” (in Japanese).
MARY G. MAZUR is an independent scholar and af liate of the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. She received a B.A. from Carleton College, 1953, in Zoology; raised a family of three children with her husband Robert H. Mazur; and com- pleted a Ph.D. in Chinese History from the University of Chicago in 1993. Awarded a Graduate Research Grant by the National Academy of Science, Committee for Scholarly Communication with the People’s Republic of China, 1985–86, with an extension in 1987, for a biography of the historian, Wu Han, her research base was at Beijing University. Among her publications is Shidai zhi zi: Wu Han (Son of His Times: Wu Han) (Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1996). Mary received the China Quarterly 1999 Gordon White Prize for the most original CQ article of the year for her Research Note, “Public Space for Memory in Contemporary Civil Society: Freedom to Learn from the Mirror of the Past?”
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BRIAN MOLOUGHNEY is Professor and Head of the School of Asian and European Languages at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His research focuses on biographical and autobiographi- cal writing in China and on the nature of Chinese narrative. He also works on the Chinese diaspora. His most recent publications include Disputed Histories: Imagining New Zealand’s Pasts (with Tony Ballantyne) and Asia in the Making of New Zealand (with Henry Johnson).
FAN-SEN WANG is Director and Senior Research Fellow at the Insti- tute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica. He also teaches at National Taiwan University and Tsinghua University. His publications include Fu Ssu-nien: A Life in Chinese History and Politics (Cambridge Uni- versity Press), The Rise of the Gushi Bian (Doubting of Antiquity) Movement (in Chinese), and The Thought of Zhang Taiyan (in Chinese), The Genealogy of Modern Chinese Thought (in Chinese).
PETER ZARROW is Associate Research Fellow in the Institute of Mod- ern History, Academia Sinica. His has recently written China in War and Revolution, 1895–1949 (Routledge) and edited Creating Chinese Modernity: Knowledge and Everyday Life, 1900–1940 (Peter Lang). His research inter- ests focus on Chinese political philosophy in the late Qing and early Republic.
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INTRODUCTION
Tze-ki Hon and Robert J. Culp*
In 1906, a year after China established the modern school system, the young Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛 (1893–1980) entered primary school in his native city Suzhou, Jiangsu province. Like any child, Gu found his rst days in school bewildering. He felt insecure when he met with complete strangers—his classmates, his teachers, and the stern, authoritative headmaster. Accustomed to exible and negotiable routines at home, he struggled to cope with the strictures and schedule of school. But besides the usual novelty and anxiety, those early days of schooling left an indelible impression on the young Gu. In an autobiography written decades later, when he became a historian known for his iconoclasm, Gu described that experience as “stepping into a brand new world” (tajin le yige xinshijie 踏進了一個新世界).1 By “a brand new world,” Gu referred to the modern school system that was sharply different from private school (sishu 私塾), where he had spent his last eight years. In sishu, students received education at home or a relative’s home from private tutors. The curriculum was exible, as long as students learned enough of the Confucian canon to pass civil service examinations. Much of the learning was rote memorization of Confucian texts, particularly the Five Classics and the Four Books. In modern school, by contrast, children were taken from home to a public place. Its curriculum was diverse and well-de ned, to prepare students to serve society in various capacities, not merely as government of cials. Gu reported that his education included scienti c experiments in laboratories, outings to the countryside to collect bio- logical and geological specimens, and writing reports after excursions to historic and scenic sites.2 After spending years in sishu memorizing dif cult Confucian texts, Gu had plenty of reasons to enjoy the modern
* We would like to thank Professor Axel Schneider for his support in publishing this book, Professor Fan-sen Wang for writing the preface, and Cythia Werthamer for her help in editing the nal version of the manuscript. 1 Gu 1926: 12. 2 Gu 1926: 12–3.
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school. In his autobiography, he noted that he felt liberated when his school days were spent in various hands-on activities, training him to use both his mind and body.3 Yet not every child in turn-of-the-century China had the same experi- ence as Gu. Feng Youlan 馮友蘭 (1895–1990), a historian of Chinese thought, remembered his early schooling as training in patriotism. In his autobiography, he recalled that, when attending school in Wuchang 武昌 of Hubei, he had to wear a school uniform and sing the school song. The school uniform—a light-blue jacket and matching pants—deliberately mimicked a soldier’s uniform to emphasize the importance of serving the nation.4 The school song, allegedly written by Zhang Zhidong 張之洞, explained the purpose of the new school system: In a peaceful world lit by the sun and the moon, Listen to our singing to pay homage to our school. Our sagely emperor is determined to strengthen the nation; There is no other way but to improve education.5 As implied in the song, the goal of the school system was to promote a collective identity among students. Through a standard curriculum with clearly de ned stages of learning, schools would gradually integrate educated youths to a bigger realm beyond family, lineage, hometown, and province, reaching to the far corners of the country, known as China. While Feng Youlan regarded his early years in school as a training ground for patriots, Guo Moruo 郭沫若 (1892–1978) saw it as an opportunity to be part of the modern world. Growing up in Jia- ding 嘉定 of Sichuan, far from cultural and urban centers, Guo was delighted when, in 1905, his two older brothers were enrolled in the modern schools of the provincial capital, Chengdu.6 From his brothers, he learned about new subjects, such as geography and mathematics. More important, he met two Japanese instructors who taught at his oldest brother’s school. In his autobiography, Guo described the two Japanese teachers’ brief visit to Jiading as “a breath of fresh air” in his forlorn and sleepy village.7 He noted that immediately after their
3 Gu 1926: 13. 4 Feng 1984: 7. 5 “天地泰, 日月光, 聽我唱歌贊學堂。聖天子, 圖自強, 除卻學堂別無方。” Feng 1984: 7. 6 Guo 1928: 40. 7 Guo 1928: 44–46.
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visit, signs of change occurred, including his stubborn father suddenly taking up the “modern habit” of eating uncooked eggs.8 If modern school for Guo was a window to the outside world, it was for Qian Mu 錢穆 (1895–1990) a reminder of the persistence of Chinese customs. An accomplished historian of Chinese thought and culture, Qian Mu fondly remembered his years in primary and second- ary schools as a continuation of his sishu training.9 Despite the obvious differences in structure and curriculum, he saw similarities between the two educational systems in their teaching of ethics and moral codes.10 In both systems, he found af rmation that the Confucian tradition, particularly the Cheng-Zhu school of Neo-Confucianism, would con- tinue to in uence China in the 20th century, making China a unique nation in the modern world.11 Diverse as they are, the four historians’ remembrances of their early years show how greatly educational changes had shaped early 20th- century China. Politically speaking, as shown in Feng Youlan’s school song, educational changes were part of China’s transformation from an empire to a nation-state. From New Policy (xinzheng 新政) reforms of the late Qing (1902–1911) to the Nationalist government (1927–1949), the Chinese were building a national school system in order to form a modern nation. With a standardized curriculum, the new school system fostered a national identity that would link students to a social whole, despite their differences in ethnic backgrounds, languages, customs, and religious beliefs. It was intended to create what Benedict Anderson calls “an imagined community”12 that would give Chinese a sense of belong- ing to their nation. Because of the pivotal role that the school system played in cultivating a national identity, any Chinese government (be it the Qing, Beiyang, or Nationalist) had to spend a signi cant amount of resources to build schools, hire teachers, screen students, and moni- tor curriculum changes.13 Controlling the school system became a key function of modern Chinese government. Socially speaking, the end of the examination system in 1905 marked a key point of transition, from an educational system geared toward
8 Guo 1928: 46. 9 Qian 1998: 33–42. 10 Qian 1998: 41. 11 Qian 1998: 33–34, 41–42, 46–50. 12 Anderson 1991: 5–7. 13 For one approach to the interaction between broader political and sociocultural trends and educational reform, see Li 1997.
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bureaucratic recruitment and the instillation of basic moral education to the start of a Japanese- and Euro-American–based system, intended to educate a broad public to be productive, nationalistic, modern citizens.14 As the new “ladder of success” for the educated classes,15 the school system dispensed “academic capital” that would bestow upon students the quali cations to become social and cultural elites. Because of its power to create what Pierre Bourdieu calls the new “aristocracy of culture,”16 many young students (including the four historians mentioned above) left sishu to enter the modern schools. As a result, the new kinds of social and cultural elites that the school system produced were drasti- cally different from the literati of the past. Rather than single-mindedly aspiring to be government of cials, as the literati did, students in mod- ern schools learned to perform various roles in society. They could be bankers, diplomats, merchants, publishers, scientists, teachers, and so on. Consequently, the “brand new world” that Gu Jiegang lauded in his autobiography was a world full of diversity, exibility, and choices, ushering educated youths into diverse positions in society. As the school system continued to grow during the Republican period (resulting in the establishment of a national school system in 1927), millions of students entered school and became ready consumers of textbooks. According to one statistical study, by the 1920s roughly 6.8 million students were regularly attending modern primary and secondary schools.17 Consequently, this population provided a ready readership for both textbooks and the broader array of popular read- ing materials pioneered by the commercial publishing companies such as the Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshuguan 商務印書館), Zhonghua Book Company (Zhonghua shuju 中華書局), and World Books (Shijie shuju 世界書局).18 In turn, as the number of students increased by leaps and bounds and the school system grew in size, educators and scholars quickly discovered that writing textbooks and popular works was a fast way to reach a huge audience. Whether for the lofty goal of
14 Hiroshi Abe traces the Japanese in uences on the rst modern Chinese educa- tional system in Abe 1987. Barry Keenan provides the most comprehensive analysis of the impact of American progressive education on Chinese educators during the 1910s and 1920s. See Keenan 1977. 15 For analysis of the multistranded social, cultural, and political impact of the end of the examination system, see Elman 2000, chap. 11. 16 See Bourdieu 1984: 9–62. 17 Zhongguo jiaoyu tongji gailan 1923: 1–2. 18 Lee 1999; Reed 2004.
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educating the masses or for the pragmatic aim of earning extra money, many educators and academics became writers of textbooks and other accessible works. They found that, in addition to classroom teaching, the book market was an important avenue for expressing views and disseminating ideas. In combination, these political, socioeconomic, and cultural changes transformed both the authors and the audience of popular and edu- cational histories. Educational reformers intended the modern school system to turn educated youths into a mass public of educated citizens, a group that provided a nascent readership both for textbooks and a growing list of periodicals and books produced by modern publishers.19 At the same time, with the decline of the literati tradition, transitional intellectuals quickly identi ed academia (xueshujie 學術界), “educational circles” ( jiaoyujie 教育界), and “publishing circles” (chubanjie 出版界) as sites for the creation of modern, professional roles and identities. Popular historical writing became a key genre through which the intellectual elite sought to transform itself and connect with the expanded (or at least expanding) public of educated readers. As a result, history—both in the formal curriculum and in terms of trade books—was a key subject for the publishing companies.20
Main Themes of the Anthology
The goal of this anthology is to broaden the scope in studying modern Chinese historiography by examining popular and educational histories. Notwithstanding their valuable contributions to our understanding of modern Chinese historical thinking, current studies of modern Chinese historiography focus primarily on two issues: the rise of nationalism and the advent of scienti c history. From Prasenjit Duara, we learn that in envisioning the Chinese nation, many modern Chinese historians adopted the European mode of national history, which is linear, pro- gressive, and centered on the nation as a homogeneous community.21 From Xiaobing Tang and Rebecca Karl, we learn that many Chinese
19 Bailey 1990; Borthwick 1983; Culp forthcoming. 20 For history’s place in the late Qing curriculum, see Peter Zarrow’s essay in this volume. For the secondary history curriculum during most of the Republican period, see Culp 2001. 21 Duara 1995.
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authors of national history, knowingly or unknowingly, advanced an image of the world that helped to locate China in the community of nations and places.22 From Q. Edward Wang and Fan-sen Wang, we learn that modern Chinese historical discourse was part of the “May Fourth New Culture Movement” that promoted a factual, empiri- cal, and impartial view of the past.23 Certainly, by concentrating on Chinese historians’ ideas of history (e.g., the nation, world order, and science), we gain a better understanding of how they interpreted the past, narrated historical events, and conveyed historical lessons. At the same time, by focusing solely on historians’ ideas of history, we lose sight of the fact that they wrote history in a speci c context and for particular audiences. As shown in the four historians’ remembrances of their early years, early 20th-century Chinese historians interpreted the past in the midst of momentous political, social, and cultural changes. Rather than pro- moting a methodology or historical school, they developed an interest in historical studies to facilitate changes in their country. The main audience for the majority of modern Chinese historians was students in modern schools and general readers in the book market. This trend began with Liu Yizheng 柳誼徵 and Xia Zengyou 夏曾佑 in the early 1900s, when the school system had just started. It continued on unabated during the 1920s, when Hu Shi and Gu Jiegang began publishing their major works. It reached its peak in the 1930s, when foreign invasion pushed historians like Qian Mu, Wu Han 吳唅 and Zhang Yinlin 張蔭麟 to write directly for young students and young readers. Many important historical works produced during these three decades—such as Hu Shi’s Zhongguo zhexueshi dagang 中國哲學史大綱 (Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy), Liu Yizheng’s Zhongguo wenhuashi 中國 文化史 (History of Chinese Culture), Qian Mu’s Guoshi dagang 國史大綱 (Outline of National History), Feng Youlan’s Zhongguo zhexueshi 中國 哲學史 (History of Chinese Philosophy) and Zhang Yinlin’s Zhong- guo shigang shanggu pian 中國史綱上古篇 (Outline of Chinese History: Section on Early Ancient Period)—were either written as textbooks or drawn from teaching notes. With 10 essays, this anthology seeks to link modern Chinese histori- cal discourse to its political, social, and cultural contexts. The premise
22 Tang 1996; Karl 2002. 23 Q. Edward Wang 2001; Fan-sen Wang 2000.
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of this anthology is that, in order to fully understand the uniqueness of modern Chinese historical discourse, we must examine the complex mechanism that allowed historical works to be written, produced, and circulated. To do so, we go beyond the writings of well-known historians, and focus our attention on the three major factors that made history an important subject of academic and social debates in early 20th-century China: the school system, print culture, and the book market. In this way, we examine various forms of historical production happening inside and outside the mainstream of academic history. They include new measures for publishing textbooks, new genres in writing history, the delineation and preservation of archival materials, the growth of popular history, and government attempts to establish orthodox histori- cal accounts. Through speci c cases, this anthology demonstrates that popular and educational histories have been important media for both historiographical and sociocultural changes in 20th-century China. Starting in the late Qing and continuing, with even greater emphasis, during the Republic, the emergent mass readership of educated young people was imagined as a nascent citizenry. However, open to question throughout this period was what kind of history was appropriate for these new citizens, and how that history would shape their collective identity. Linear, progressive history that tracked the development of the national people through time was certainly a central theme in at least some educational histories during this period.24 But a signal contribution of this anthology is to document the many alternative conceptions of history and community that circulated in textbooks and other popu- lar historical writings, from the start of the 20th century through the Republican period. Perhaps most signi cant and valuable in this regard are the textbooks of the late Qing period, which indicate some of the challenges involved in moving immediately to a historical discourse centered on progressive development of an ethno-culturally de ned national community. The three essays in Part I of this anthology examine some of these chal- lenges. Rather than seeing late Qing historians as breaking fully with the past by adopting linear, progressive, and unitary national histories, Peter Zarrow and May-bo Ching describe histories that followed the forms of two of late imperial China’s most prominent historical genres—the
24 Culp 2001. Note, though, the plural forms of narrative that were incorporated as national history in these textbooks.
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dynastic history and the local gazetteer. These prior forms haunted and shaped the resulting narratives. Zarrow shows that late Qing textbooks were often organized around accounts of dynastic consolidation and efforts to maintain dynastic security.25 Although the continuity of the dynastic form in a recognizably Chinese geopolitical space suggested a kind of national historical continuity, the textbooks still segmented time in non-national, dynastic units that would have complicated a clear message of national progression. Segmentation of time in Zarrow’s account becomes segmentation of space in Ching’s. Native place-teaching materials, though intended to “go from near to far” and root a national political identity in a local community identity, in fact gave rise to claims of ethnic priority and triggered interethnic controversies that exposed China’s undeniable ethno-cultural diversity. Such ethnic tensions complicated formulations of national-level ethno-cultural cohesion. Even Tze-ki Hon’s authors, at least two of whom aspired to craft national narratives, failed to produce them. Instead, we see histories that are fragmented, awed, incomplete, or present narratives of return to an authentic past. Nevertheless, as earlier attempts to present a history of the Chinese nation to educated youths, the three works that Hon ana- lyzes show important signs of change after the abolition of the civil service examinations in 1905. Written respectively for the Qing gov- ernment, the Commercial Press, and the revolutionary group Guoxue baocunhui 國學保存會 (Association for Preservation of National Learning), the three works re ect the variety of social roles that edu- cated elites could assume. With the establishment of the modern school system and the growth of the burgeoning book market, some members of the educated elite (especially those who had been struggling to pass the examinations) found opportunities to use their cultural capital to advance their social status. National history matured under the Republic. To assess the signi - cance of national history, the four essays in Part II examine the social and cultural impact of this new historical genre. In their essays on general history (tongshi 通史), Mary Mazur and Brian Moloughney compare the different ways that national histories were written to
25 Madeleine Dong’s paper, with its discussion of debates surrounding the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty (Qingshi gao) and the production of yeshi (unof cial history), also illustrates the continuing power of late imperial historical forms during the early Republic.
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inspire national identity. Tracing the process by which general history was developed into a popular genre of presenting the past, Mazur and Moloughney show how Chinese historians made the history of ancient China meaningful to a twentieth-century audience. Like Zarrow and Ching, Mazur and Moloughney see both continuity and discontinuity in historians’ attempts to refashion historical memory. Certainly, the form of general history was new: it broke with the tradition of dynastic his- tory by presenting a story of the Chinese nation progressing over time. Yet, in substance, particularly with respect to marshalling historical facts to illustrate the continuous growth of the Chinese nation, historians drew on such traditional works as Sima Qian’s Shiji 史記 (Records of History), Sima Guang’s Zizhi tongjian 資治通鑒 (Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government), and Zhang Xuecheng’s Wenshi tongyi 文史通義 (Comprehensive Explanation of Literature and History). Continuing the theme of national history, Wai-keung Chan’s essay illustrates that the motivation to use history to build national identity only intensi ed during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). In this time of crisis and con ict, the past served as a resource to construct a national collective and to inspire and direct patriotic action. However, the presence of competing regimes led to competing national narra- tives that had varying degrees of resonance with student readers. In his article, Chan compares the history textbooks in Guomindang and Japanese-controlled areas, based on the themes of ancient myths, race, and national heroes.26 In the comparison, Chan shows the different uses of the past in supporting competing political agendas. In some contrast with these pieces on the narratives in general histories and Chinese history textbooks, Culp’s essay on world history textbooks explores how the nation was conceived in the framework of global historical discourse during the Republican period. Most world histories of this period followed the Euro-American model of national narrative, portraying modern history as the realization or failure of various nation-making projects. But starting in the 1920s, world history textbooks’ celebration of a globalized form of anti-imperialism hinted at formation of an alternative political community of “weak and small peoples” (ruoxiao minzu 弱小民族) who were joined in their opposition
26 Because of a dearth of extent materials, Wai-keung Chan’s otherwise excellent essay could not include discussion of historical education in areas controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Wartime popular historiography under the CCP is an obvi- ous next step in the study of Republican-period historical writing.
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to imperialism. Though ultimately subsumed in a Nationalist Party project of nation-building, this vision of a potential global community, which echoed a pattern that Rebecca Karl has identi ed in late Qing revolutionaries’ political writings,27 remained a persistent subtext in textbooks throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The three essays in Part III reveal ways in which educational his- tories and historians working inside and outside the academy eroded the hegemony of elite intellectuals’ national history at its foundations. Shana Brown strikingly portrays Luo Zhenyu 羅振玉 during the early Republic as combining the activities of a dynastic loyalist and a modern collector to compile an archive of Qing historical materials outside the national trust. By de ning a universe of primary historical materials separate from the national heritage, Luo disrupted the project of build- ing a national history that could easily incorporate the Qing period. Likewise, Madeleine Dong suggests that the production of the Qingshi gao 清史稿 (Draft History of the Qing Dynasty) was shaped by Qing loyalists who were explicitly critical of the revolutionary project that ended that dynasty and ambivalent about the nation-state that replaced it. In both instances, late imperial modes of dynastic af liation disrupted the production of nationalist histories. Chiu-chun Lee’s essay focuses on the late-1920s debate between Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 and Dai Jitao 戴季陶 on standardizing the school curriculum. Lee demonstrates that during the early years of the Nanjing government, no consensus existed regarding precisely how to reshape the Chinese educational system, but a shared understanding evolved of the value of centralized state control over education, including historical instruction. Like Brown and Dong, Lee stresses that there were many forces shaping Chinese historical dis- course. In particular, Guomindang leaders’ unpleasant experience with urban protests and student demonstrations in the mid 1920s greatly in uenced their views in designing a nationwide curriculum that would stress conformity and discipline. In all these ways, then, popular historical writing, textbook histories, nonacademic archive building, and curriculum debates complicated the dominant trend of nationalist historiography. The continued in uence of late imperial genres (dynastic histories and gazetteers), historiographic voices (loyalist apologists and local elites), and organizational patterns (the gentleman collector) underpinned these alternative histories. Such
27 Karl 1998.
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continuities indicate the challenges involved in the introduction of a new historical paradigm, even one as powerful and convincing as linear, progressive national history, into a cultural context with a well- established and sophisticated historiographic tradition. At the same time, national history was also disrupted by radical political histories calling for new forms of global revolution that were shaped by the post-Versailles global political climate. In sum, the 10 essays suggest that, once we look beyond the mainstream of of cial, academic his- tory, the late Qing and early Republican historiographic terrain was complex and varied. As a result, the early 20th-century readership of students and educated readers was exposed to variegated messages of collective identity.
Transitional Intellectuals and New Sites of Cultural Production
If the narratives in early 20th-century popular and educational histories were varied, many of their authors shared a common goal, though one that was seldom explicitly voiced. That is, they sought to de ne a new role for themselves as historians with the impending decline of the literati tradition that was signaled by the end of the examination system in 1905. The many authors discussed in this volume can all be considered “transitional intellectuals” because of the way they straddled the late imperial and modern institutional and academic worlds of early 20th-century China.28 Most, if not all, of them were trained at least to some degree in the classical tradition, but by virtue of their dates of birth, they did not have access to the examination ladder of suc- cess that had motivated and rewarded their predecessors. At the same time, many of them were conversant with, if not trained in, modern, Euro-American modes of scholarship and writing. Our authors wove together the intellectual strategies of these different intellectual traditions to craft a new, specialized role for themselves as historians or histori- cal writers, as the role of “literatus” (wenren 文人) faded into historical memory and lost cultural power.
28 Capsule biographies of the authors discussed in the volume are incorporated into the relevant articles. We already have excellent English-language intellectual biographies of, respectively, Qian Mu and Gu Jiegang. See Dennerline 1988; Schneider 1971.
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Transitional intellectuals empowered themselves by assuming the role of historian. Discursively, it provided them with a position of authority from which to write, for by writing national or world his- tory, these intellectuals assumed the roles, respectively, of authors of the nation or interpreters of the broader world. Our authors claimed further authority by seeking to write for a popular audience, thereby taking on the role of tutor to the people. We see the attractiveness of this role perhaps most clearly in the case of authors like Zhang Yinlin and Chen Hengzhe 陳衡哲, both eminently successful academic his- torians who could quite easily have focused solely on arcane areas of specialized research. Instead, they self-consciously chose to write for a popular audience, because of the increased impact they might have on their society. In addition, Hon and Culp both suggest that transitional intellectuals sought to legitimize and naturalize the central role of intellectuals in contemporary China by literally writing, respectively, either Confucian literati or modern intellectuals into prominent roles in their historical narratives. For a generation that had lost ready access to positions of political in uence and socio-cultural status, the role of historian presented itself as a viable alternative. Claiming status and authority as historians was a viable strategy, in part because transitional intellectuals could draw selectively from their classical training to write their modern histories. As we have seen, some during the late Qing, like Zarrow’s, Dong’s, and Ching’s authors, wrote in familiar genres of the dynastic history, the unof cial history ( yeshi ), and the local gazetteer, which were packaged by publishing companies in new ways, such as history textbooks, popular historical works, and native-place teaching materials. Others converted the cultural capital of their intellectual skills by more complex means. To varying degrees and in different ways, Liu Shipei 劉師培 (discussed in Hon’s essay), Meng Sen 孟森 (discussed in Dong’s essay), and Gu Jiegang (discussed in Mazur’s essay) built on philological scholarly traditions to write new histories. Luo Zhenyu (discussed in Brown’s essay) incorporated practices of literati connoisseurship in his collecting, cataloging, and sometimes reselling of archival materials in the early 20th century. Moreover, for all these authors, familiarity with, if not complete internalization of, the classical tradition shaped their understanding of the imperial past and, to varying degrees, informed their writing, whether in terms of style or perspective. If these transitional intellectuals, to some degree, chose to cast them- selves anew in the discursive role of historian, the variation in insti-
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tutional contexts in which they operated as historians is quite striking. Surveying this group, we can see at least four institutional contexts in which they operated: formal academic institutions; educational circles (local, provincial, or national); publishing circles; and government ser- vice. Interestingly, the last of these seems to have been the least common and least attractive, perhaps because of its great discursive and practical restrictions, its inherent instability, and its limited potency, especially during the early Republic. This preference for operating in institutional contexts outside the government is telling. It suggests that, just years after the end of the examination system, which had always steered late imperial China’s best and brightest directly into government service, we see at least three other social domains—academia, publishing, and education—as presenting themselves as more attractive institutional contexts for intellectual work and cultural production.29 Our authors’ uid movement among these institutional sites and spheres indicates another way in which they were transitional, for as intellectuals they were moving between various social roles and contexts, as well as living through the transition from one era to another. Each of the gures discussed in this anthology operated in at least two of these domains; several worked actively within all three. Especially noteworthy is elite intellectuals’ and educators’ ready movement into publishing circles by working, on contract or as editors, for the commercial pub- lishing companies. Just drawing on examples from this anthology, we see prominent young intellectuals like Gu Jiegang and Chen Hengzhe drawn into editing departments or writing on contract for publishers; and Meng Sen edited journals for the Commercial Press. Other histo- rians, like Lü Simian 呂思勉, spent most of their careers moving back and forth between academic and publishing positions, and arguably established their reputation as historians as much through their writ- ing for a popular audience as from their academic work.30 Even career
29 This assessment resonates with work documenting the growth of civil society, such as nongovernmental organizations, during the late Qing and early Republic, as well as the post-1911 intellectual focus on society rather than the state. For the former trend, see Rankin 1986; Schoppa 1982; Strand 1989. For the latter, see Chow 1960; Dirlik 1991; Schwarcz 1986. This shift of institutional preference for cultural produc- tion away from of cial government positions was likely the culmination of a long-term trend that began in the early 19th century, when more and more intellectuals began to opt for more in uential and less fraught positions as of cial secretaries, rather than commit themselves to the grueling discipline of of cial life. Philip Kuhn and Susan Mann documented this trend some time ago. See Kuhn and Jones 1983. 30 Xu 1991: 331–332.
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academic Zhang Yinlin seems to have found his voice and purpose in writing a popular history for a commercial market. For educators like Jin Zhaozi 金兆梓, He Bingsong 何炳松, and many others of lesser fame, working as editors in publishing companies provided an alternate career route and position of intellectual in uence. Further research is necessary on this count. However, the uid move- ment of historians among the elds of academia, education, and pub- lishing suggests that all of them provided viable institutional sites for transitional intellectuals to support themselves and claim some kind of public voice and cultural status in late Qing and Republican China. Worth emphasizing here might be the apparent parity in the attractiveness of work in academia and publishing circles during most of the Republican period. The movement into commercial publishers’ editing depart- ments of prominent intellectuals like Princeton-trained He Bingsong (Commercial Press, 1924–1932) and University of Chicago-educated Chen Hengzhe (Commercial Press, 1922–1924) suggests that the free- dom, income, and perhaps enhanced public visibility and in uence of the publishing world proved more attractive to some than arcane academic work. At the very least, the experiences of the historians in this anthology indicate that the vibrant economy and active educational reform movements of the early 20th century created multiple sites where transitional intellectuals could chart new career paths and produce new forms of culture that had social impact. Yet, into the Sino-Japanese War period, no single institution monopolized the power, status, and revenue potential that had characterized government service and state- sponsored scholarship during the late imperial period. The uid, transitional nature of the early 20th century, with its low degree of state in uence, is perhaps captured best in Shana Brown’s portrayal of Luo Zhenyu’s peripatetic career. Luo inhabited none of the three institutional contexts described above, yet he successfully posi- tioned himself on the margins of the community of historians through his control over historical materials. For most of his career from the 1910s into the 1930s, Luo looks like nothing so much as an archivist with documents but no archive. However, by the early 1930s, the interstices in which Luo had happily maneuvered began to narrow and nally close. As state formations consolidated in both Manchukuo and under the Nationalist Party in China proper, formal archives were established that sought to monopolize control over material collections.31 In the
31 Prasenjit Duara provides a nuanced analysis of the parallel and competing state-
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end, even intellectual maverick Luo Zhenyu drifted into state orbit by contributing to projects sponsored by the Manchukuo government. This growth in state in uence over historical production, through establishment of state archives and state efforts to centrally control education, comes only at the end of the period covered by this book, when Chinese states again had the means and intention to shape popu- lar and educational history. For much of the late Qing and Republi- can periods, intellectuals had great leeway, and also responsibility, for crafting a usable past for post-imperial China. During the late Qing, the Ministry of Education (Xuebu 學部) set curriculum standards and reviewed the resulting textbooks (see Ching’s and Zarrow’s essays); the variety of narratives and arguments in the resulting texts suggests state controls over content were, in practice, limited. During the Republican period, state in uence on educational and popular historical writing was even less evident, until the start of the Nanjing decade in 1927.32 From that point onward, as Lee Chiu-chun’s and Wai-keung Chan’s articles suggest, the Nationalist government sought to reestablish centralized state control over the educational process, including textbook histories. When read together, the essays on education, cultural production, and the state in Part III portray relatively limited state control over historical discourse during the late Qing and early Republic that the Nationalist Party sought to reverse after 1927. In sum, the educational and popular histories studied here were sites of experimentation with new modes of narrative, structures of argument, and registers of speech. These were shaped by intellectual in uences ranging from late imperial philology to modern Western scienti c historiography, by shifts in political and cultural climate, and by the demands and opportunities of institutional contexts, such as academia, educational circles, and publishing circles. But they gener- ally were not dictated by direct state intervention. As a result, these educational and popular histories open a window onto a rare period of limited state control in China’s historical tradition. This illustration of the limited nature of state control over historical production from the late Qing to the beginning of the Nanjing decade suggests how this anthology, while focused primarily on popular historical
building projects in Nationalist China and Manchukuo during the 1930s. See Duara 2003. In both areas, states aspired to greater control over cultural representations, especially in regard to ethno-history. 32 For a preliminary assessment of the limited nature of government control over textbook production during the early Republic, see Culp forthcoming, chapter 1.
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discourse during the early 20th century, makes contributions to, and has implications for, many other historiographical debates. Speci cally, the 10 essays document a major cultural shift in the early 20th century, when commercial publishing and writing for the book market became a prime locus for cultural production and intellectual elites’ activities. Socially, this anthology explains the ways in which early 20th-century intellectuals made the transition from inhabiting the role of the late imperial literatus to playing new modern professional roles, such as historian, and operating within the modern institutions of the school, academy, and publishing house. Through attention to these processes, this anthology works to contextualize historiographic change and con- sider across a broader eld the social, political, and cultural implications of the historical craft.
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Abe, Hiroshi (1987), “Borrowing from Japan: China’s First Modern Educational Sys- tem,” in Ruth Hayhoe and Marianne Bastid (eds.) (1987), China’s Education and the Industrialized World. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 57–80. Anderson, Benedict (1991), Imagined Communities: Re ections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition. London: Verso. Bailey, Paul J. (1990), Reform the People: Changing Attitudes Towards Popular Education in Early Twentieth Century China. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Borthwick, Sally (1983), Education and Social Change in China: The Beginnings of the Modern Era. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. Bourdieu, Pierre (1984), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chow Tse-tsung (1960), The May 4th Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Culp, Robert J. (2001), “ ‘China—The Land and its People’: Fashioning Identity in Secondary School History Textbooks, 1911–1937,” in Twentieth-Century China 26 (April 2001) 2, 17–62. —— (forthcoming), Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Social Change in Southeastern China, 1912–1940. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Dennerline, Jerry (1998), Qian Mu and the World of Seven Mansions. New Haven: Yale University Press. Dirlik, Arif (1991), Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution. Berkeley: University of California Press. Duara, Prasenjit (1995), Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. —— (2003), Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern. Lanham, Boulder: Rowman & Little eld Publishers Inc. Elman, Benjamin A. (2000), A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Feng Youlan 馮友蘭 (1984), San song tang ziyu 三松堂自序 (Preface to the Collected Writings of the Three Pines Pavilion). Beijing: Sanlian shudian.
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Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛 (1926), “Zi xu” 自序, in Gu shi bian 古史辨 vol. 1. Beiping [Bei- jing]: Pushe, 1–103. Guo Moruo (1928), “Wo de tongnian” 我的童年 (My Childhood), in Moruo zi zhuan 沫若自傳 (The Autobiography of Guo Moruo) (1956). Shanghai: Xinwenyi chuban- she, 40–46. Karl, Rebecca E. (1998), “Creating Asia: China in the World at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century,” in American Historical Review 103, no. 4 (October 1998): 1096–118. —— (2002), Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Durham: Duke University Press. Keenan, Barry (1977), The Dewey Experiment in China: Educational Reform and Political Power in the Early Republic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kuhn, Philip, and Jones, Susan Mann (1983), “Dynastic Decline and the Roots of Rebellion,” in Cambridge History of China, vol. 10. New York: Cambridge University Press, 107–162. Lee, Leo Ou-fan (1999), Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China 1930–1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Li Huaxing 李華興 et al. (1997), Minguo jiaoyushi 民國教育史 (The History of Educat- tion during the Republican Period). Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe. Qian Mu (1998), “Shiyou zayi” 師友雜憶 (Memories of Teachers and Friends), in Bashi yi shuangqing shiyou zayi hekan 八十憶雙親師友雜憶合刊 (Combined Publication of Remembering My Parents at the Age of Eighty and Memories of Teachers and Friends). Taibei: Lianjing chubanshe, 33–388. Rankin, Mary B. (1986), Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Reed, Christopher A. (2004), Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876 –1937. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Schneider, Laurence A. (1971), Ku Chieh-kang and China’s New History: Nationalism and the Quest for Alternative Traditions. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schoppa, R. Keith (1982), Chinese Elites and Political Change: Zhejiang Province in the Early Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schwarcz, Vera (1986), The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May 4th Movement of 1919. Berkeley: University of California Press. Strand, David (1989), Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tang, Xiaobing (1996), Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity: The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wang, Fan-sen (2000), Fu Su-nien: A Life in Chinese History and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wang, Q. Edward (2001), Inventing China through History: The May Fourth Approach to Historiography. Albany: State University of New York Press. Xu Youchun 徐友春 et al., (eds.) (1991), Minguo renwu da cidian 民國人物大辭典 (Biographical dictionary of Republican China). Shijiazhuang: Hebei renmin chu- banshe. Zhongguo jiaoyu tongji gailan, Zhonghua jiaoyu gaijin she congshu, Di si zhong (An Overview of Chinese Statistics on Education, No. 4 in the Chinese Educational Improvement Society Series) (1923). Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan.
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THE NEW SCHOOL SYSTEM AND NEW EDUCATED ELITE
hon&culp_f3_18-54.indd 19 5/22/2007 4:48:14 PM hon&culp_f3_18-54.indd 20 5/22/2007 4:48:14 PM THE NEW SCHOOLS AND NATIONAL IDENTITY: CHINESE HISTORY TEXTBOOKS IN THE LATE QING
Peter Zarrow*
“Western-style education” in China, referring to schools that included Western subjects, had its roots in the missionaries and reformers of the 19th century. But it was only in the rst years of the 20th century that a nation-wide mass education system began to take shape. The New Policy (xinzheng 新政) reforms of the Qing dynasty made education a central concern from their beginnings in 1902, and a number of of cially-sanctioned schools emerged with the educational regulations of 1904.1 The goal of compulsory and universal education was to be met gradually; the regulations stipulated that each prefecture needed a middle school and each county a primary school. The actual numbers were much larger, even while local schools might only follow the of cial curriculum to a degree. A functioning state school system could certainly be found in China’s cities by the time of the 1911 Revolution. In the countryside, as is well known, building local schools by con scating temple lands and raising taxes provoked protests; however, there were also quiet successes that historians have perhaps underestimated.2 Regardless of the exact number of schools and students, the publica- tion of recognizably modern textbooks (that is, short books devoted to particular subjects and aimed at speci c age groups) grew from rela- tively small numbers through the 1890s to a veritable explosion circa
* I would like to express my appreciation for helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter, particularly to the editors of this volume; and also to participants in several forums at the National University of Singapore ( July 2005); the International Conference of Asian Studies (Shanghai, August, 2005); the Instituto Ricci de Macau (December 2005); Yangzhou University (August 2006); and the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, where Huang Chin-hsing’s 黃進興 discussant’s comments proved especially useful ( June 2006). 1 For the early development of China’s modern education system in English, see Borthwick 1983: 87–127; Bastid 1987; Abe 1987; and Curran 2005. The classic study in Chinese is Shu 1932; see also inter alia Xiong 1998; Li and Wang 2000; Mao and Shen 1988. 2 VanderVen 2005.
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1906.3 Large-scale textbook publication created a “textual community” of students and teachers reading the same kinds of materials.4 By 1906 if not earlier, schools could choose among dozens of competing textbooks in particular subjects (upper primary school Chinese history, for example, or middle school physics). The variety of textbooks simul- taneously represented diversi cation and standardization. Competing editions by different publishers (or the same publishers in the case of larger companies) reveal different approaches to the subject matter—as we will explore further below in the case of Chinese history—but they also show general similarities that re ected both of cial regulations and elite consensus. The Commercial Press (商務印書館), soon to be dominant in text- book publishing, began in 1897 as a small printing operation; then, it moved into translation projects and in 1903 recognized the potential of textbooks.5 Its editors now included men who were leading intellectuals in their own right, interested in raising the cultural level of the people and looking to education to help solve China’s problems. The famous “up-to-date textbook” series (zuixin jiaokeshu 最新教科書) was started in 1904 and proved immensely pro table. The entire series was designed, subject by subject, to begin with short simple “lessons” that expanded to longer and more complex ones over the course of the semester, one lesson per class as stipulated by the Qing regulations. For example, history classes were to be held one hour a week in lower primary and two hours a week in upper primary and middle schools.
3 This date is meant loosely, and is based on my entirely unscienti c sense of library catalogs. 4 The phrase is from Wertsch 2002: 27–29, 62–65. Historians have given textbooks relatively little attention, although education is a fundamental institution in all modern societies and history textbooks in particular can be highly politicized and controver- sial—for America, see FitzGerald 1980, and for a more recent comparative study, see Hein and Selden 2000. Textbooks in modern China are the subject of a number of ongoing investigations; recently published research includes Wang 1996 on the institutional background; Zou 2001, who uses geography textbooks in the late Qing to trace the spread of Western knowledge; and on citizenship and national identity see: Zinda 2004; Judge 2000, 2001; and on the early Republican period Culp (2001). Chinese history textbooks have received little scholarly attention; one recent article, focusing on their relationship to early 20th century Chinese nationalism, is Tanaka 2005; though see also Tze-ki Hon in this volume and Zheng 1991: 181–245, especially on university and upper level texts. 5 Zhang 1997.
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Textbooks represent “of cial knowledge” in the sense that they are approved by political and intellectual elites to form the basis of mass education of the young. Of course, elites’ goals are usually met only partially. In the 19th-century West no less than in early 20th-century China, formal schooling—universal, compulsory, and regimented—was a state ideal, not a reality. Textbooks themselves tell us what lessons elites hoped to impart to children but not what children actually learned or what they thought about their texts. For late Qing Chinese elites, national history was a critical subject. It was both a traditionally honored branch of scholarship and, in the new world of imperialist rivalries, a means to socialize children into their community: or, rather, communities: local, Chinese-national, Qing-imperial, and even human- ity as a whole. Chinese history textbooks in the late Qing conveyed a sense of national identity deeply rooted in the past—indeed, rooted in a vision of ancient “China” stretching back four to ve thousand years. Textbooks narrativized the achievements that marked and ultimately de ned the Chinese. But what were these “achievements” and, above all, how pre- cisely was “Chinese-ness” (zhongguo 中國, zhonghua 中華, huaxia 華夏) to be de ned? Here, it should be noted that history textbooks were not excessively didactic. The job of directly telling children who they were and how they should behave was left to morality textbooks and readers. History textbook authors, while enthusiastically accepting the duty of instilling patriotism as one of their goals, tended to let their historical narrative speak for itself.6 Yet if historical knowledge was not reduc- ible to the production of national feeling, neither was identity a mere byproduct of the installation of history into children’s minds. Rather, in the context of the late Qing, Chinese history and national identity were so intertwined as to be inseparable. This was not a result of explicit authorial intention so much as the demand that elites generally made of national history at a time of crisis. This chapter argues that history textbooks re ected many of the ten- sions and debates of the late Qing. History textbooks attempted to con- struct a narrative framework based on the progress of the nation. That is, they attempted, though with only partial success, to t the historical data into this particular framework, a framework which represented a
6 Liu Longxin 2002: 88–98.
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new understanding of the meaning of history. As we will see, textbooks were themselves thus lled with tensions and ambiguities. Who were the Chinese? Was Chinese culture reducible to the Han (漢) people’s culture? How did the races and ethnic groups that occupied Chinese territories come together? If history is a story of progress, how and when did China actually see progress? Did it not stagnate at times? What did, what would, represent historical progress? Nonetheless, in spite of differing approaches to such questions, the Chinese history textbooks of the late Qing tended to emphasize the theme of political unity. Political unity was the greatest accomplish- ment of the ancient period, and never entirely lost—at least never lost as the normative expression of the national ideal even if temporarily mislaid from time to time. Naturally enough, textbooks narratives were structured around the dynastic cycle. Textbooks thus frankly discussed periods of disunity as well as unity. Yet transcending the cyclical sense of time was the continuity (if not progress) of the dynastic system itself. And to emphasize the dynastic system was to emphasize the centralized state. Regardless of whether the speci c dynasty in question was the Han, the Song, the Ming, or for that matter the Qing, it was marked by imperial-bureaucratic control within (rough) boundaries which also marked certain cultural traits and customs. In the context of the late Qing, this was to create a national identity that derived from the state. In other words, the textbook narrative of the Chinese nation was a story that revolved around a putative Chinese state. Textbooks did not neglect stories based on local, ethnic, and cutural identities, but—in spite of some attempts—they simply could not turn the story of China into an ethnohistory of the self-becoming of the people (Han or oth- erwise), and nor into the rise of a particular culture (given China’s cultural diversity). The Qing court’s non-Han ethnicity naturally precluded of cial textbooks from explicit anti-Manchuism, and the con ation of “China” with the borders of the Qing turned China into a multi-ethnic nation by de nition.7 Discussions of the different “peoples” of China often
7 Zhao 2006 argues that Qing imperial ideology deliberately equated the empire (Qing, including Inner Asia) with “China” (Zhongguo). This is convincing up to a point; however, it remains unproven that eighteenth century use of Zhongguo in of cial docu- ments, much less in nonof cial usages, always corresponded with the “entity” that is immediately antecedent to China today, and the possibility remains that Qing imperial ideology did more to create various proto-nationalities within the empire who could be subsumed under the label Zhongguo only with great dif culty. Still, if we cannot
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served as introductionary material in history textbooks and invariably did so in geography textbooks. Textbook writers were in uenced by the ethnohistorical approach to national history that dominated history-writ- ing in the West and Japan and were happy to talk about distinct races and “peoples.” But they could not escape the dynastic (now Chinese) state. There was a large “traditional” component to this view of Chinese history, even it if was now harnessed to a crisis-induced patriotism that sought—in some quarters and to varying degrees—to de ne the state as the “property” of the people, not the emperor. State-based patriotism simply made sense to most Han elites, but it was a double-edged sword for the Qing itself, threatening to cut off the head of the dynasty if it failed its duties to the state—which was to say, the nation.
The Purpose of History
Thus the overriding didactic purpose of history textbooks was to pro- mote patriotism, even if the exact contents of this ethic remained elastic and historical narrative worked through indirect means. The Qing’s new Ministry of Education (學部) wanted textbooks to emphasize the history of the nation: its origins, its development over long periods, recent events, the worries of the emperor, and the problems stemming from foreign pressures and domestic issues. In this way, the Ministry promised, students would never forget loyalty to the emperor—and, in remembering the great deeds of former heroes and the blessings of the cosmos, would be inoculated against revolutionary heresies. Exactly how this approach differed from traditional historiography could be debated. Neither an interest in learning lessons from the past nor a sense that history might convey moral lessons were novel, but history designed systematically for the inculcation of children was new. At the same time, widespread calls for a “new historiography” in the late Qing certainly in uenced of cials and textbook-writers. In a word, the new history was to take the Chinese nation as its subject, showing its development through time. Not alone, but perhaps most famously, in 1902 Liang Qichao 梁啟超 sharply criticized traditional histories as
speak of a truly “Chinese” national identity before the late 19th century, it is clear that a lengthy ideological development prepared the way for what would be called “greater Chinese nationalism” as opposed to the exclusionist Han nationalism of the 1911 revolutionaries.
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merely dynastic “genealogies” or personal histories of emperors rather than collective histories of the nation; he demanded that history focus on the evolution of the nation, paying attention to current affairs and speaking to the future.8 This chapter cannot explore in detail the “new history” movement.9 However, it is important to note that the movement had a strong and direct—if incomplete and tension- lled—impact on the search for the “progress” of the “nation” in late Qing history text- books. Furthermore, there is no doubt of the importance of the Japanese model on the Chinese history textbooks that began to be written in the late Qing.10 Meiji historians, who were often well trained in Chinese studies, by the 1880s had begun to write national histories of China as well as Japan. The Japanese offered a model of the narration of a nation from its origins, through its development, to the present-day. If not completely unknown in traditional Chinese historiography, the “national history” ( guojia tongshi 國家通史) was a striking innovation both as the dominant form of historical writing and in the context of international nation-state system, each member claiming its own bounded history. If traditional historiography was in part a tool of state-building, it now became a tool of nation-building. In this sense, regardless of Japanese models—and often in fact in opposition to Japanese views—Chinese writers were necessarily going to provide their own views of their own history. They also continued to rely on their own knowledge of the classics, particularly for narratives of the ancient period, and their familiarity with the dynastic histories. The fundamental problem facing Chinese historians and textbook writers was how to ful ll the ideals of the “new history” in practice: how to avoid reverting to a history of great men (or indeed “dynasties”) that obscured the nation; and how, in a word, to de ne the “nation”
8 Liang 1996. 9 Overviews of the transformation of historiographical thinking in the late Qing and early Republic include: Xu Guansan 1989; Luo Zhitian 2001; Wang Fansen 1987, 2003; Zhang Kaizhi 1996; Hu Fengxiang and Zhang Wenjian 1991; and Wang 2001. Duara 1995 is indispensable for thinking about the relationship between nationalism and history. For Liang’s views in particular, see inter alia Huang Jinxing 1997; Tang 1996; Zarrow 2003. 10 Li Xiaoqian 2003. As Tze-ki Hon shows in this volume, late Qing historian-authors like Liu Yizheng 柳誼徵 based their own textbooks directly on Japanese models; other Chinese authors were in uenced indirectly. A complete analysis of the rise of “national history” narratives in East Asia around the turn of the century would also take into account the Sino-Japanese interest in “national learning” (國學) in more general terms, a topic beyond the scope of this chapter.
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that the history was supposed to illuminate. In practice, late Qing history textbooks utilized a “schematic narrative template,” as James Wertsch has proposed for the Russian case.11 Wertsch postulates that generalized narrative forms underlie speci c narratives or stories (forms that manifest underlying patterns but that are not universal archetypes, because they are culturally or nationally determined in speci c textual heritages). In the Chinese case, the dynastic cycle in effect provided textbook authors with such a template. Unnamed and never explicitly analyzed, the “dynastic cycle” nevertheless described good emperors and of cials who built great empires and civilization but who were, however, eventually succeeded by evil or incompetent emperors whose rule gave rise to domestic rebellion and foreign invasion. This repeated rise-and-fall story provided a “narrative template” for nearly all of Chinese history: the history that followed the very rst sage-kings who founded (Chinese) civilization itself up to the Qing. As for the Qing, textbook authors could hardly state explicitly that by the end of the 19th century it t the model of dynastic decline, but they certainly presented evidence to suggest decline. In itself, this schematic possessed no moral force. The historical subject of “China” was here implied as that arena within which the dynastic cycle oper- ated, maintaining cultural continuity across the dynasties. But, again, the narrative template never speci ed the exact nature of Chinese or Han identity. These were issues marginalized by the schematic of the dynastic cycle. However, it seems to me that there is also another way to reduce the immense range of historical detail—which general is rebelling against which monarch, which minister is loyally serving unto death, which monarch is staging brilliant campaigns against barbarian threats, and so forth—to conscious or unconscious themes that in narrative terms act as repeating motifs. Most important of these are rst, the unity of empire, or the dominance of central rule and uni ed customs; and second, the protection of the borders, or resistance to barbarian pres- sure. This “resistance” could be quite active in the case of pushing back barbarians to expand the empire, but textbooks also treat stability
11 Wertsch 2002: 60–62. Wertsch found that Soviet and post-Soviet textbooks use a narrative template of “triumph over alien (hostile) forces” (2002: 93) consisting of a repeated story with four plot elements: 1) Russia at peace; 2) invaded by aggressors; 3) crisis and suffering; and 4) victory secured by the Russian people. Garagozov 2002 has found this template at work in pre-Soviet history-writing as well.
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as a satisfactory condition. These motifs were compatible with a frank, realpolitik approach to history-writing that generally eschewed moral- izing. However, these motifs were also compatible with the speci c worries of late Qing intellectuals: that the empire’s borders were under threat and that the empire needed unity and stability in order to meet this threat.
Of cial Goals
The new Ministry of Education set out general goals for the new schools in 1906. This document plunged into the debates of the day, promoting reform on the one hand but criticizing reformist extremism on the other. It was the latter problem that seems to have struck the Ministry as especially worrisome; it did not claim that the West set a bad example but that some Chinese did not properly understand the West. Universal education was ultimately a means to inculcate loyalty and inoculate the population against revolutionary “heresies”; it was also a means to strengthen the state by mobilizing the people.12 Textbooks were subject to the Ministry’s censorship. Nonetheless, although this subject needs greater research, in general it seems that textbooks were not required to spread a speci c political message.13 The Ministry of Education was alert to threats to morality in ethics textbooks (xiushen jiaokeshu 修身教科書) and elementary readers (duben 讀本), but perhaps respected history and geography as more objec- tive disciplines. Furthermore, a number of textbooks were published privately outside the of cial school system, which remained limited. Therefore, the textbooks of major publishing companies certainly complied with the vetting process of the Ministry of Education, but in practice this appears not to have been dif cult, at least in the case of history textbooks. Generally speaking, history textbook authors eschewed moralizing and even political theorizing, concentrating on a dry recitation of “facts.” This is not to claim either that history text- books lacked political implications or that authors were oblivious of these implications. Indeed, precisely because historical questions were politically sensitive and history textbooks were devoted to the creation
12 Qu and Tang 1991: I, 534–539. 13 Guan 2000: 375–385; Wang Jianjun 1996: 158–190.
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of the modern Chinese citizen, they implicitly reveal the tensions of that time, as we will see below. Nonetheless, the narrative structure of history textbooks tended to obscure these tensions and emphasize the general elite consensus on the need to create a self-aware citizenry. The Ministry of Education proclaimed that proper policies needed to be established on the basis of China’s circumstances and popular customs. Above all, the traditional notion of the state (zhengjiao 政教) rested on loyalty to the emperor (zhongjun 忠君) and reverence for Con- fucius (zun Kong 尊孔). What was now needed, in order to maintain these foundational principles, was esteem for public mindedness (shanggong 尙公), the military arts (shangwu 尙武), and the practical arts (shangshi 尙實).14 According to the Ministry, although the political forms of Eastern and Western countries differed, all based their politics on reverence for the king ( guozhu 國主). For example, the recent rise of Germany could be traced to the emphasis its schools placed on preserving the unity of the empire, while Japan’s rise had much to do with its schools’ emphasis on the unbroken imperial line. The Qing, in its great bene cence and care of the people, could, according to the Ministry, shape its educational system similarly. Public-mindedness, the military, and the practical arts were thus, for the Ministry, essentially means to promote Confucianism and loyal- ism. Nonetheless, in terms of curriculum and class time, they offered a more immediate set of purposes to school-builders. Public-minded- ness referred to creating a uni ed populace that was determined and unconquerable.15 The role of schooling here was essential, the Ministry declared, in creating trust and friendship through lessons in self-cultiva- tion, ethical relations, history, and geography: all such courses encour- aged the feelings of students to promote cooperative sentiment. Patriotic unity, the Ministry explicitly noted, should be rooted in childhood, just as Confucius taught that universal benevolence was the extension of more particularistic liality. Central to this process would be a revival of a “national learning” ( guoxue 國學) that was in decline. Students were to start formal schooling at age 7, and lower primary schools covered grades one through ve; upper primary schools grades six through nine; and middle schools (along with parallel vocational and normal schools) grades ten through thirteen. Then, higher schools
14 Qu and Tang 1991: I, 535. 15 Qu and Tang 1991: I, 536.
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were to provide more specialized university-preparation courses in grades fourteen through seventeen, followed nally by a university or Confucian academy.16 The curriculum of upper and lower primary and middle schools emphasized self-cultivation and the classics (as well as learning to read and write characters). Other classes included geography, arithmetic, sciences, physical exercise, perhaps drawing and crafts—and certainly history. Upper primary and middle schools were to provide more specialized scienti c or vocational classes (e.g., agriculture and commerce); middle and higher schools were to offer courses in law, nance, and foreign languages in addition to the basic curriculum. What was the role of history classes in this system? If the Ministry originally envisioned a curriculum revolving around Four Books and Five Classics and ethics, while subjects like history, politics, and the sciences were secondary, the fact remains that the new subjects were given a major place in the curriculum—a place that only grew over time.17 Yet was history a discrete eld of knowledge in its own right, or was it a branch of ethics? History classes were certainly to promote moral lessons, above all patriotism. The aim of history was to convey the “great and virtuous deeds of the sage rulers” (shengzhu xianjun 聖主 賢君) so students learned the origins of Chinese culture and the sacred governance (shengde zheng 聖德政) of the “present dynasty” in order to nurture the well-springs of national loyalty ( guomin zhongai 國民忠愛).18 Whilst the Ministry may have sought to nesse any potential con ict between loyalty to the dynasty and loyalty to the “nation” (patriotism), the ambiguous term guomin (國民, “national” or “citizen”) was itself a break with the past. “The knowledge of love of the same kind [of people] (ai tonglei 愛同類) at this time [in youth] is the basis for the patriotism (ai guojia 愛國家) of adults.”19 History classes for the rst two years of lower primary school were to focus on local history and the stories of the virtuous men of the locality for students to emulate.20 And at the same time, a chart of
16 This essay focuses on textbooks used at the primary level. For details of the higher- level school system, never fully implemented, see Shangwu yinshuguan 1909. 17 Hayhoe 1992: 51, 71 n. 11. 18 Qu and Tang 1991: I, 295. 19 Qu and Tang 1991: I, 294. 20 This chapter focuses on history textbooks and the late Qing project of national identity; in addition to tensions in this project noted below, potential con icts between local and national identities should be noted. For both the tensions and means to reconcile them, see May-Bo Ching’s article in this volume; also see her two Chinese articles, Cheng 2003, 2006.
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the imperial dynasties and reigns hung on the wall would provide a convenient chronology that students would naturally memorize. Consciously or not, the regulations thus linked local and national (or imperial), simultaneously seeking to root children in their immediate, known place and their larger, abstract political community. In years three and four students moved on to learn of the speci c dynasties and reigns, and in year ve they learned of the founding of the Qing and the good government of its various sage-rulers (renzheng liesheng 仁政列聖). Similarly, geography classes began with the local, years one and two emphasizing local roads, villages, mountains, rivers, and temples to worthies, while in year three students went on to their county and prefecture and something of China. In year four students concentrated on Chinese territory, famous mountains, and rivers, and in year ve looked at both China and its neighboring countries.21 Students were thus to understand China’s place in the world, which was pictured as primarily constituted of borders. It is as if the Ministry assumed modern patriotism rested on the extension of a concrete sense of locality to the more abstract sense of a territory de ned historically and represented by lines on a map. History in the upper primary schools was to emphasize stories of dynastic rise and fall since Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor) 黃帝 and Yao 堯 and Shun 舜. History classes were also to be explicitly didactic, designed to produce loyal subjects of the Qing, from whose good gov- ernment they bene ted; they were also to promote self-strengthening. Middle school history was to use the “great events of dynasties and reigns” to narrate, rst, the Qing’s own “royal sacred government and inexhaustible virtue” and the basic progress of the previous century: its great events; the stories of loyal and good scholars; the ourishing of scholarship and technical skills; the renewal of old military equip- ment; changes in government; the progress of agriculture, industry, and commerce; and changes in customs.22 Then students were to learn the history of Asian nations and nally Europe and the United States. In general, the history curriculum at this level was supposed to show students the relations among facts and the distinct origins of dif- ferent cultures. In this way, students would come to an understanding of the reasons why some countries were strong while others weak. Again, the ultimate purpose was frankly didactic if less narrowly
21 Shangwu yinshuguan 1909: 7:2:5a–6a. 22 Shangwu yinshuguan 1909: 7:1:73.
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focused: to raise the resolve and character of the people ( guomin zhi zhiqi 國民之志氣).23 It is also worth noting that at the middle school level, classics classes seemed more oriented toward history than self-cultivation. The Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu 春秋), the Zuo Commentary (Zuozhuan 左傳), and the Rites of Zhou (Zhouli 周禮) were all considered useful sources of statecraft ( jingshi 經世) knowledge. They displayed valiant heroes and the spirit of ancient Zhou of cials; they demonstrated how the former kings’ system to nourish and educate the people could inspire present- day government.24 So, too, primary school geography classes were to reinforce pupils’ patriotic spirit; and while the geographic concepts grew more complex at higher grade levels, this goal did not change.25 The goals of the Qing government for its new schools were thus fairly clear. But did the schools and the texts actually taught to children deliver what the Qing wanted? While this chapter can scarcely answer that question completely, I conclude that history textbooks followed the Qing’s guidelines but nonetheless subtly subverted any speci c Qing loyalism. Rather, the narrative template of history textbooks linked patriotism to a sense of the Chinese state that transcended any par- ticular dynasty, as well as the narrow ethnonationalism rightly feared by the Qing. Focusing on the implications of historical narrative for identity, the following three sections examine the play of the motifs of empire- building, breakdown, and state functions in descriptions of, rst, the ancient origins of China; second, the imperial period to the end of the Ming; and third, the Qing itself.
A Question of Identity: Origins
By focusing on the origins of a people/culture/civilization, late Qing history textbooks implied the existence of a “nation” that was somehow distinguishable from the dynasty or indeed any particular state forma- tion, and which progressed through time. To an extent, traditional stories of the “sage-kings” (聖王) as culture-founders were reforged into stories of nation-founders. Textbooks were thus quick to re ect two intellec-
23 Shangwu yinshuguan 1909: 7:1:74. 24 Shangwu yinshuguan 1909: 7:1:72b–73a. 25 Shangwu yinshuguan 1909: 7:1:81b; 7:1:74a.
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tual trends of the late Qing. First, the interest in “new historiography” that sought to center the nation in an evolutionary framework.26 And second, the “Western origins” theory of the Han race that postulated that the Chinese or “Han” people did not originate in the land they now occupied (China) but thousands of years previously had emerged out of Central Asia. Publicized by the prominent intellectuals Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 and Liu Shipei 劉師培, this theory held that the “Baks,” originally from Mesopotamia but then wandering around Central Asia for some time, had entered China under their leader Huangdi (the Yel- low Emperor) in the third millennium BC. Huangdi defeated the native aborigines, some of whom moved south, becoming the Miao 苗, while some remained as a labor caste under the Baks, whose name evolved into “Han.” Huangdi was literally the progenitor of the Chinese people (or the Han, a term derived from “Bak”).27 Inevitably, history textbooks began in one form or another with founding stories of the Chinese nation. These started not with the origins of the world or the human species but with a bio-cultural descent group that from ancient times occupied the Yellow River and the Yangzi River regions: what is today generally called China proper. One approach was to begin with a discussion of physical and human geography. The “Primary Reader in History” attempted to de ne the Chinese in racial terms.28 They were members of the Yellow Race like Japanese, Koreans, Tartars, and other groups. Their speci c subgroup was that of the Hua (huaren 華人), who were in turn de ned circularly as those who developed China. “China” in this sense was a spatial concept: this people originally moved out of the northern plains, but what marked them as historically Chinese was their settling around the Yellow River Valley and then moving into central and southern China.29 Culturally, according to the “Primary Reader,” this people was marked by scholarship, the educated classes following Confucianism while the
26 See notes 7 and 8 above. 27 Though well known to historians of the late Qing, the popularity of this theory, propagated especially by anti-Manchu revolutionaries but more widely held, has yet to be fully explained. For Liu Shipei’s version, see 1997a [1904]. For well-considered analysis, see Shen 1997; and Luo 2002. 28 XDS: 4a–5a. 29 Obviously, this story does not accord exactly with the “Western origins” theory that speci ed Central Asia, but it does maintain the notion of the migration of the (future) Chinese into “China” from the outside.
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ignorant followed Buddhism and Daoism. In this sense, identity was de ned through race, geography, and culture. Yao Zuyi’s 姚祖義 “Upper Primary Chinese History Textbook” of 1904 began with a brief cosmogony, referring to a Great Mist that was succeeded by Pangu 盤古 and the Three August Ones and the Five Emperors (sanhuang wudi 三皇五帝).30 Yao thus generally followed the account in Sima Qian 司馬遷 (145–90 BC) in referring to the August Ones of Heaven, Earth and Humanity (tianhuang 天皇, dihuang 地皇, renhuang 人皇) and attributed the most basic attributes of civili- zation— re and housing—to this extremely ancient and little-known period. However, it is worth noting that Yao Zuyi did not begin his text with these civilizational legends but rather with the observation that the ancient world consisted merely of tribes or villages, and that it evolved into a uni ed state. In all, “China” had remained uni ed through fourteen dynasties.31 These dynasties stretched back to Tang 唐, Yu 虞, and Xia 夏, coming forward to the Qing through periods of division. The point is not how Yao Zuyi determined which later dynasties were legitimate (zhengtong 正統) but that he was giving stu- dents a sense of national identity that depended on the uni ed imperial state. In this way, Yao took the legitimacy of the Qing (like the Yuan 元 under the Mongols) for granted. More importantly, while obviously not denying Chinese identity to those unfortunate enough to lives in times of disunity or chaos, he bound that identity to the ideal of the uni ed imperial state. Other textbooks, however, simply plunged into China’s history, begin- ning with the genesis of a recognizable nation with the Yellow Emperor. As noted above, several textbooks reported a movement of primitive tribes out of the West or Northwest into what would become China. For example, Qian Zonghan’s 錢宗翰 “Illustrated Vernacular History of China” spoke of tribes moving into the Yellow River region.32 Even- tually, these tribes amalgamated, and from their various chiefs came a supreme leader: the Yellow Emperor. Establishing a kingdom that stretched from north of the Yellow River to south of the Yangzi, he
30 GXZL: 1: 2a. The textbook was evidently highly successful, in its (alleged) four- teenth edition. 31 GXZL: 1: 1a. Again, this is not to deny the fact of periods of political disunity but to stress the normative condition intrinsic to unity and by implication maintained at the cultural level regardless of political disruptions. 32 HZBS: 1a.
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marked the start of the rulership. He was the “ rst ancestor of us, the Chinese people” (women de Zhongguoren de touyige zuzong 我們的中國人的 頭一個祖宗). He also created written characters and invented carts and ships. Qian Zhonghan thus concentrated all these markers of civilization in one historical gure. Before the Yellow Emperor there were primitive tribes perhaps with some skills like hunting, re, even agriculture (in other accounts this is made clearer) but not a uni ed people. After the Yellow Emperor there was, in effect, the Chinese nation. Qian was not alone in attributing both rulership and ancestry to the Yellow Emperor. Ding Baoshu’s 丁寶書 “Elementary Chinese History Textbook” was slightly different in specifying a pre-existing “Han tribe” (hanzu 漢族) that moved into the Yellow River region out of the north- west.33 As its population grew, various separate tribes emerged under local chiefs. This was an age of shing, hunting, planting, medicine, and weaving. There were no supreme rulers ( junzhu 君主). Then, in Ding’s narrative, the Yellow Emperor arose as a conqueror, uniting the tribes under his rule and extending his kingdom to the Yangzi region.34 In this account, too, the Yellow Emperor created Chinese characters, invented carts and boats, and “established the basis for a uni ed Chinese polity.” In other words, even if “Han” identity of some sort preceded the Yellow Emperor, the Han were but one tribe indistinguishable from many others. Ding’s emphasis on the beginning of rulership was essential for a distinct Han identity. So, too, in Zhao Zhengduo’s 趙鉦鐸 “Upper Primary History Textbook.” Zhao began with the suc- cessful spread of the Hua race (huazhong 華種) from out of the West into the upper Yellow River valley and beyond: so that China (Zhong- guo 中國) has been called Zhonghua (中華) ever since.35 And for Yao Zuyi, the Yellow Emperor, once his conquest was in place, represented nothing less than the institutionalization of the bureaucratic system and “improving the lives of the people through civil rule.”36 At the same time, the basic story of the evolution of civilization and the organized state could also be told without emphasizing the role of the Yellow Emperor. The “Primary Reader in History” pointed out the unreliability of records pertaining to the “Three August Ones and the Five Emperors” while also noting a series of inventions associated
33 MZLJ: 1a. 34 MZLJ: 1b. 35 GXLK: 1a–b. 36 GXZL: 1:2b–3a.
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with various versions of their names.37 Essentially, this textbook re- peated familiar legends. Taihao 太皞 [i.e., Fuxi 伏羲] invented the eight trigrams, hunting nets, ritual sacri ces, and marriage; Yandi 炎帝 [Shennong 神農] invented the plow, and taught the people farming, medicine, and markets—while the Yellow Emperor then made tools, currency, boats and carts, clothes, cities, and ordered the creation of written characters and the stem-branch calendrical system, and his empress taught the people to raise silkworms. These inventions, along with houses, re, clothing, and the like distinguished the civilized Huaxia (華夏) from barbarian groups, according to this textbook. The Huaxia’s leaders were termed Sages (sheng 聖). Yet the “Primary Reader” also pointed out that the inventions of civilization did not all come from one man or one sage: they were the product of hundreds of people’s efforts and adapted over generations.38 This latter view came close to turning the anonymous collective Chinese people into the agent of historical progress—or at least pre- historical progress. Civilization took generations to build. The “Primary Reader” also traced the rise of an organized polity to the arrival of the Huaren in what was to become China. Originally from the north, they followed the river eastward and gradually opened up more lands to the south. When faced with native inhabitants (barbarians), they simply expelled them. Gradually, they established cities and eventually a “huge empire” divided into the nine districts ( jiuzhou 九州). Unlike most other textbooks, the “Primary Reader” suggested that not until the reliable records of Yao and Shun could one speak of individuals, but it conveyed a similar sort of state-based political identity. It was also possible to combine the traditional Five Emperors narrative with a new emphasis on the Yellow Emperor. Fu Guangnian’s 富光年 “Simpli ed History Textbook” posited an evolutionary process from primitive tribes to more complex, higher-level social organization.39 He thus traced an age completely without rulers ( junzhu 君主) to purely local chiefs, and nally to assemblages of tribes—which marked the origins of the emperorship (diwang 帝王). Fu Xi invented writing and
37 XDS: 10a–b. 38 XDS: 10b–11a. The quasi-metaphorical interpretation of the sage-king mythol- ogy as a representation of the collective advances in civilization was to become more common in the Republican period, especially after the “doubting antiquity” movement of the 1920s; for textbook treatments, see Culp 2001: 24–26. 39 JLK: 1a.
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Shennong medicine, but it was still the Yellow Emperor who militarily defeated his enemies, created a polity—including the well- eld ( jingtian 井田) system—and fathered the entire yellow race. An even stronger position was staked out by Zhao Zhengduo, who dismissed Fuxi and Shennong as mere tribal chiefs, although with the usual inventions to their names.40 But (for Zhao) it was the Yellow Emperor who became a great military leader, expelling the Miao people and creating a real polity through expansion. The Yellow Emperor thus became honored by the people as the rst “Son of Heaven” (tianzi 天子), and he thus became the founder of the imperial system ( junzhu zhengzhi 君主政治).41 Nonetheless, the Yellow Emperor was not the sole focus of “origins” in the version of a collective past expounded in late Qing history textbooks. The Yellow Emperor’s great successors, Yao and Shun, if not the founders of the imperial state, came to de ne its ideal essence. The late Qing history textbooks treated Yao and Shun as exemplars of imperial virtue. Qian Zonghan, for example, simply describes Yao as devoted to the people, laboring every day, and establishing the calen- dar.42 The main themes here were their good deeds, their abdications of the throne, and the ood stories, which explain the rise of a third exemplar of imperial virtue, Yu. Here, then, is a mix of foundation myths concerning the institutions of civilization on the one hand and personal moral attributes on the other. Yao, aging, and learning of Shun’s great reputation for lial piety, rst turned over responsibilities to Shun and then, once Shun had proved himself, formally abdicated the throne. In Qian’s view, Shun’s rule was marked by good administration: not only did he work hard personally but he promoted good of cials and demoted bad ones. Again, nding his own son inadequate to replace him, he abdicated to the virtuous Yu. Yu—who had quelled the oods after immense and lengthy labor—returns us to the realm of the foun- dation myths, but, in Qian’s hands, in a rather naturalistic fashion.43 Other textbooks added more detail, but while cautiously warning that the records were sparse, nonetheless mixed the ood themes of origins mythology with more prosaic administrative accomplishments.44 For
40 GXLK: 1b–2a. 41 GXLK: 2b. 42 HZBS: 1b. 43 HZBS: 1b–2a. 44 However, records pertaining to Yao and Shun were seen as more reliable than accounts of earlier leaders; indeed, several textbooks convey a sense that proper records began with Yao. See JLK: 1a.
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Ding Baoshu, Yao possessed the “kingly virtue of the great sage.”45 For Zhao Zhengduo, Yao was “humane and virtuous” (rende 仁德), honoring frugality and simplicity.46 Yao and Shun continued the military conquest that made China.47 They also invented the calendar and astronomy.48 These were of course traditional markers of dynastic-founders as well as the building-blocks of civilization. Shun’s virtue was de ned more precisely than Yao’s. In effect, Shun needed to prove himself worthy: not only did he take care of his parents but he managed to keep his entire criminally-minded family out of trouble. The cycle of ood myths was of course associated with Yu rather than Shun, but in these histo- ricized accounts, it was Shun who appointed Yu as Minister of Public Works, giving him bureaucratic responsibility for controlling the oods. Yu’s diligence and eventual success then caused Shun to abdicate to Yu. Meanwhile, Shun was also no mean administrator, using ritual to command. He put the lords on a schedule of court visits (pre guring the enfeoffment system of fengjian 封建), and he developed a system of rewards and punishments for aristocrats and commoners alike.49 Origin stories seem to hold a peculiar grip on the imaginaries of most, if not all, human societies. Myth or history, they answer the critical question, “where did ‘we’ come from?” The question is critical because its answer at least partly de nes identity—who we are—in a logic parallel to the seed somehow containing the tree. The origin sto- ries recounted in late Qing history textbooks in no way differed from versions in the classics and Han period textual redactions. Yet a new political and institutional context gave them new signi cance. They now spoke not merely to exible ways of distinguishing “us” from “them” through ethnicity and culture but also to the early growth of a speci c “Chinese” nation that—by implication—grew like the tree from the seed into today’s Chinese nation. The late Qing’s unprecedented need for national identity, so to speak, led to the recasting of ancient myths and histories into coherent narratives in which contemporary Chinese could nd themselves, or at least their ancestors. However, Chinese history was obviously more than its origins, and indeed textbook authors had
45 MZLJ: 2a. 46 GXLK: 2b. 47 JLK: 1a. 48 XDS: 11b; MZLJ: 2a. 49 XDS: 12a–b.
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to deal with the less-than-ideal dynastic states that in fact formed the heart of the historical record. After origins, textbook authors had to discuss development, albeit possibly the development of stasis.
The Dynastic State: Hereditary Kingship50
King Yu who quelled the oods was of course one of the iconic sage- king founders of civilization in Chinese popular memory. Textbook treatments of him re ected such mythical elements as his construction of nine rivers to the sea, but differed on the ultimate signi cance of his turn to the hereditary kingship. Of Yu’s contributions to the kingship, there was no doubt. Yao Zuyi, for example, emphasized Yu’s casting of the nine bronze tripods (a key mark of rulership), as well as his estab- lishment of a tribute or tax system and his administrative organization of the empire.51 It was the people themselves who wanted Yu’s son to succeed him—in Zhao Zhengduo’s account—thus establishing the hereditary kingship ( junzhu shixi zhi zhi 君主世襲之制) of the dynastic state.52 Other accounts leave the decision to Yu; in any case, the rst family dynasty was established under Yu. Fu Guangnian noted that Yu had already expanded imperial power and reported that people said Yu’s virtue had decreased.53 This was why he was called “king” (wang 王) instead of “emperor” (di 帝). Fu’s was certainly a minority view; accord- ing to the “Primary Reader,” for example, Yu’s title as “king” was a mark of special respect continued through the entire “three dynasties” period through the Zhou. Nonetheless, textbook writers hardly presented the principle of hereditary kingship as either natural or moral. If Yu’s son was virtuous, his grandson was immoral and lost the empire.54 True,
50 This section of the chapter re ects, I believe, the general view of late Qing textbook authors that King Yu’s establishment of the Xia dynasty was a watershed in Chinese history (roughly comparable to the stress that today’s historians place on the Qin). Nonetheless, it should be noted that late Qing textbook authors generally paid little attention to grand periodization schemes. There were some attempts to use the categories of ancient, medieval, and modern (see Tze-ki Hon in this volume). But elementary and secondary textbooks, at least, effectively based periodization on rulers and dynasties. 51 GXJL: 3b–4a. See also XDS: 13a–b. 52 GXLK: 3b. 53 JLK: 1a–b. 54 XDS: 13b; see also JLK: 1b.
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another heir of Yu was able to restore the Xia, and, in all, the dynasty lasted some 400 years under 17 generations of Xia kings. Yet nally, with seeming inevitability, the utterly evil Jie 桀 came to power, to be overthrown by King Tang 湯, who then established the Shang 商 dynasty. Textbooks thus described the rst dynastic cycle, which was to struc- ture the rest of their historical narratives. As Zhao Zhengduo pointed out, as Yu had been the rst emperor to transmit the throne to his son, so Tang had been the rst to seize the throne by violence.55 However, this did not imply moral culpability on Tang’s part. Jie was immoral and lost all popular support.56 Tang was wise and kind—indeed some textbooks treated him not as a military conqueror at all but as almost passively winning the support of all the lords, who pronounced him Son of Heaven.57 So, too, with the Zhou, and after its prolonged decline, the Qin, quickly passed through, the longer Han (or two Hans), and so forth down to the “present dynasty.” The historical events that textbooks described in some detail must be ignored here for want of space. The larger question is, what was the signi cance of the cyclical rise-and- fall narrative structure of late Qing textbooks? What did it say about the nation? Nowhere do any of the textbooks I examined offer explicit statements about the nature of the Chinese people (beyond their early development of culture or civilization), the legitimacy of the imperial state, or metahistorical speculation. They offer straight-forward political narratives, focusing on court politics, foreign relations, military events, rebellions, and the like, sprinkled with occasional summaries of devel- opments in scholarship, religion, and the arts. Beyond this kind of historical ‘data’ certain themes do emerge: motifs as it were repeated if not in every dynasty, certainly repeated often enough. Several authors stressed the dangers of court in ghting—particularly the threats posed by eunuchs and women.58 The Zhou kings were sometimes discussed in terms of their personal virtue (or lack thereof ), and the Zhou offered the single best image of a Golden Age.59 However, later emperors were
55 GXLK: 3b. 56 GXZL: 2b. 57 HZBS: 2b–3a; XDS: 14a–b. 58 GXLK: 14b–15a; JLK: 5b–6a, 7b. 59 Golden Age thinking is an important variation of the stress placed on origins. Late Qing textbooks all treated the Eastern Zhou as a golden age. A special case is Liu Shipei’s Chinese History Textbook (中國歷史教科書) of 1906 (1997b), which stressed
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subject to more purely political analysis. Zhao Zhengduo, for example, did not pass moral judgment on Qin Shihuang 秦始皇 but only politi- cal judgment: the burdens he placed on the people contributed to the uprisings that occurred after his death.60 Politically, then, what de ned the successful dynastic state? The great models of the Han and the Tang, and to some extent the Yuan and the Ming, featured military strength. Unity at home and, above all, the ability to maintain peace along the frontiers emerged, at least implicitly, in late Qing history textbooks as core political values. The Yuan was not a “Han” Chinese dynasty, of course, but it was a success in military terms, at least for a century.61 That the Yuan uni ed China after a period of disunity (even if that disunity was caused to a degree by the Mongols themselves) marked its legitimacy. Of course, political considerations would have prevented outright condemnation of the Yuan even in the waning days of the Qing, since the Qing court was long sensitive to criticism of the Yuan. However, if the real glories of the dynastic state were found in the successes of the Han and Tang, putting aside ethnic issues, the Yuan t that mold. In fact, textbooks did note that the Yuan bureaucratic system discriminated against Hanren and that it was unpopular. It survived, after all, only a hundred years, though its own internal rifts explained much of its weaknesses. Yet meanwhile textbook writers gave the Yuan credit not only for its military success but for the results of that success: expansion of the state’s terri- tory and, above all, opening the entire Eurasian continent to ows of communication and trade.62 Indeed, textbooks treated even the collapse of the Yuan not as a matter of Han restoration but in terms of the usual pattern of the dynastic cycle. Emperors were incompetent (this was a special problem for the Yuan since the Yuan lacked an orderly rule of succession); there was corruption and cruelty; and taxes were too high, and so the people became restless.
the quasi-democratic nature of the Western Zhou. I will not further comment on Liu’s textbook here, because, rst, an excellent study of this work is offered by Tze-ki Hon in this volume (see also Yuan Yingguang and Zhong Weiming 1998). And second, although Liu’s textbook and an entire series of related and overlapping writings were published in the in uential Guocui xuebao (國粹學報) and there is no doubt of the power of Liu’s philological-historical analysis well into the Republican period, it is not clear that Liu’s textbook was widely adopted in schools. 60 GXLK: 11b–12a; see also JLK: 4a. 61 JLK: 11a–b. 62 MZLJ: 47a–b; JLK: 11a–b.
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Putting the Yuan aside as a special case, we can see that textbook writers valued the dynastic state when it protected the borders. This was of course a historical theme with contemporary implications. Ding Baoshu was unusual in his willingness to make relatively explicit his- torical judgments. Ding found faults with Qin Shihuang but noted the emperor uni ed and expanded the empire, thus protecting the “race” (zhongzu 種族).63 If the early Zhou, for Ding, represented the perfection of government, it was apparently an unrecoverable perfection. However harsh, the centralization put into place by the Qin and continued, if modi ed, by later dynasties, at least served to keep the barbarians at bay. Indeed, several textbook writers emphasized orthodox Confucian approbation of the “hegmons” (ba 霸) of the late Zhou on the grounds they protected the borders. Similarly, for Ding, Han Wudi’s 武帝 mili- tary expansionism created problems for his successors yet he “protected the race and advanced state power” ( yi bao zhongzu yi yang guowei 以保 種族以揚國威) by defeating the dreaded Xiongnu 匈奴.64 Ding also credited Tang Gaozong 高宗 with the “protection of the race and the extension of state power” (wei zhongzu zhang guowei 衛種族張國威) in his discussion of the great but scarcely perfect Tang dynasty.65 In sum, late Qing history textbooks did not explicitly attempt to trace the story of a Chinese “nation” that in some sense transcended the dynastic state. According to much current theory of nationalism, the dynastic state’s centripetal hierarchies represented an entirely different worldview than that required by the modern national imaginary.66 In China’s case, furthermore, the dynastic state was an inherently unstable formation that seems unable to support the essentialism and the conti- nuity assumed in modern nationalism. Yet late Qing textbook writers sought—in accordance with their own desires and of cial curriculum guidelines—to instill a sense of patriotism. The dynastic state erased neither the quasi-racial nor the cultural-civilization bases of identity established (in the late Qing view) in ancient times. An equation of the land and the people—the land of China being the land rst conquered
63 MZLJ: 10a–b; see also HZBS: 9b. 64 MZLJ: 16a; see also JLK: 4b. 65 MZLJ: 30b. 66 Benedict Anderson (1991) for example, speci cally cites the dynastic state as a pre- nationalist form that nationalists must overthrow to create the horizontal ties of nation (19–22). Although Anderson may well be right, this was not the understanding of late Qing reformers, who sought to reconcile the imperial state with nationalist sentiment, indeed creating the latter in some sense on the foundation of the former.
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and then expanded by its people—was then further ‘marked’ by the dynastic states that rose and fell on this land. Dynastic identity (“man of Han,” “man of Ming”) was a form of contemporary being-ness that was layered on top of other identities. In the late Qing, the quest to construct national identity found this both a problem—as intellec- tuals attempted to sort out competing identities—yet also a source of national identity. For the dynastic state willy-nilly shaped the historical consciousness that was central to national identity.
The Manchu-Qing as Contemporary Reality
Late Qing intellectuals building Chinese nationalism had to deal with the “foreignness” of the Qing, as is well known.67 Anti-Manchuism had the virtue of simplicity and was vigorously argued by revolutionary republicans. However, it did not represent mainstream view, which was more complicated. Of course, as we have seen above, late Qing history textbooks could hardly preach anti-Manchuism. Authors con ated the borders of the empire and the distinct peoples it had come to come up with a multiethnic view of China. This was a state-based view of nationalism that stemmed partly from long-standing Qing ideology, but it was also based on the historical logic of the dynastic cycle. While anti-Manchu revolutionaries mustered historical, racial, and cultural arguments to deny the Qing had ever been legitimate, once its legiti- macy was granted, as had long been the case, then modern Chinese nationalism had to incorporate the Qing one way or another. Textbooks thus made no attempts to hide or deny the “foreignness” of the Manchus, but rather, understanding the Qing in terms of the dynastic cycle, assigned it the duty of maintaining China’s territorial integrity. In the case of the equally foreign Yuan, we have seen that textbooks followed orthodox historiography by treating it as a legiti- mate dynasty. It was even regarded favorably in some respects though certainly criticized (like all dynasties) on various grounds. According to the “Primary Reader in History,” the Mongols were primitive pastoral- ists, racially related to the Turks, both groups being descended from the Xiongnu.68 Ding Baoshu called the Mongols a race of nomadic
67 The literature on this topic is vast; the best recent study is Rhoads 2000. 68 XDS: 5b–6a.
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herders.69 Yet textbook writers do not seem to have seen the Mongol conquest of China, perhaps precisely because it was a military con- quest, as fundamentally different from the route to power taken by other dynasties. The Ming was not a “restoration,” in this view, but rather another conquest: in the end a military rising led by the brilliant Zhu Yuanzhang 朱元璋 as the Yuan followed the usual pattern and self-destructed. From this perspective, the historical importance of the Ming lay not in the features of economic growth and cultural ourish- ing that historians today often emphasize but rather in the pressures it constantly faced and its own weakening that prepared the way for the Qing. (If later Republican historiography treated the Yuan as an alien conquest, the Ming as a restoration, and the Qing as another alien conquest, such was the logic of racial/national identity. But in the Republican period the self-conscious multi-ethnic construction of the “Republic of the Five Races” (wuzu gonghe 五族共和)—and ongo- ing imperialist threats—continued to limit the uses of ethnonationalism and encourage nationalists to identify with the state.) In late Qing history textbooks, the Qing conquered China militar- ily like other dynasties. However, the textbooks also made it clear that the Ming had rst self-destructed and the Qing’s military was mostly devoted to mopping up operations against bandits and rumps of the Ming court. For the Ming had long been under military pressures from the northern tribes and eastern pirates.70 (Perhaps textbooks tended to downplay the role of the Manchus in in icting these pressures in the rst place, but they were not ignored.) The Ming, in this view, collapsed in court factionalism and eunuch maneuvering and nally due to the rise of vast bandit armies. Meanwhile, the Great Qing had already taken shape in the Northeast as the Aixinjueluo 愛新覺羅 clan began to conquer and unify neighboring tribes.71 Having moved into Korea and the Liaodong Peninsula, a process that involved struggles with Ming troops, the Great Qing was in effect poised to takeover China by the 1640s. Textbook accounts, however, make it plain that the late Ming emperor hanged himself when “bandits” led by Li Zicheng 李自成 took over Beijing. This was, aside from being technically accurate, part of the pattern of the dynastic cycle. In other words, textbook authors
69 MZLJ: 44a. 70 MZLJ: 54a–55a; JLK: 13b. 71 GXLK: 13a–b. MZLJ: 54a–55b; JLK: 13a–14a.
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were not here engaged in Qing propaganda, nor did they present the conquest that was soon to come as in any way friendly to the Ming, as had some Qing propaganda of the seventeenth century. Rather, it was precisely a conquest and a restoration of imperial order. The Qing entered the pass with the cooperation of Wu Sangui 吳三桂, destroyed Li Zicheng and moved on to the south. There, they faced Ming rem- nant opposition, then the rebellions of the Three Feudatories, and Zheng Chenggong’s (鄭成功) resistance in Taiwan. Textbooks treated Kangxi 康熙, Yongzheng 雍正, and Qianlong 乾隆 in the heroic mode. Zhao Zhengduo proclaimed that these emperors not only defeated all opposition, they established superior government, rectifying the Ming’s mistakes.72 By the eighteenth century the treasury was full and the people prosperous. Ding Baoshu emphasized that the Qing conquered new territories, so that power was spread to its maximum and the arts of government ourished.73 The “Primary Reader” accepted racial terms of analysis, but argued that the Manchus had become assimilated. The “Manchu race” (滿洲種) was itself a subgroup of the Donghu (東胡) race, but since entering the territory of the Chinese, their ceremonies and customs had been sini ed. Indeed, according to the “Primary Reader,” present-day China bene ted from the good points of both Manchus and Han. The groups’ powers might differ, but both stood on the basis of the Classics.74 The text thus admitted the limitations of assimilation, referring to the political supremacy of the Manchus, while still arguing that culture trumped race. And when the text turned to historical discussion proper, it derived the Qing’s legitimacy from the fact of dynastic change—or more speci cally the “unity” (tongyi Zhongguo 統一中國) imposed by the imperial state.75 This was a unity that had existed cyclically (not unbroken) for thousands of years. Textbooks naturally told the story of the rise of the Qing as a trium- phant narrative. Incidents of tragedy and violence—rape and slaughter and exile—found no place in the textbook narratives. Yet what were authors to do with the defeats the Qing had suffered since the 19th century? Should they be played down to shore up the prestige of the
72 GXLK: 13b–14a; see also JLK: 14b–16b. 73 MZLJ: 58b. 74 XDS: 5b. 75 XDS: 7a.
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dynasty? Should they be played up to foster patriotic anger? How could they be explained? Who was at fault? In the case of Ding Baoshu, this material is handled very dryly and succinctly. If there is a ‘ rst cause,’ it is Qing domestic disorder: the White Lotus uprising.76 As several authors noted, Qianlong was not at his best in his old age. At the time, British opium imports were increas- ing, and the court seemed to have little option but to try to prohibit it. In Ding’s account, the Opium War contributed to the Taiping Rebel- lion; the Qing was also forced to give up Hong Kong and open ports to trade. During the British-French expedition against Beijing during the Taiping Rebellion, the emperor was forced to ee while new peace terms were worked out. This brought Russia onto the scene even as the Qing managed to defeat the Taipings. Ding seems to emphasize the lost suzerainty over the nations of Southeast Asia, Korea, and the Liuqiu Islands as much as direct attacks on China itself, a point of view somewhat distinct from modern nationalist feeling. Ding’s textbook ends abruptly with the loss of the Sino-Japanese War of 1895 and the postwar proliferation of Western leaseholds. Not only was Taiwan ceded to Japan permanently, but soon Russia, France, Germany, and Britain were all carving out pieces of China proper. Ding ends his textbook on this utterly bleak note without further comment. Other authors, while maintaining a sober, objective tone, added more telling detail. Zhao Zhengduo jumped from the glory days of Qianlong to the Opium War, and in addition to China’s territorial losses, recounted each indemnity “extorted” from the Qing: 21 million taels of silver after the First Opium War, 16 million after the Second Opium War, 200 million after the Sino-Japanese War (increased by another 30 million after the Triple Intervention), and no less than 450 million in the wake of the Boxer Uprising.77 In Zhao’s account, there is little hint of domestic trouble before Britain started the rst Opium War and the foreigners began opening China’s ports, taking control of China’s traditional dependencies (Vietnam, Korea), and seizing Chinese territory. There is no doubt of the foreigners’ aggression, though Zhao, like Ding, refrains from moral or even strategic discussions. Why the foreigners behaved the way they did is not Zhao’s concern, though
76 MZLJ: 60b–69a. 77 GXLK: 14b–16b.
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he does note that the Japanese had long desired Korea, and students are left in little doubt of the foreigners’ commercial interests—at least their desire to pro t from the selling of opium. Moving beyond Ding’s chronology, Zhao discusses the Russo-Japanese War, highlighting China’s neutrality, and concluding that while Manchuria remained of cially Chinese real power had passed into Japan’s hands.78 Nonetheless, Zhao ends his textbook on an optimistic note. The disaster of the Boxers had inspired Chinese reformers (though he avoids the controversy of the 1898 reforms), and Japan’s defeat of Russia seemed to con rm the effectiveness of constitutional government. China was now preparing for a constitution, which, Zhao promised, boded well for the future.79 Fu Guangnian, too, effectively began the story of Qing decline—not that the term was used—with British opium. He only then turned back to White Lotus Rebellion, which, after all, had been suppressed.80 But by the mid-19th century, both foreign pressures and domestic turmoil were taking their toll. Fu described the setbacks to the Qing in much the same terms as the other authors, though he added a chapter on the 1898 reform movement. Again, without passing judgment, he noted that in the wake of the Sino-Japanese War the emperor had been attracted by Kang Youwei’s 康有為 notions of self-strengthening (自強) and institutional reform (變法). The empress dowager, however, accused the reformers of plotting rebellion and countermanded the reforms. Soon, the Boxer disaster broke out, but in its wake the court turned to the New Policy reforms: a second round of institutional reform.81 Again, this allowed Fu to end his textbook on a note of optimism: with the triumphal abolition of the traditional examination system and the promise of a constitution in the future. On the other hand, Yao Zuyi, whose textbook generally stressed loyalism and the Qing point of view, painted a bleak picture of the 19th century, and ended with the briefest of notes on the promise of the New Policy’s school system to strengthen China.82 In effect, Yao was suggesting that the next generation would be the ones to save China.
78 GXLK: 17b. 79 GXLK: 18a. 80 JLK: 17b–18a. 81 JLK: 21b –22a. 82 GXZL: 4:63a.
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Conclusion
How did textbook discussions of the Qing contribute to Chinese iden- tity? Surely frank discussions of the defeats in icted on the country over the last half century conveyed the sense of “national humiliation” that was common parlance at the time.83 The pictures of emperors eeing to Rehe and Xi’an were hardly edifying. The key, if largely hidden, issue was not the Qing’s foreignness but its competence. The nature of the dynastic state gave the Qing all the legitimacy it needed, as logically followed from the narrative structure of post-Yu/Xia and post-Qin historiography. Nor were the Qing’s accomplishments for- gotten—the creation of unprecedented territorial claims, population size, and general prosperity. More importantly, for anti-revolutionary reformers, at least, the threat to China—which after all provoked all the of cial discussion of patriotism—came from the “White race.” No longer did Chinese rulers have to worry about Xiongnu, or Donghu, or Tartars. Today’s struggle set the Yellow Race against the White, as Ding Baoshu, echoing much rhetoric of the period, frankly stated in his preface. Similarly, not only did the “Primary Reader” argue that the Manchus had become assimilated, as we have seen. In addition, several history textbooks pointed out that of the various dynasties with foreign elements (including even the great Tang), all these foreigners had belonged to the Yellow Race. The implicit argument, in terms of debates known to the textbooks writers if not all their young students, was that the various peoples of China needed to unite—through seri- ous governmental reform—to meet the new threat from the West (that is, the White race). Nonetheless, historical narratives that in effect taught a state-based nationalism were a double-edged sword for the Qing. Without the move from dynastic legitimacy to state nationalism, the Qing could not claim the right to rule in a world much concerned with “race” and the sup- posed naturalness of the “nation-state.” Yet such history also taught that the dynasty’s rst duty was to defend the borders. The Qing had survived much by the rst decade of the 20th century, but in asking its people for “patriotism” it was also promising a new relationship between
83 See also XDS: 3b. For intellectuals’ concerns over the issue, see Cohen 2002. “National humiliation” was ritualized during the Republican period and has been periodically revived since: see Callahan 2006.
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the state and the people. History could not speak to the unprecedented demands of the 20th century; its promise was that although dynasties came and went, the Chinese state endured. The Chinese state might endure, but the state, at least as embodied in any particular government, did not represent the ultimate locus of loyalty. Something even larger was at stake. Ding Baoshu’s preface is unusual among late Qing textbooks for its openly programmatic state- ment of political goals. Frankly acknowledging that Chinese textbooks writers had borrowed heavily from Japanese sources, he argued that the Chinese people needed to develop their own “historical point of view” (lishi zhi guannian 歷史之觀念). Their failure to do so had resulted in their forgetting the origins of the “ancestral nation” (zuguo 祖國).84 Ding compared the narration of the affairs of the nation to a grand- son narrating the meritorious deeds of his father and grandfather to encourage clan solidarity. This theme of ancestral remembrance, then, was meant to mark a history that was based on two kinds of time. On the one hand, Ding emphasized the cyclical movement between unity and disunity: this allowed him to bring out the current threat facing China from invading Europeans. At the same time, history nar- rates the evolutionary phenomena of the past and foreshadows future evolution, according to Ding. His ultimate goal, then, was to further advance culture and improve society. He proposed to trace the changes in dynastic rule and territorial conquests in these terms, while noting the in uences on China from other parts of the world and providing students with moral exemplars. Although, as we have seen, Ding drew parallels from the past struggles between Han and non-Han to the contemporary struggle between the Yellow and White races, and although the purpose of his history was frankly to protect the race and promote national power, Ding’s vision of the world was not of zero-sum competition but was actually quite benign. He strongly favored opening China up to outside in uences. His reading of history further suggested to him that when national civilizations were roughly equal in strength, they could not oppress one another. As they maintain contacts and some degree of competition with one another, furthermore, they both progress. Facing European imperialism from a position of weakness, then, China must now absorb European civilization precisely in order to resist its imperialist side.
84 MZLJ: 1a.
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Chinese children must learn to keep the country open and struggle economically. Youth needed to be taught practical business skills to make the country strong and wealthy.85 Ding’s views were typical of the reform generation, and, I think, more or less representative of other history textbook writers in the late Qing.86 History texts narrativized the nation through its roots and development up to the present-day. Textbook authors deliberately recruited history to the nation-building cause, even if not as consistently as they would during the Republican period.87 Yet if the new educational system heeded the calls of Liang Qichao and others for a greater emphasis on contemporary issues, history classes still emphasized the deeds of individuals: emperors, their ministers, generals, and a few thinkers, beginning with Confucius. What did it mean to claim that “China” was a historical subject? Where was the collectivity? Who were the much- vaunted Chinese people? Whether “Zhongguoren” or “guomin,” the people generally appeared only in crowd scenes, passive recipients of history, not its makers. And where was “progress” in these textbook accounts of various dynasties? Arguably, separate sections on thought and cul- ture that were featured to a greater or lesser extent in most textbooks revealed a story of cumulative gain of some kind, though this was not made explicit.88 But in any case the narrative template of dynastic rise and fall left little room for the evolution of the nation. Interestingly, Ding’s stated goals differed from the Qing government’s emphasis on loyalty, though, at least ostensibly, they shared a concern with fostering “patriotism.” Even Ding, however, not only failed to challenge the Qing’s legitimacy but sought to shore it up. Yet, at the same time, history textbooks, even Yao Zuyi’s, strongly implied the Qing had to earn the loyalty of the people by better protecting the nation. Nonetheless, most textbook writers tried to be hopeful. Indeed, to write a history textbook was to proclaim one’s faith in history’s worth and in the project of educating the citizens of China’s future. The Min- istry of Education sought to con ate the Qing with China, loyalism with patriotism, and patriotism with history. History textbooks taught
85 MZLJ: 2a–b. 86 Ding (1866–1935) was an educator and in 1902 co-founded the Wenming Publish- ing Co. (文明書局). I have been able to nd nothing more about his life. 87 Tanaka 2005. And as Robert Culp demonstrates in this volume, Western and Japanese history were, in part, utilized to provide models for Chinese nation-building efforts. 88 Some textbooks also discussed popular customs and beliefs: see XDS: 54a–61a.
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a slightly though signi cantly different lesson: national identity was inseparable from the state, but the Chinese state could not be reduced to the Qing.
References Cited
I Textbooks GXLK. Zhao Zhengduo 趙鉦鐸, Gaodeng xiaoxue lishi keben 高等小學歷史課本 (Upper Primary History Textbook, 3 vols.). N.p.: Zhongguo tushu gongsi, 1907–10. GXZL. Yao Zuyi 姚祖義, Zuixin gaodeng xiaoxue Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu 最新高等小學 中國歷史教科書 (Upper Primary Chinese History Textbook). Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1904. HZBS. Qian Zhonghan 錢宗翰, Huitu Zhongguo baihua shi 繪圖中國白話史 (Illustrated Vernacular History of China). N.p., 1906. JLK. Fu Guangnian 富光年, Jianyi lishi keben 簡易歷史課本 (Simpli ed History Text- book). Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1906. MZLJ. Ding Baoshu 丁寶書, Mengxue Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu 蒙學中國歷史教科書 (Elementary Chinese History Textbook). Shanghai: Wenming shuju, n.d. XDS. (Anon.), Xiaoxue duben shi 小學讀本史 (Primary Reader in History). N.p., n.d., in possession of the Shanghai Library (古籍文獻庫).
II Other Works Cited Abe, Hiroshi (1987), “Borrowing from Japan: China’s First Modern Educational Sys- tem,” in Ruth Hayhoe and Marianne Bastid, eds., China’s Education and the Industrialized World. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 57–80. Anderson, Benedict (1991) Imagined Communities: Re ections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Bastid, Marianne (1987), “Servitude or Liberation: The Introduction of Foreign Edu- cational Practices and Systems to China from 1840 to the Present,” in Ruth Hayhoe and Marianne Bastid, (eds.) (1987), China’s Education and the Industrialized World. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 3–20. Borthwick, Sally (1983), Education and Social Change in China: The Beginnings of the Modern Era. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. Callahan, William A. (2006), “History, Identity, and Security: Producing and Consuming Nationalism in China,” in Critical Asian Studies, 38 (2006) 2, 179–208. Cheng Meibao [May-bo Ching] 程美寶 (2003), “You aixiang er aiguo: Qingmo Guangdong xiangtu jiaocai de guojia huayu” 由愛鄉而愛國:清末廣東省鄉土教 材的國家話語 (To love my native-place, to love my country: The national discourse in Guangdong native-place textbooks during the late Qing), in Lishi yanjiu 歷史研究 2003 no. 4, 68–84. Cheng Meibao 程美寶 (2006), Diyu wenhua yu guojia rentong: Wan-Qing yilai Guangdong wenhuaguan de xingcheng 地域文化與國家認同:晚清以來廣東文化觀的形成 (Local culture and national identity: the formation of Cantonese cultural views since the late Qing). Beijing: Sanlian. Cohen, Paul A. (2002), “Remembering and Forgetting National Humiliation in Twen- tieth-Century China,” in Twentieth-Century China 27 (April, 2002) 2, 1–39. Culp, Robert (2001), “ ‘China—The Land and Its People’: Fashioning Identity in Sec- ondary School History Textbooks, 1911–37,” in Twentieth-Century China, 26 (April, 2001) 2, 17–62.
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Curran, Thomas D. (2005), Educational Reform in Republican China: The Failure of Educators to Create a Modern Nation. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Duara, Prasenjit (1995), Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. FitzGerald, Frances (1980), America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century. New York: Vintage Books. Garagozov, R.R. (2002), “Collective Memory and the Russian ‘Schematic Narrative Template’,” in Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 40 (September-October 2002) 5, 55–89. Guan Xiaohong 關曉紅 (2000), Wan-Qing xuebu yanjiu 晚清學部研究 (Research on the late Qing Ministry of Education). Guangzhou: Guangdong jiaoyu chubanshe. Hayhoe, Ruth (1992), “Cultural Tradition and Educational Modernization: Lessons from the Republican Era,” in Ruth Hayhoe, (ed.) (1992), Education and Modernization: The Chinese Experience. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Hein, Laura, and Mark Selden (eds.) (2000), Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Hu Fengxiang 胡逢祥 and Zhang Wenjian 張文建 (1991), Zhongguo jindai shixue sixiang yu liupai 中國近代史學思想與流派 (The ideas and schools of modern Chinese historiography). Shanghai: Huadong Shifan daxue chubanshe. Huang Jinxing 黃進興 (1997), “Zhongguo jindai shixue de shuangchong weiji: shilun ‘xinshixue’ de dansheng ji qisuo mianlin de kunjing” 中國近代史學的雙重危機: 試論「新史學」的誕生及其所面臨的困境 (The dual crises of Chinese modern historiography: A preliminary discussion on the birth of ‘new history’ and its pre- dicament), in Journal of Chinese Studies (Hong Kong: Institute of Chinese Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong) 6, 263–285. Judge, Joan (2000), “Meng Mu Meets the Modern: Female Exemplars in Early Twen- tieth-Century Textbooks for Girls and Women,” in Jindai Zhongguo funüshi yanjiu 近代中國婦女史研究 8, 129–177. —— (2001), trans. Sun Huimin 孫慧敏, “Gaizao guojia—wan Qing de jiaokeshu yu guomin duben” 改造國家—晚清的教科書與國民讀本 (Transforming the nation: late Qing textbooks and citizen readers), Xin Shixue 新史學 12 ( June, 2001), 1–40. Li Guojun 李國鈞 and Wang Bingzhao 王炳照 (eds.) (2000), vols. 6–7, Zhongguo jiaoyu zhidu tongshi 中國教育制度通史 (General history of the Chinese education system). Jinan: Shandong jiaoyu chubanshe. Li Xiaoqian 李孝遷 (2003), “Qingji Zhinashi, dongyangshi jiaokeshu jieyi chutan” (A preliminary discussion of textbooks on Chinese and Asian history during the Qing), Shixue yuekan 9, 101–110. Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1996 [1902]), “Xin shixue” 新史學 (New history), Yinbingshi heji 飲冰室合集 (Collected essays from the Ice-drinker’s studio). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, wenji 文集 9, 1–32. Liu Longxin 劉龍心 (2002), Xueshu yu zhidu: xueke tizhi yu xiandai Zhongguo shixue de jianli 學術與制度:學科體制與現代中國史學的建立 (Scholarship and institutions: academic disciplines and the establishment of modern Chinese history). Taibei: Yuanliu. Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1997a [1904]), “Rangshu” 攘書 (Book of Expulsion), in Liu Shipei quanji 劉師培全集 (The complete works of Liu Shipei). Beijing: Zhonggong zhong- yang dangxiao chubanshe, vol. 2, 1–17. —— 劉師培 (1997b [1906]) Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu 中國歷史教科書 (Chinese History Textbook), in Liu Shipei quanji 劉師培全集 (The complete works of Liu Shipei). Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, vol. 4, 275–370. Luo Zhitian 羅志田 (2002), “Baorong ruxue, zhuzi yu Huangdi de guoxue: Qingji shiren xunqiu minzu rentong xiangzheng de nuli” 包容儒學、諸子與黃帝的國學: 清季士人尋求民族認同象徵的努力 (The national learning of Confucianism, the various schools, and the Yellow Emperor: Chinese intellectuals’ search for a symbol of national identity in the Qing), Taida lishi xuebao 29 ( June), 87–105.
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—— 羅志田 (ed.) (2001), 20 shiji de Zhongguo: xueshu yu shehui—shixuejuan 20 世紀的中國: 學術與社會─史學卷 (20th century China: scholarship and society—history volume). Jinan: Shantong renmin chubanshe. Mao Lirei 毛禮銳 and Shen Guanqun 沈灌群 (eds.) (1988), Zhongguo jiaoyu tongshi 中 國教育通史 (General history of Chinese education), vol. 4. Jinan: Shandong jiaoyu chubanshe. Qu Xingui 璩鑫圭 and Tang Liangyan 唐良炎 (eds.) (1991), Zhongguo jindai jiaoyushi ziliao huibian: xuezhi yanbian 中國近代教育史資料彙編:學制演變 (Collected historical documents on modern Chinese education: the development of the school system). Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe. Rhoads, Edward J.M. (2000), Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861–1928. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Shangwu yinshuguan 商務印書館 (1909), “Seventh category” 第七類目錄, in Da Qing xin faling 大清新法令 (New of cial regulations). Beijing: Shangwu. Shen Songqiao 沈松僑 (1997), “Wo yi woxie jian Xuanyuan: Huangdi shenhua yu wan Qing de guozu jiangou” 我以我血建軒轅—黃帝神話與晚清的國族建構 (I sacri ce to Huangdi with my blood: Huangdi myth and the construction of nationhood in the late Qing), in Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 28 (December), 1–77. Shu Xincheng 舒新城 (ed.) (1932), Jindai Zhongguo jiaoyu sixiangshi 近代中國教育思 想史 (The history of modern Chinese educational thought). Shanghai: Shanghai shudian). Tanaka Hiroshi 田中比呂志 (2005), “Tsukurareru dent : Shinmatsu minsho no kokumin keisei to rekishi ky kasho” 創られる伝統:清末民初の国民行形成と歷史教科書 (Invented tradition: The formation of the nation and history textbooks in the late Qing and early Republic), Rekishi hy ron no. 659 (March), 42–56. Tang, Xiaobing (1996), Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity: The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao. Stanford: Stanford University Press. VanderVen, Elizabeth (2005), “Village-State Cooperation: Modern Community Schools and Their Funding, Haicheng County, Fengtian, 1905–1931,” in Modern China 31 (April, 2005) 2, 204–235. Wang, Q. Edward (2001), Inventing China Through History: The May Fourth Approach to Historiography. Albany: State University of New York Press. Wang Fansen 王汎森 (1987), Gushibian yundong de xingqi: yige sixiangshi de fenxi 古史辨 運動的興起:一個思想史的分析 (The origins of the antiquity debate movement: an intellectual history analaysis). Taibei: Yunchen wenhua gongsi. —— 王汎森 (2003), “Wan-Qing de zhengzhi gainian yu ‘xin shixue’ ” 晚清的政治概念與 F新史學 X (Late Qing political concepts and the “new history”), in Zhongguo jindai sixiang yu xueshu de xipu 中國近代思想與學術的系譜 (Modern Chinese thought and genealogies of scholarship in modern China). Taibei: Lianjing, 195–220. Wang Jianjun 王建軍 (1996), Zhongguo jindai jiaokeshu fazhan yanjiu 中國近代教科書發 展研究 (Studies on the development of modern Chinese textbooks). Guangdong: Guangdong jiaoyu chubanshe. Wertsch, James V. (2002), Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Xiong Xianjun 熊賢君 (1998), Qianqiu jiye: Zhongguo jindai yiwu jiaoyu yanjiu 千秋基業; 中國近代義務教育研究 (A foundation for centuries: studies of modern compulsory education in China). Wuchang: Huazhong shifan daxue chubanshe. Xu Guansan 許冠三 (1989), Xinshixue jiushinian: 1900 —新史學九十年:一九00— (Ninety years of the new history: 1900 –). Hong Kong: Zhongwen daxue chubanshe. Yuan Yingguang 袁英光 and Zhong Weimin 仲偉民 (1998), “Liu Xhipei yu Zhong- guo lishi jiaokeshu yanjiu” 劉師培與《中國歷史教科書》研究 (Notes on Liu Shipei and the Chinese History Textbook), in Huadong shifan daxue xueban (zhexue shehui kexueban) no. 4, 67–75. Zarrow, Peter (2003), “Old Myth into New History: The Building Blocks of Liang Qichao’s ‘New History’,” in Historiography East & West, 1.2 (2003), 204–241.
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Zhang Kaizhi 張豈之, ed., (1996), Zhongguo jindaishixue xueshushi 中國近代史學學術史 (The history of modern Chinese historiography). Beijing: Zhongguo Shehuikexue chubanshe. Zhang Renfeng 張人鳳 (1997), “Shangwu ‘zuixin jiaokeshu’ de bianzuan jingguo he tedian” 商務《最新教科書》的編纂經過和特點 (How the “new textbooks” series of the Commercial Press were compiled), Bianji xuekan 編輯學刊 no. 3 (www.cp.com. cn/ht/newsdetail.cfm?iCntNo=601, accessed 4 September 2005). Zhao, Gang (2006), “Reinventing China: Imperial Qing Ideology and the Rise of Modern Chinese National Identity in the Early Twentieth Century,” Modern China vol. 32, no. 1 ( January), 3–30. Zheng Zhishu 鄭之書 (1991), “Qingmo minchu de lishi jiaoyu” 清末民初的歷史教育 (History teaching in the late Qing and early Republic), Masters’ Thesis, Taiwan Normal University (國立台灣師範大學歷史研究碩士論文). Zinda, Yvonne Schulz (2004), “Propagating New ‘Virtues’—‘Patriotism’ in Late Qing Textbooks for the Moral Education of Primary Students,” in Michael Lackner and Natascha Vittinghoff, eds., Mapping Meanings: The Field of New Learning in Late Qing China. Leiden: Brill, 685–710. Zou Zhenhuan 鄒振環 (2001), “Shilun wan Qing jindai dilixue jiaokeshu de bianzuan” 試論晚清近代地理學教科書的編纂 (A preliminary analysis of the compilation of modern geography textbooks in the late Qing), in Shanghai tushuguan lishi wenxian yanjiusuo 上海圖書館歷史文獻研究所, ed,. Lishi yu wenxian 歷史與文獻 (History and documents), vol. 5. Shanghai: Shanghai kexue jishu chubanshe, 273–308.
hon&culp_f3_18-54.indd 54 5/22/2007 4:48:18 PM CLASSIFYING PEOPLES: ETHNIC POLITICS IN LATE QING NATIVE-PLACE TEXTBOOKS AND GAZETTEERS
May-bo Ching
In the rst decade of the 20th century, the Qing government announced a series of school regulations as part of its reform program. Supplemen- tary to this nationalistic education reform agenda was the promotion of native-place (xiangtu 鄉土) education at the primary school level. The Qing government believed that through learning “from near to distant,” students would be able to see the connections between their own native-place and the nation, and their patriotic sentiments would be cultivated as a result. Consequently, a considerable number of native-place textbooks (xiangtu jiaokeshu 鄉土教科書) and native-place gazetteers (xiangtuzhi 鄉土志) were published in a number of provinces from 1904 to 1911. However, because native-place textbooks and gazet- teers were in most cases compiled by local literati, their consideration of their own local interest was often articulated side by side with their expression of patriotism. In some cases, traces of con icts of interest articulated by different dialect groups within the same province can be detected. In late Qing Guangdong, Cantonese-Hakka con icts became intensi ed as a result of the rise of ethnic consciousness among the Hakka literati. Focusing on the Cantonese-Hakka con icts manifested in the native-place textbooks and other relevant literature published in late Qing, this paper examines how ethnic politics was expressed and manipulated in textbooks compiled and applied in a local context.
Native-place Education in the Late Qing
Elsewhere I have discussed the implementation of native-place education in the late Qing by analyzing a number of native-place textbooks and gazetteers compiled in Guangdong Province.1 In this paper I will only give a brief account of the subject before looking into the focal issue,
1 See Cheng 2003.
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namely, ethnic politics expressed in textbooks. The idea of native-place education was of cially introduced for the rst time in the “Approved Junior Primary School Regulations” pronounced by the Qing govern- ment in 1904. According to the regulations, elements of native-place education should be attached to the history, geography, and science curriculum. The signi cance of native-place education, however, has to be appreciated against the wider background of national education. It is clearly stated in the regulations that the ve-year junior primary education was intended “to enlighten the students to learn what they should learn; to establish the foundation for their understanding of proper human relationships, and for promoting their love for the nation.”2 Native-place education was therefore a means to an end. According to the 1904 regulations, the essence of history education was to let students know “the important issues and virtuous conducts of various sage emperors” in order to nurture their spirit of national- ism and loyalty. Teachers should start with “native-place history” by telling students the history of local celebrities so as “to strengthen their will.” Likewise, the teaching of geography should also be started with geographical knowledge of the vicinity. Maps of the county, province, nation (the Qing empire), Eastern and Western hemispheres, and the ve continents should be posted on the wall so that students could understand the world “from near to distant” ( you jin er yuan 由近而遠). The same principle should also be applied to the teaching of science. Before studying the animals, plants, and minerals in the wild, students should be instructed to become familiar with the appliances used in their classrooms and schools and the animals, plants, and minerals seen in their backyards.3 In every respect, learning “from near to distant” parallels the attempt to link the notion of loving one’s native place with that of loving one’s nation. Students were expected to see the connections between their own native place, counties, provinces, and the nation as a whole. In view of the new of cial policies, local literati acted quickly to respond to the possible demand. Extant collections show that consider- able numbers of native-place textbooks and native-place gazetteers (as
2 Quoted from Qu and Tang 1991: 291. According to the 1904 school regulations, children were expected to attend junior primary school at the age of seven and study there for ve years. Afterwards, they could attend senior primary schools, education that lasted for four years. 3 Qu and Tang 1991: 295–296.
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supplementary and preparatory materials to textbooks) were compiled from 1904 to 1911. The background of the compilers varied from established degree holders active at the county or provincial levels, members of Guoxue baocun hui 國學保存會 (Society for Preserving National Learning) who were stationed at Shanghai to advance their latent anti-Manchu agenda, to radical local literary men who later joined the revolutionary Tongmenghui 同盟會 (Society of the United Alliance). Their political orientation might be different, but with the exception of the members of Guoxue baocun hui, all other compilers were local leaders who were deeply involved in provincial and county politics and education matters. They were signi cant gatekeepers in disseminating and interpreting the political and social ideas promoted by the government and individual intellectuals at the national level. In spite of the requirements made in the regulations, no clear instruc- tions concerning the compilation of native-place textbooks were given. The only available of cial document concerning the compilation of native-place textbooks is a guideline on the compilation of native-place gazetteers issued by the minister of education in 1905. According to this guideline, local literati were encouraged to compile native-place gazetteers before native-place education was put into practice.4 It is unclear whether the guideline was also applied to the compilation of native-place textbooks. What is certain is that native-place gazetteers were regarded as part of the native-place education teaching materials and, to some extent, the preparatory materials for compiling native- place textbooks. According to the guideline, the table of contents of a native-place gazetteer should include the followings: 1. History (lishi 歷史) 2. Government’s accomplishment (zhengji 政績) 3. Military affairs (bingshi 兵事) 4. Biographies of the Elderly (qijiu 耆舊) 5. Humans / Race (renlei 人類) 6. Households (hukou 戶口) 7. Surnames and lineages (shizu 氏族)
4 “Xuewu dachen zou ju bianshuju jiandu biancheng xiangtuzhi limu ni tongchi bianji pian,” 217–218. According to Wang Xingliang 王興亮 and Zhao Zongqiang 趙宗強 the guideline was drawn by Huang Shaoji 黃紹箕 the superintendent of the Imperial Compilation Bureau. See Wang Xingliang and Zhao Zongqiang 2005. Regarding Qing’s government policy of examining and approving the use of textbooks, see Wang Jianjun 1996.
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8. Religions (zongjiao 宗教) 9. Occupations (shiye 實業) 10. Geography (dili 地理) 11. Local produce (wuchan 物產) At rst glance, the overall structure of a native-place gazetteer would not have been signi cantly different from a traditional gazetteer, albeit such new categories as “renlei” (humans / race), “zongjiao” (religion), and “shiye” (occupations) were proposed.5 Yet local literati who felt involved in the late Qing reform movement did perceive native-place gazetteers as a novelty, and it was exactly in the chapters dealing with these new categories that local literati made an effort to rephrase their description of their native place in order to t it into the national agenda.
From Near to Distant: Local Pride and National Interest
The primary task of the native-place gazetteer and textbook compilers was to create a chain that connected their localities with the nation. Above all, one had to ask what constituted a “xiangtu.” The answer given by the guideline is that a “xiangtu consists of four categories, namely, the self-governing region of the prefecture ( fu zizhi zhi di 府自治之地), the self-governing region of the subprefecture (zhili zhou zizhi zhi di 直隸州 自治之地), the department (zhou 州), and the county (xian 縣).” Trans- lating the Chinese term “zizhi zhi di” as “self-governing region” does not re ect what was being practiced in reality. But the rhetoric echoed the local activism motivated by the government. At any rate, the de nition of “xiangtu” as it appeared in the guideline is not clearly differentiated from the administrative hierarchy outlined in traditional Chinese gazet- teers: all localities were de ned and perceived from the sovereign’s point of view in administrative terms, and were signi cant only because they were part of the Chinese territory. Within such a framework, it seems that compilers still found it feasible to relate “xiangtu” to the unclear and yet novel idea of “guojia” 國家, and thus “yimin” 邑民 (native residents) to “guomin” 國民 (national). The Shouban Chaozhou xiangtu dili jiaokeshu 首版潮州鄉土地理教科書 (Chaozhou Native-Place Geography Textbook, rst edition, 1909) relates
5 “Xuewu dachen zou ju bianshuju,” 218–223.
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people’s love for their native place with their love for their nation in the following way: The teaching of geography is highly relevant to the cultivation of patriotism. The foundation of people’s love for their nation was their love for their native place. Thus the teaching of native-place geography is pressing. It is especially true in the case of teaching the native-place geography of Chaozhou. Since the beginning of maritime trade, foreign powers have considered China their theater for competition. Previously, the gateways of eastern and western parts of China were blocked. With the improvement in transport, more and more of our senior and junior male members went to Southeast Asia to do business. The total number of these people is uncountable. Subsequently, foreigners used a number of tricks to appeal to and try to assimilate [the Chinese]. However, [the Chinese] were as sturdy as stone pillars, and were not moved at all. This is because they love their nation. They live such a happy life there, and transport is so convenient, why are they not [induced by foreigners]? How is their affection for their nation roused? This is because our schools are founded everywhere. Our senior male members said, “It is appropriate and correct to teach our junior members with native-place gazetteers.”6 Education, in particular native-place education, is therefore crucial to the cultivation of patriotism among overseas Chinese. In terms of teach- ing techniques, children were expected to be instructed with something “near” ( jin 近) before being taught anything distant ( yuan 遠). In other words, native-place education had to start with something that children found familiar. The compiler of Xuebu shending Jiaying xinti xiangtu dili jiaokeshu 學部審定嘉應新體鄉土地理教科書 (New Style Jiaying Native- place Geography Textbook, approved by the Ministry of Education) wrote in the style of traveling journals and introduced to students some local geographical knowledge that he found essential: Chapter One: Jiaying is situated in the eastern part of Guangdong. We love our native place, and we should travel around there. Now I will make an appointment with the students. We will tour Jiaying Department. We will start by walking in the city and then go to the thirty-six villages. Chapter Two: Waking up in the morning, we walk around the city. For civil affairs, there is the Of ce of the Department Magistrate, which oversees the administration of the whole of the department. There is the Of ce of the Chief of Police, which bears the responsibility of maintaining public security. There is the Of ce of the Instructor, which supervises
6 Cai Huize 蔡惠澤, “Preface”, in Weng and Huang 1909.
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the schools of the department. For military affairs, there are the Of ces of the Brigade Commander and Garrison Commandant, both of which take up defense assignments.7 Likewise, the teaching of natural science in a “local” sense meant the teaching of local produce, which is, again, related to the promotion of patriotism. For a short while after the introduction of the new educa- tion system, Japanese textbooks were translated into Chinese and used in Chinese classrooms. The result was, as pointed out by some critics, that Chinese students became familiar with Japanese plant specimens, but knew nothing about the variety of plants grown in their own neighborhood.8 The 1909 edition of Xuexian shending Chaozhou Xiangtu Jiaokeshu 學憲審定潮州鄉土教科書 (Chaozhou Native-place Textbook, authorized by the Ministry of Education), therefore, emphasizes that “the animals, plants, and minerals entered in this book are those seen by children in their daily lives. Therefore, no illustrations are needed, as children know exactly what they are like.”9 For example, in one chapter of the book, the mustard plant, a plant indigenous to Chaozhou, is introduced in the following way: Mustard plant: Its smell is strong. Its vernacular name is “big vegetable.” It becomes tastier after a period of frost. Commoners’ families have it salted and called it “salty vegetable,” which is frequently consumed by Chaozhou people.10 Yet scienti c knowledge was more than scienti c, and the importance of local produce went beyond a locality. In traditional gazetteers, local produce was entered because it was supposedly the tribute presented by a locality to the state. In the late Qing native-place textbooks, affection for one’s local produce was connected with the nationalistic discourse by applying the modern concept of “economic rights” (liquan 利權). Pride in local produce went hand in hand with anxiety caused by the in ux of foreign goods. In this regard, the following comments in Zuixin Chenghai Xiangtu Gezhi Jiaokeshu 最新澄海鄉土格致教科書 (Chenghai Native-place Science Textbook, the latest edition) are telling: Sugar: Sugar cane is planted in the yard and contains much sugar. . . . Most of our exported sugar is red sugar, which is transported to Tianjin 天津
7 Xiao and Yang n.d.: chapters 1 and 2. 8 Lin 1909. Lin’s book was prefaced by Cui Bingyan 崔炳炎. Cui was the magis- trate of Chaoyang County. 9 Lin 1909: “Editorial Notes”. 10 Lin 1909: chapter 21.
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and Yingkou 營口 for sale. Many of our natives make fortunes out of the sugar business. At present, more and more foreign sugar is being imported, and is seizing the market of local sugar. If we do not nd ways to reverse this trend, our sugar industry will decline.11 Further elaboration of such a theme can be found in other native-place textbooks and gazetteers. The compilers appreciated the fashionable ideas of “enlightenment” (wenming 文明), reform ( gailiang 改良), progress ( jinbu 進步), military spirit (shangwu jingshen 尚武精神), economic rights (liquan 利權), and the survival of the ttest ( yousheng liebai 優勝劣敗); and regarded all these as the necessary conditions for strengthening the nation and reinforcing the notion of “being loyal to the sovereign and showing gratitude to the nation” (zhongjun baoguo 忠君報國). The Ren- hua xiangtuzhi 仁化鄉土志 (Renhua Native-place Gazetteer) claims that “once children are instructed with knowledge about their localities, they will realize how prosperous their native places used to be, and how much they have declined.” “Their cranial nerves will thus be stimulated, and they will become more concerned with their homeland, more absorbed by the idea of reform and progress, and more occupied by the belief in the survival of the ttest.”12 Similar ideas are expressed in the Shixing xian xiangtuzhi 始興縣鄉土志 (Shixing Native-place Gazetteer): [It is crucial to] make students familiar with [native-place knowledge] from their childhood, so that they will not leave their native village thought- lessly. They will also know that not an inch of Chinese territory can be given to others. Their military spirit will be nurtured in advance. They will be able to stand up to the world that is full of competition. This is how our race can be preserved (baozhong 保種). Our local fauna, ora, and minerals might not have much unique commercial value, but if we can make some modi cations and progress, we will be able to win in the commercial war. Our economic rights can be rescued, our national income will increase, and our economic losses will be compensated. All these are urgent and related to the development of our nation. Sources [of commercial value] should be explored as quickly as possible.13 Understandably, the commerce and industrial prospects portrayed in the native-place gazetteer and textbooks are, in most cases, merely imaginary. Once again, the compilers had to reconstitute the old cat- egories to t the new picture. The four categories of people, or four
11 Cai Pengyun n.d.: vol. 4, chapter 17. 12 Renhua xiangtuzhi n.d., “Xuyan” (Preface). 13 Zhang 1907: “Xu” (Preface).
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occupations (scholars, farmers, artisans, traders), were therefore assigned new missions: There are many kinds of artisans in our locality. Most of them work as carpenters, builders, and tailors. . . . At present, [the local people] remain unenlightened. Wandering around, most local people lack expertise. If we do not establish technical plants as soon as possible, our economic rights will be damaged and our people will have nothing to count on. The total number of artisans working in the seventy-two occupations amounts to no more than 3,220. Nonetheless, there is no celebrated expert at all. In an era of commercial war, commerce is the only means to develop a nation. Similarly, only by developing distinctive commercial activities can long-term development be sustained. There is no commercial school in our community. Our people know nothing about currency, remittance, bank- ing, and bookkeeping. . . . If our people continue to abide by old practices and do not pursue commercial studies, I am afraid that our industry will never make any progress, and our commerce will never be competitive enough. Our locality will become more and more impoverished, and will not be able to stand up to the world of struggle.14 To the compilers, opening up China to the world could be both threat- ening and bene cial. The appearance of modern infrastructures in Shantou 汕頭 (Swatow), which had been a treaty port since 1860, was noted positively in Zuixin Chenghai xiangtu gezhi jiaokeshu: To the south of Shantou is Jiaoshi 角石, at which the British Consu- late is located. The German Consulate is located at the eastern end of Shantou. . . . In the treaty port, charity halls are constructed, commercial associations are founded, hospitals are established, and electric lights are laid. A water supply company will be set up soon.15 Such chapter titles as “Railways,” “Electricity lines,” and “Postal service” acknowledge the idea of modernity in its own right. The modernity discourse was an extension of the notion of self-strengthening, which was in turn a continuation of Wei Yuan’s famous statement of “learning the superior techniques of the barbarians to control the barbarians.” To the Chinese literati, the presence of foreign powers posed a threat to the economic rights of China, but the material development made by foreign powers also served as a symbol of advance and progress.
14 Zhang 1907: “Shiye” (Occupations), 39. 15 Cai Pengyun n.d.: vol. 2, chapter 16.
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In the native-place gazetteers and textbooks, both foreign imports and local products (as long as they had undergone a process of improvement and modernization) served as symbols of modernity. The logic of this argument is that, with proper development of foreign trade and local produce, a locality would be able to contribute to the development of the nation as a whole.
National Unity and Ethnic Division
To the late Qing local literati, the strengthening of the nation depended not only on material constructions, but also on a rede nition of the concept of “min” 民 (subjects of the emperor), or in other words, the transformation of the concept of “min” into that of “guomin” 國民 (nationals/citizens). In view of the rhetorical change in the sovereign- subject relationship, some native-place textbook compilers found it ne- cessary to rephrase their local identity. The compiler of Xinning xiangtu dili 新寧鄉土地理 (Xinning Native-place Geography Textbook) con- nected the various layers of identities in the following manner: Where does the idea of native-place geography originate? Everyone understands the various expressions of people (min), namely, “nationals” ( guomin), “villagers” (xiangmin 鄉民), and “natives” (turen 土人). The idea of people should be substantiated by the idea of native place and nation. A national should not forget his or her nation; a villager should not forget his or her village, and a native should not forget his or her native place.16 It is noteworthy that in contrast to local literati, national opinion lead- ers, such as Liang Qichao 梁啟超, dismissed local identities and found them a barrier to the construction of national identities. Liang himself had undergone some changes in this regard. Back in 1899, when he published an article entitled “The Future of the Chinese Race,” Liang asserted that the “self-governing” tradition of lineages and villages in China was the foundation for making Chinese the “most powerful race” in the world. However, in many of his articles published after 1902, Liang considered village and lineage organizations unfavorable to the development of a Chinese nation. In his well-known “On New Citizens” (Xinminshuo 新民說), Liang said that the Chinese people regarded their nation as somewhere “under the heavens” (tianxia 天下).
16 Lei Zepu n.d.: “Zixu” 自敍 (Preface).
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All the teachings that the Chinese received made them “quali ed to be an individual; quali ed to be a family member; quali ed to be a member of a village or a lineage; quali ed to be a member of tianxia, but not quali ed to be the member of a nation.”17 Liang Qichao might be in uential at a national level, but local literati were content to present their own de nition of min according to their own interpretation, whether it meant “national” or “subject.” Conforming to the Guidelines for Compiling Native-Place Gazetteers, compilers’ major concern was to decide who within a locality could be counted as “qimin” 齊民, i.e., “subjects who were brought under the rule of the sovereign.” According to the guidelines, whether a person can be counted as “qimin” depends on whether he or she satis es three criteria: (1) In religious terms (zongjiao), one should not be converted to “other religions,” such as Christianity and Islam; (2) In occupational terms (shiye), one should be engaged in one of the four traditional occupations, i.e., scholars, farmers, artisans, or traders; (3) In racial terms (renlei ), one will be categorized as “other species” (tazhong) if one was neither Han Chinese nor Manchu.18 The introduction of the idea of race into China in the late 19th century complicated the de nition of Chinese idea of qimin. Like many other Western concepts, the concept of “race” was transplanted from Japan and translated into Chinese as “renlei” or “zhongzu.”19 To most Chinese intellectuals, racial discourse was relevant because proof of the racial strength of Chinese implied that China was able to cope with Western challenges. To revolutionaries, racial discourse was meaning- ful, as they needed evidence to argue that only the Han Chinese, the descendant of the Yellow Emperor (and thus the “yellow race”), was legitimate to rule China. From the Han Chinese literati’s point of view, Han Chinese were superior to Manchus, not only in cultural, but also in biological, terms. This Han Chinese chauvinist opinion can be found in the works published by the members of Society for Preserving National Learn- ing. However, because all textbooks had to be examined by the of cial
17 Liang 1899, 1902. 18 “Xuewu dachen zou ju bianshuju,” 220. See also Luo Xianxiu n.d.: “Shiye” 實業 (Occupations). Wu Mei and Gong Bingzhang n.d.: “Shiye,” 19. 19 For the introduction of racial concepts into China, see Dikötter 1992.
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education authority, the native-place textbooks compiled by the society contain no anti-Manchu element. If there is any, the message is implicit or understated. For example, the Zhili xiangtu lishi jiaokeshu 直隸鄉土 歷史教科書 (Zhili Native-place History Textbook), published by the society, attributed the fall of the Ming to its ignorance of the strategic importance of Yanjing. The Zhili xiangtu dili jiaokeshu 直隸鄉土地理教 科書 (Zhili Native-place Geography Textbook), compiled by the same author, echoes the historical narrative by discussing the geographical location of Zhili in the following way: Since the Yellow Emperor made Zhuolu 涿鹿 [at Zhili] his capital, [the territory of Zhili] was thus resided purely by Han Chinese. How- ever, situated at the frontier, Zhili was frequently disturbed by northern barbarians. . . . In the Song and the Ming Dynasties, [China] was ruled consecutively by Khitan, Jurchens, and Mongolians. Members of the Han had to move to the south.20 The reason for ending all historical accounts at the Ming dynasty is obvious. Nonetheless, to most native-place textbooks and gazetteers compilers, racial discourse expressing any trace of anti-Manchu senti- ments was out of their consideration. Rather, the traditional theme of acculturation, as expressed in conventional gazetteers, was replicated in the native-place gazetteers and textbooks. According to the above- mentioned 1905 guideline, under the item of “Humans / Race” (renlei ), a native-place gazetteer should answer the following questions: If there are any other species of humans (tazhong ren 他種人) in addition to bannermen and Han Chinese households living in this area, their origins should be investigated, their descendants should be accounted; the number of their households, their residence, and their customs should also be recorded. Roughly speaking, these peoples include the Hui 回, Fan 番, She 畲, Luo 猓, Miao 苗, Yao 猺, Zhuang 獞, Ling 狑, Ya 犽, Lang 狼, Ming 皿, Yang 犭央, Dasheng 打牲, Diao 貂, Li 黎, and Tusi 土司 (indigenous chiefs).21 In answering these questions, some native-place textbooks and gazetteers compilers took the opportunity to assert the racial purity of their local residents. The 1906 edition of Guangdong xiangtushi jiaokeshu 廣東鄉土 史教科書 (Guangdong Native-place Textbook) states that:
20 Chen Qinglin 1907: chapter 17. 21 “Xuewu dachen zou ju bianshuju,” 218–223.
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In the Southern Song dynasty, to escape from turmoil, many people migrated from the Central Plain to Zhuji xiang 珠璣巷 at Nanxiong 南雄 [a county of Guangdong]. This is why most Yue people [Cantonese] are of the Chinese race (Zhongguo zhong 中國種).22 Another version of the same acculturation story said that the aboriginal Yue race gradually diminished against the rise of Han race: Since the Qin authority moved some of its subjects to reside in Guang- dong, Han people (Han zhong) began to enter Guangdong. In the Tang- Song period, people from the central plain came to the south to escape from the turmoil. Consequently, Han people (Han zhong) ourished more and more in Guangdong and the indigenous Yue people (Yue zhong) vanished gradually.23 This “migration-acculturation-evolution” theme can easily be found in the historical narratives of traditional local gazetteers. What is new to the native-place textbooks and gazetteers is the inclusion of the con- cept of “zhong” (race) in a biological sense. It implies an introduction of racial discourse into the narratives of local history. Likewise, some native-place gazetteer compilers answered the ques- tions posed by the 1905 guidelines by adopting a “ ll-in-the-blanks” approach. Guangning xian xiangtuzhi 廣寧縣鄉土志 (Guangning County Native-place Gazetteer) claims that in Guangning County, there is no other species of humans (tazhong ren), nor are there any banner- man households.24 The Shixing xian xiangtuzhi 始興縣鄉土志 (Shixing County Native-place Gazetteer), alternatively, provides a more elaborate answer: Our county is located in a remote area. Apart from the natives, we never have bannermen, nor do we have such species of people as Hui 回, Fan 番, Luo 猓, Miao 苗, He 犭合, and Ya 犽. In the mountainous area to the south of our county, there used to be some Yao people 猺人 com- ing from Lian Mountain. There they built their shelters and grew some miscellaneous crops. In recent years, these mountainous Yao people, who previously lived in the mountains, were driven out by bandits and migrated to somewhere else. Traces of Yao people have vanished almost completely as of a few years ago.25
22 Huang Foyi 1906: chapter 2. 23 Huang Peikun and Cen Xixiang 1908: chapter 19. 24 Wu Mei and Gong Bingzhang n.d.: 18. 25 Zhang Baohe n.d.: 36.
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It is worth noting that Shixing County has been populated by Hakka- speaking people since the Ming-Qing period. By today’s linguistic and cultural standards, Shixing County could be classi ed as a “Hakka” region. Nonetheless, the compilers of Shixing xian xiangtuzhi did not apply the term “kejia” to refer to the majority of local residents, but the term “tuzhu” 土著 instead. In the chapter on surnames and lineages, the compilers stated that most residents were the descendants of great surnames originated from Emperors Yan and Huang, and they were all “tuzhu” with no single case of “keji” 客籍 (guest households). By contrast, in the native-place gazetteer of another Hakka-speak- ing county in Guangdong, Xingning, an explicit expression of Hakka identity can be found. In the chapter on “Humans/Race” (renlei ), the compilers of Xingning xian xiangtuzhi 興寧縣鄉土志 (Xingning Native- place Gazetteer) stated that: The people (renlei ) of our county were originally crowned nobles com- ing from the central plain. When the Song rulers moved to the south, these people also migrated southward. They were in most cases migrants from Fujian and Jiangxi. Their language and customs differed from that of the indigenous population and were called by the indigenous people kejia 客家. Hence when they migrated to other places, they also called themselves kejia. To show that they do not forget their ancestral origin, they never change their language and customs. . . . The Yao 猺 people originated from the race of Panhu 槃瓠種 and were dispersed in the mountainous region of Lingnan 嶺南. . . . In the early Qing time, there were still some Yao people who lived in stone shelters in Tieshan zhang 鐵山嶂, which was located 60 li to the east of our county. They lived a simple life and remained uncivilized. Few of them were intelligent. The Yao people have disappeared gradually since a hundred years ago. . . . An alternative species of Yao was She 畲. They lived by re plowing, hunt- ing, and collecting fruits. . . . Their race has been vanishing and can no longer be investigated. The Dan 蛋 households were previously under the authority of the Fishing Tax Of ce (Hebo suo 河泊所, established in the Hongwu reign of the Ming dynasty) . . . At present, only two or three residents with the family name Mai are of the Dan race (Danzu 蛋族). On top of this, there are ve to six hundred Sha 沙-surnamed residents, who are of Mongolian origin. Yet their language and customs have already been transformed. There are no Hui 回 and Fan 番 people in our county.26
26 Luo Xianxiu n.d.: chapter on “renlei.”
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The above citation states that in Xingning County, “tazhong ren” occu- pies only a small minority; and that the major residents are migrants from the central plain. They were called by the indigenous people kejia, which later also became their self-marker. What is not stated clearly in this chapter is that the kejia residents are equivalent to “Han,” but the “fact” that they are descendents of central plain migrants implies that they are of the Han race. Despite the claims made by the Hakka, in the eyes of some Cantonese literati, whether the Hakka people could be considered as descendants of the central plain migrants was doubtful. In a chapter that dealt with the racial composition and origins of different groups, the Guangdong xiangtu dili jiaokeshu 廣東鄉土地理教科書 (Guangdong Native-place Geography Textbook), complied by Huang Jie 黃節 and published in 1907 by the Society for Preserving National Learning, states that: The Yue region [Guangdong] has been populated by a pure Han race since the Qin dynasty, when the people in the north were exiled and moved to the Yue region. Before the Qin dynasty, the Hundred Yue peoples (Baiyue 百粤) were of different races. They once had their own rulers, who submitted themselves to the Yue Kingdom. The King of Yue [that is, Gou Jian 勾踐] was the descendant of Wu Yu 無余, the son borne by a concubine of Shaokang 少康, the emperor of the Xia dynasty.27 Therefore, those descendants of Shaokang who moved to the region south of Five Ranges (Lingnan) were of the Han race. Those [of this race] who mixed with the Hundred Yue races were called Zhuang 獞. Now, the Zhuang, Yao 猺, Lang 狼, Li 黎 (also known as the Li 俚, a variation of which is known as the Qi 歧), the Dan 蜑, Kejia 客家 [Hakka], and Fulao 福佬 [Hoklo] races are still found scattered in differ- ent areas [of the Yue region].28 Following the above paragraph, the compiler attached a table which indicated an even clearer distinction and classi cation among the dif- ferent ethnic groups of Guangdong:29
27 For a record of the legendary ancestors of Gou Jian, see Shiji 史記 1975: vol. 5, 1739. It is also stated in the Shiji that the emperors of the Xia dynasty were the descendants of the Yellow Emperor. See Shiji 1975: vol. 1, 49. 28 Huang Huiwen 1907: chapter 12, 6a–7a. 29 I have simpli ed the original table, which lists also the regions inhabited by these ethnic groups.
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Table 1: Classi cation of peoples as illustrated in the 1907 edition of Guangdong xiangtu dili jiaokeshu
Han race a) Zhuang 獞 (the descendants of the Yue who mixed with the Hundred Yue) b) The people exiled by the Qin dynasty and settled in the Yue region Hundred Yue a) Liao 獠 races b) Li 俚 c) Yao 猺 Races coming a) Kejia [Hakka] 客家 from outside b) Fulao [Hoklo] 福佬 c) Dan race 蜑
The table clearly shows that, according to the compiler, the Liao, Li, Yao, Hakka, Hoklo, and Dan were not of the Han race, whereas the Zhuang people were a less pure Han race. Without mentioning the Cantonese by name, the table implies that the Cantonese were equiva- lent to the people who had come from the north, because it was well known that the exiles moved to Nanhai County when Guangzhou city was founded. By implication, the Cantonese were pure Han. The implication that Hakka people were not of Han racial stock immediately provoked a storm of protest among the Hakka literati in Guangdong. Among them were Huang Zunxian 黃遵憲 (1848–1905), Qiu Fengjia 丘逢甲 (1864–1912), and Zou Lu 鄒魯 (1885–1954), all of whom were at the time actively involved in either reform or revo- lutionary affairs. A Society for the Investigation of the Origin of the Hakka People was formed among the Hakka people from Jiaying, and further actions were threatened. Zou Lu recalled in later years that he “called upon several tens of the Education Promotion Of ces (quanxue suo, an ad hoc of ce of local gentry for promoting new-style educa- tion during the late Qing reform period) run by the Hakka and Hoklo people in Guangdong Province to present their disagreements, and to take action to stop the publication of the textbooks.”30 Representatives from the Education Promotion Of ce of Dapu 大埔 County, a Hakka- speaking county under the jurisdiction of Chaozhou Prefecture, sent their complaints to the Ministry of Education. According to the of cial
30 Zou Lu and Zhang Xuan 1910: 21.
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reply, the controversial textbook was once used in the Guangdong Law and Political Sciences Academy (Guangdong fazheng xuetang 廣東 法政學堂) and caused considerable disputes. Eventually, the Ministry of Education banned the publication of the book.31 The Society for Preserving National Learning compromised by publishing a revised edition of the textbook in 1908, removing the whole paragraph on the Hakka and the Hoklo.32 Criticism of Huang Jie was extended to another current Hakka native-place gazetteer. In the “Local Celebrities” section of the Xingning xiangtuzhi 興寧鄉土志 (Xingning Native-place Gazetteer), the biogra- phy of Hu Xi 胡曦, a notable local Hakka scholar, was accounted as follows: [Hu Xi] died in 1907. A few days before his death, Hu Xi read the native- place history compiled by a certain Guangzhou man, who accused the Hakka people by saying that they are not of the Han race. Hu argued against such an accusation, presenting several ten of thousands of words on the issue. After discussing the issue with his friends till mid-night, Hu passed away at the age of sixty-four.33 The controversy caused by Huang Jie’s textbook did not bring a halt to the discrimination against the Hakka. Some Cantonese textbook compilers remained insensitive to the racial issue. In the Xinning Native- place Geography published in 1909, the compiler still called the Hakka “bandits” (kefei 客匪): Chapter 10 Mountains Dalong Mount 大隆山: . . . It is always occupied by the Hakka bandits and much disturbance is caused. To bring social order to Xinning 新寧 County, it is necessary to be cautious and defensive in this area.34
31 See the of cial order made by the Ministry of Education published in Xuebu guanbao 1907. 32 Compare the 1907 and 1908 editions of Huang Huiwen’s Guangdong xiangtu dili jiaokeshu; the offending remarks about the Hakka is deleted in the latter edition. Regarding the founding of “Society for the Investigation of the Origin of the Hakka People,” see Luo Xianglin 1933: 5–6, 27–28. For a brief account of the incident, see Leong 1985. 33 Luo Xianxiu, “Qijiu Lu” 耆舊錄 (Biographies of Elderly), in his Xingning xian xiangtuzhi. Hu Xi (1844–1907) was well known for his contribution to collecting local historical documents and maps. For details of his background, see the special issue on Hu in Xingning wenshi 興寧文史 (The Literature and History of Xingning County), edited by Xingning xian zhengxie wenshi weiyuanhui, No. 17 (1993): 46. Luo Xianglin, the well-known Hakka scholar, also wrote a biography for Hu Xi and mentioned how seriously Hu was irritated by the offensive remarks made by Huang Jie. See Xingning wenshi, No. 17: 163. 34 Lei Zepu n.d.: 12.
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In the Xinning Native-place History compiled by the same author, the signi cance of the textbook is highlighted in the same manner: In spite of my ignorance, I took up the task of compiling the Xinning Native- place History. The objectives of the textbook are two-fold. First, I collect the excellences of our previous celebrities so as to remind our students of their quality of integrity. Second, I make an account of the violence caused by the Hakka bandits and the subsequent calamities caused to the natives, so as to remind our primary school students that our locality has experienced such a dreadful disaster.35 The compiler’s offensive statement has to be read against the background of the Cantonese-Hakka feuds that occurred in Xinning County in the 1860s. The hostilities between the two groups became so brutal that the Guangdong-Guangxi governor-general and the Guangdong governor appealed to the emperor in 1867 to separate the Hakka residents from the Cantonese and place them under different administration. A Chixi Department (Chixi ting 赤溪廳) was established to the southeast of Xin- ning and became an exclusively Hakka region as a result.36 Probably in view of the continuous accusations made by Cantonese writers, Hakka leaders kept on stressing their racial purity. In 1910, with the support of some overseas Chinese, Zou Lu published Hanzu kefu shi 漢族客福史 (The History of the Hakka and Hoklo of the Han-Chinese Race), articulating the Han-Chinese purity of the Hakka and Hoklo: It is well known that the Kejia (Hakka) and Fulao (Hoklo) originated from Henan. Henan is located in the centre of Huaxia (華夏, i.e., China). Therefore Kejia and Fulao were the direct descendants of Han. This is discussed in details in the chapter of this book, entitled “The Origins of Han-Chinese Kejia and Fulao.” There are four waves of Kejia and Fulao migration: The rst began in the Qin-Han period and ourished at the time when Sun Quan was recruiting talents. The second occurred when China was disturbed by the Five Barbarians and people had to move to the south in order to escape from the turmoil bought about by Hunag Chao’s rebellion. The third referred to the period when the of cials and subjects of the Song and Ming dynasties who remained loyal to their rulers stayed in the south. The fourth phase marked the expansion of Kejia and Fulao populations, when they moved to Southeast Asia, Vietnam, and Burma. Records about their exile and migration, and about the similarities and differences among different types of Hakka / Hoklo dialects, are also accounted and studied by various experts. Generally speaking, to the
35 Lei Zepu, “Xinning xiangtu lishi zixu” 新寧鄉土歷史自序 (Preface to Xinning Native-Place History) in Lei Zepu 1923. 36 Lei Zepu n.d.: chapter on the founding of Chixi Department.
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north of the river, both the terms Hakka (Kejia) and Hoklo (Fulao) are never heard of. [This is because] the north is the [native] land of Ke as well as the origin of Fu. To the south of the river, there is only one type of “Ke,” and “ke” (guest) and “tu” (natives) are merely relative terms.37 The Hakka-Hoklo allies on this matter have an earlier historical root. Chen Chunsheng’s study illustrates that after Shantou (Swatow) became a treaty port in 1860, it developed into an economic and cultural center beside the Hanjiang area. The rise of Shantou attracted merchants and literati from Chaozhou and Jiaying Prefectures; among them there were both Hakka and Hoklo speakers. In the rst few years of the 1900s, the two groups still identi ed themselves with reference to administra- tive boundaries (prefectures) rather than to their dialects, and it is not uncommon to see activities or institutions jointly run by the two dia- lect groups. A new-style school founded in 1902 in Shantou admitted both Hakka and Hoklo students coming from Chaozhou and Jiaying prefectures. Launched in 1903 by a few Hakka writers, a newspaper, Lingdong Ribao 嶺東日報, ran a special column called “Chao-Jia News” for articles from the Chaozhou and Jiaying areas. In most of the news reports and commentaries published in Lingdong Ribao, regional identi- ties of Chaozhou and Jiaying were expressed much more frequently than those of Hoklo and Hakka. Nonetheless, it was also under such circumstances that the two different dialect groups encountered each other and noticed more and more their dialect, and therefore ethnic, differences.38 The controversy caused by the Guangodng xiangtu dili jiaokeshu and subsequent publication of Hanzu kefu shi should also be appreciated against the wider political-social context of late Qing. While involved in the Hakka-Hoklo vis-à-vis Cantonese disputes, Zou Lu, the author of Hanzu kefu shi, was also participating actively in anti-Manchu revo- lutionary activities. For the revolutionary cause, Zou Lu and his col- leagues would have promoted the consolidation of the Han race. It is therefore understandable that the accounts in the Hanzu kefu shi had to avoid provoking further controversies within the supposedly uni ed Han race, even though these accounts were meant to speak against the Cantonese on behalf of Hakkas and Hoklos. The preface, written by Qiu Fengjia, fully demonstrates how such a balance was maintained:
37 Zou Lu and Zhang Xuan 1910: 19–20. 38 See Chen Chunsheng 2006.
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If the world had already entered into the stage of uni cation, and people had already been enjoying a prosperous life, there would be no need to differentiate one race from another. Nonetheless, the reality is that the world has not evolved to that stage, and competitions among nations and races are so intense that the differences between species (zhong) and races (zu) have to be identi ed. Why must we make such a distinction? We do this because we want to ally people of the same race by making them a consolidated group and by strengthening their spirit, so as to ght against the alien race ( yizu 異族). If [people of the same race] discriminate against one another and are jealous and suspicious of one another, the alien race will gain advantage. In view of the intense competition, people of the same race might still be conquered [by an alien race] no matter how united they are. If any disagreements occur among [our people of the same race], [our] race will run the risk of being extinguished. Whenever I think of this, I feel terri ed.39 Qiu Fengjia was careful to avoid mentioning the Manchus. What he did instead was to relate the so-called “alien races” to the “Miao, Yao, Li, and Zhuang,” who are considered “minorities” by contemporary standards. To maintain the purity of the Han, Qiu Fengjia even said that these “alien races” were only “historical remnants” (lishi zhi yiwu 歷史之遺物) and few of them existed. Following Qiu’s arguments, Huang Jie de- served condemnation, because not only had he offended the Hakka and Hoklo, but he also damaged the greater revolutionary cause. It is interesting to note that Huang Jie was also anti-Manchu al- though, unlike Qiu Fengjia and Zou Lu, he did not join the Tongmen- ghui. Coming from Shunde 順德 County, a Cantonese-speaking region of Guangdong province, Huang Jie was a co-founder and one of the few radical anti-Manchu members of the Society for the Preservation of National Learning in Shanghai.40 Like Qiu Fengjia, Huang’s anti- Manchu sentiment was expressed subtly enough that it did not irritate the Qing government directly. In 1905, Huang Jie published a series of articles under the title “Yellow History” (Huang shi 黃史) in the Journal of National Essence (Guocui xuebao 國粹學報), in which he expressed blatantly his anti-Manchu sentiment.41 In the “Yellow History,” Huang argued that under the rule of the Manchus in the Qing, just as under the rule of the Mongols in the Yuan or the Tartars in the Northern Wei, China lost its character as a “nation” (Zhongguo zhi bu guo ye 中國之不國也). To rediscover the character of the “nation,” Huang examined ancient
39 Qiu Fengjia 丘逢甲, “Preface,” in Zou Lu and Zhang Xuan 1910: 2–3. 40 See Lawrence Schneider 1976: 66; Leong, 1985: 308. 41 Huang Jie 1905.
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sources. He asserted that the race that was sanctioned to rule China originally came from Kunlun Mountain. Led by the Yellow Emperor, the race entered into the land that was later known as China, and the descendants of the Yellow Emperor were called Han. Huang’s purpose in promoting this racial theory was to link the emergence of the Can- tonese to migration from the north, implying that they were the Han race who migrated to south China. Huang’s controversial statement was a re ection of his dual role as a promoter of anti-Manchuism and as a Cantonese native. As a Han chauvinist, Huang Jie surely viewed the Manchus as his enemy. However, being also Cantonese, Huang might perceive the Hakka and the Hoklo people as no less barbarous than the Manchus. Huang Jie’s case shows clearly that the late Qing discourse of race was not only a result of the wider nationalist movement, but was also an expression of the pride of a dominating ethnic group over what it considered a subordinate group.
The Aftermath
The racial discourse narrated in the native-place gazetteers and text- books illustrate various layers of rhetoric manipulation. To the estab- lishment, racial theories were applied to unite the nation to counteract foreign aggression. To the revolutionaries, racial theories were used to challenge the legitimacy of the Manchu rulers. To some Cantonese or Hakka literati, racial theories were used to de ne “insiders” and “out- siders” in a local context. To the third group, native-place gazetteers and textbooks were transformed from a platform for promoting patriotism to an arena for articulating ethnic con icts within a region. The fashion of compiling native-place textbooks and gazetteers might have cooled down after the 1911 Revolution, but the very idea of native place (xiangtu) relative to the modern concept of nation ( guojia) has been rmly established. Chinese students bought up in the rst and second decades of the 20th century found native-place education important and impressive.42 The idea continues to be appreciated by the Communist government, as indicated by the compilation of Guangdong xiangtu dili
42 My personal interview with Mr. Xu (1912–2002), dated March 27 and April 3, 2001, Guangzhou. Part of the interview is included in Cheng 2001.
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廣東鄉土地理 (Guangdong Native-place Geography), initiated by the Education Department of Guangdong Province in 1959,43 as well as the recent revival of native-place education among various local education authorities since the 1990s. Likewise, the concept of race (zhongzu, which was later replaced by minxi 民系 or minzu 民族 when referring to different dialect or ethnic groups) has been authenticated through various means. From the early 20th century through today, the Hakka articulation of their pure Han identity has continued and intensi ed. Academics, pioneered by Luo Xianglin 羅香林 (1906–1978), a prominent Hakka scholar who advocated Hakka studies starting in the late 1920s, produced a huge amount of literature that helped turn the myth into reality. The late Qing native-place textbooks and gazetteers played a part in racial articulation when the idea of Hakka was yet to take shape; but in time they became part of the literature verifying the very presence of the history of Hakka.
References Cited
Chen Chunsheng 陳春聲 (2006), “Diyu rentong yu zuqun fenlei: 1640–1940 nian Han- jiang liuyu minzhong “kejia” guannian de yanbian 地域認同與族群分類: 1640–1940 年韓江流域民衆“客家”觀念的演變 (Regional identity and racial classi cation: the transformation of the idea of “Kejia” among the people in Hanjiang area from 1640 to 1940),” in Kejia yanjiu 客家研究, 2006, 1, 1–43. Chen Qinglin 陳慶林 (1907), Zhili xiangtu dili jiaokeshu 直隸鄉土地理教科書 (Zhili Native-place Geography Textbook). Shanghai: Guoxue baocun hui. Cai Pengyun 蔡鵬雲, Zuixin Chenghai xiangtu gezhi jiaokeshu 最新澄海鄉土格致教科書 (Chenghai Native-place Science Textbook, the latest edition). N.p and n.d. Cheng Meibao 程美寳 (May-bo Ching) (2001), “Cong minsu dao minzu: difang wen hua yu guojia rentong 從民俗到民族: 地方文化與國家認同 (Folklores Studies and Nationalism in the 1920s and 30s),” in Qinghua shehuixue pinglun 清華社會學評論, 2001, 1, 104–126. —— (2003), “You aixiang er aiguo: Qingmo Guangdong xiangtu jiaocai de guojia huayu 由愛鄉而愛國: 清末廣東鄉土教材的國家話語 (To love my native-place, to love my country: The national discourse on native-place textbooks in late Qing),” in Lishi Yanjiu 歷史研究, 2003, 4, 68–84. Dikötter, Frank (1992), The Discourse of Race in Modern China. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Guangdong xiangtu dili 廣東鄉土地理 (Guangdong Native-place Geography) (1959), Guangdongsheng jiaoyuting Guangdong xiangtu dili bianxie xiaozu 廣東省教育 廳廣東鄉土地理編寫小組.
43 See Guangdong xiangtu dili 1959.
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Huang Foyi 黃佛頤 (1906), Guangdong Xiangtushi jiaokeshu 廣東鄉土史教科書 (Guang- dong Native-place history textbook). N.p. Huang Huiwen 黃晦聞 (1907), Guangdong xiangtu dili jiaokeshu 廣東鄉土地理教科書 (Guangdong Native-place Geography Textbook). Shanghai: Guoxue Baocunhui. —— (1908), Guangdong xiangtu dili jiaokeshu 廣東鄉土地理教科書 (Guangdong Native- place Geography Textbook). Shanghai: Guoxue Baocunhui. Huang Jie 黃節 (1905), “Huang shi 黃史 (The History of the Yellow Race),” in Guocui Xuebao 國粹學報, 1905, 1, 1a–10b. Huang Peikun 黃培坤 and Cen Xixiang 岑錫祥 (1908), Guangdong xiangtu dili jiaokeshu 廣東鄉土地理教科書 (Guangdong Native-place Geography Textbook). Yuedong bianyi gongsi, 1908 reprint. Lei Zepu 雷澤普, Xinning xiangtu dili 新寧鄉土地理 (Xinning Native-place Geography). N.p and n.d. —— (1923), Songxia shuxue ji 松下述學集. Yuedong bianyi gongsi. Leong, Sow-Theng (1985), “The Hakka Chinese of Lingnan: ethnicity and social change in modern times,” in David Pong and Edmund Fung (eds.) (1985), Idea and Reality: social and political change in modern China. New York: University Press of America, 287–322. Liang Qichao 梁啓超 (1899), “Lun Zhongguo renzhong zhi jianglai 論中國人種之 將來 (On the Future of the Chinese Race),” in Yinbingshi heji, wenji 3 飲冰室合集: 文集之三. Zhonghua shuju, 1936 reprint. —— (1902), “Xinminshuo” 新民說 (On New Citizens), in Yinbingshi heji, zhuanji 4 飲冰室合集: 專集之四. Zhonghua shuju, 1936 reprint. Lin Yanqiong 林宴瓊 (1909), Xuexian shending Chaozhou xiangtu jiaokeshu 學憲審定潮 州鄉土教科書 (Chaozhou Native-place Textbook, authorized by the Ministry of Education). Shantou Zhonghua Xinbao guan. Luo Xianxiu 羅獻修 (ed.), Xingning xian xiangtuzhi 興寧縣鄉土志 (Xingning County Native-place Gazetteer). Manuscript, n.d., n.p., collection of Guangdong Provincial Library. Luo Xianglin 羅香林 (1933), Kejia yanjiu daolun 客家研究導論 (An Introduction to Hakka Studies). Xingning: Xishan shucang. Qu Xingui 璩鑫圭 and Tang Liangyan 唐良炎 (eds.) (1991), Zhongguo jindai jiaoyushi ziliao huibian: xuezhi yanbian 中國近代教育史資料匯編: 學制演變 (A Collection of Documents on Modern Chinese Education: Changes in School System). Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe. Renhua xiangtuzhi 仁化鄉土志 (Renhua Native-place Gazetteer). Manuscript, n.d., n.p., collection of Guangdong Provincial Library. Schneider, Lawrence (1976), “National Essence and the New Intelligentsia,” in Charlotte Furth (ed.) (1976), The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 57–89. Shiji 史記 (A Record of History). Zhonghua shuju, 1975 reprint. Wang Jianjun 王建軍 (1996), Zhongguo jindai jiaokeshu fazhan yanjiu 中國近代教科書發 展研究 (Study of the Development of Textbooks in Modern China). Guangzhou: Guangdong jiaoyu chubanshe. Wang Xingliang 王興亮 and Zhao Zongqiang 趙宗強 (2005), “Liu Shipei yu difang zhi” 劉師培與地方志 (Liu Shipei and gazetteers), Zhongguo Difangzhi 中國地方志 2005, no. 2. Weng Huidong 翁輝東, Huang Renxiong 黃人雄 (1909), Shouban Chaozhou xiangtu dili jiaokeshu 首版潮州鄉土地理教科書 (Chaozhou Native-place Geography Textbook, the rst edition), vol. 1. N.p. Wu Mei 伍梅 and Gong Bingzhang 龔炳章 (eds.), Guangning xian xiangtuzhi 廣寧縣鄉 土志 (Guangning County Native-place Gazetteer). Manuscript, n.d., n.p., collection of Guangdong Provincial Library.
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Xiao Qigang 蕭啓岡 and Yang Jianai 楊家鼐, Xuebu shending Jiaying xinti xiangtu dili jiaoke- shu 學部審定嘉應新體鄉土地理教科書 (New Style Jiaying Nativeplace Geogra- phy Textbook, approved by the Ministry of Education). N.p, and n.d. Xingning wenshi 興寧文史 (The Literature and History of Xingning County), No. 17 (1993), edited by Xingning xian zhengxie wenshi weiyuanhui 興寧縣政協文史委員會. Xuebu guanbao 學部官報 (Gazette of Ministry of Education), No. 31 (1907): 44–45. “Xuewu dachen zou ju bianshuju jiandu biancheng xiangtuzhi limu ni tongchi bianji pian” 學務大臣奏據編書局監督編成鄉土志例目擬通飭編輯片, in Dongfang zazhi 東方雜誌 (Eastern Miscellany), 1905, 9, 217–218. Zhang Baohe 張報和 (ed.) (1907), Shixing xian xiangtuzhi 始興縣鄉土志 (Shixing Native- place Gazetteer). Qingfengqiao Wenmao yinju, n.d., prefaced 1907. Zou Lu 鄒魯 and Zhang Xuan 張煊 (1910), Hanzu kefu shi 漢族客福史 (The History of the Hakka and Hoklo of gthe Han-Chinese Race). Guangzhou: Guoli Zhongshan daxue chubanbu, 1932 reprint.
hon&culp_f4_55-77.indd 77 6/12/2007 7:29:11 PM hon&culp_f5_78-105.indd 78 5/17/2007 4:29:29 PM EDUCATING THE CITIZENS: VISIONS OF CHINA IN LATE QING HISTORY TEXTBOOKS
Tze-ki Hon
In recent years, the late Qing invention of national history has received considerable attention. Taking a “history of ideas” approach, scholars such as Prasenjit Duara, Rebecca Karl, Xiaobing Tang, Edward Wang, and Ying-shih Yü discuss how late Qing historians adopted foreign concepts such as the nation-state, linear progress, and scienti c ration- ality.1 Stressing what was new and western in the late Qing historical writings, scholars emphasize their role in laying the foundation for the “new historiography” (xin shixue 新史學) of the May Fourth New Culture Movement. While this “history of ideas” approach has undoubtedly yielded new insights into late Qing historical discourse, it also takes the discourse out of its own context. Seen as a precursor to the May Fourth “new historiography,” the late Qing historical discourse is understood not by what happened at the turn of the 20th century, but by what occurred later during the 1920s and 1930s. Certainly numerous threads, cultural and political, connected the late Qing period with the May Fourth period. Nevertheless, as David Der-wei Wang has pointed out, we miss the originality and creativity of the late Qing thinkers if we judge them by events that occurred thirty years later.2 In what follows, I will examine the late Qing historical discourse from the perspective of the social and political changes at the turn of the 20th century. Focusing on history textbooks, my premise is that the late Qing historical discourse emerged in a critical moment when the Qing government was building a national school system to replace the civil service examinations. Described by Ping-ti Ho as “the ladder of success” for the literati, the civil service examination system had been
1 See Duara 1995: 17–50; Karl 2002; Xiaobing Tang 1996: 46–79; Edward Wang 2001: 1–50; Ying-shih Yü 1994. 2 See David Der-wei Wang 1991: 1–52. Elsewhere I have discussed the May Fourth New Culture Movement as a paradigm in studying modern China. See Ip, Hon, and Lee 2003; Hon 2004b.
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the main vehicle of social mobility for the educated elite for centuries.3 Although plagued by problems of fairness and accountability, the examination system not only bestowed power to successful candidates to rule the country, but also established a body of knowledge and a cluster of texts to de ne the membership of the learned community.4 Thus, after centuries, the replacement of the civil service examinations by the national school system led to a re-de nition of the learned com- munity. Instead of training the literati (shi 士), the new school system produced, in Pierre Bourdieu’s words, a “state nobility” who were licensed by the state and acculturated in the state ideology through years of institutionalized learning.5 In many ways, the new nobility of the state were different from the old literati. Rather than obtaining their elite status by passing the civil service examinations, the state nobility spent years in the national school system. Instead of joining of cialdom, the state nobility had a variety of career options, ranging from working as teachers and writers to publishers and businessmen. But in the 1900s, as the Qing government was building the school system, the line between the state nobility and the scholar-of cials was still unclear. As we shall see, many authors of late Qing history textbooks had spent years studying for the civil service examinations. Some of them were junior members of the literati com- munity by virtue of passing the lower level examinations. Because of their literati backgrounds, they had to imagine—some creatively and some less so—what schooling could do to mold a “citizen” ( guomin 國民) who was directly responsible to the state rather than to their families, clans, and native places.6 Similarly, the political status of the new nobility of the state was ambiguous. Would they, like the old literati, have the opportunity to partake in governing the country? If so, what forms of political participation would they assume in order to make the largest impact on the state? Would they, unlike the old literati, be able to maintain their elite status without family or local support? In the 1900s, these
3 See Ho 1962; Chaffee 1995. 4 For a study of the social and political impact of the civil service examination system, see Elman 2000: especially 125–172, 239–370. 5 See Bourdieu 1996: 1–53. 6 I follow the current practice of translating guomin as citizen. But in some cases in late Qing China, guomin also meant a national’s duties to the state, rather than the inalienable rights of a citizen. For a discussion of the late Qing understanding of guomin, see Fogel and Zarrow 1997: 3–38.
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questions were not easy to answer because the shape of the new social and political structure remained unclear. Nevertheless, they were press- ing issues to the authors of late Qing history textbooks when they interpreted the past. More important, as junior literati who became textbook authors, they knew that they were in a precarious situation. On the one hand, they understood that education had traditionally been an autonomous domain of local gentry who, through supporting schools, gained in uence over local affairs and attained leverage to bargain with central authority.7 On the other hand, they realized that they were the “educators of citizens,” participating in nation-building by forging a collective identity among young Chinese. As a result, in writing history textbooks, the authors saw themselves not only con- tributing to the history curriculum of the new school system, but also clarifying the relationship between learning and governing, state and society, citizen and nation. To deepen our understanding of the social and political signi cance of late Qing historical discourse, I will compare three major history textbooks: Liu Yizheng’s 柳誼徵 (1880–1956) Lidai shilüe 歷代史略 (A Brief Account of the Past, 1902), Xia Zengyou’s 夏曾佑 (1863–1924) Zuixin zhongxue Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu 最新中學中國歷史教科書 (The Newest Chinese History Textbook for Middle School, 1904), and Liu Shipei’s 劉師培 (1884–1919) Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu 中國歷史教科書 (Chinese History Textbook, 1906). In various ways, these three textbooks were based on the “East Asian history” (t y shi ) textbooks of Meiji Japan. They were examples, in the words of Douglas Reynolds, of the “Golden Decade” of Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges during the New Policy period (1901–1911).8 In addition, they were published by three different venues: Liu Yizheng’s textbook was published by a government press in Nanjing; Xia Zhengyou’s textbook by the Commercial Press in Shanghai; Liu Shipei’s textbook by the self- nanced Guoxue baocun hui 國學保存會 (Association for Preservation of National Learning) in the foreign concessions of Shanghai. As a whole, the three textbooks represent the range of possibilities available to late Qing edu-cated elites, resulting from the proliferation of printing press, bookstores,
7 For a discussion of the relationship between education and society in late imperial China, see Elman and Woodside 1994: 1–16, 417–522. 8 See Reynolds 1993: 5–14. For the characteristics of T y shi, see Tanaka 1993: 31–104.
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academic associations, and private organizations.9 As we shall see, both the Japanese in uence and the expanded social space allowed the three authors to be creative and imaginative in envisioning a new social and political order. In narrating the past, the three authors not only offered different images of the Chinese nation, but also rede ned the roles of the educated elite in post-imperial China.
The Two-pronged Approach to Teaching History
Two sets of documents set the tone for the late Qing educational reform. The rst set of documents, known as Qinding xuetang zhangcheng 欽定學 堂章程 (School Regulations by Imperial Order), was issued in 1902 for two purposes. First, it proposed to establish a school system consisting of pre-schools, primary schools, secondary schools, teacher-training schools, and universities.10 Second, it attempted to link the schools to the civil service examinations such that the two systems would comple- ment each other. For instance, graduates of the school system would be given titles equivalent to successful candidates of the civil service examinations, and in turn successful examination candidates would be allowed to enter into the school system.11 Due to con icts in the top leadership, however, the plan was never put into practice. Two years later, in 1904, another set of documents was made public. This new set of documents, known as Zouding xuetang zhangcheng 奏定學 堂章程 (Approved School Regulations), was more elaborate in spelling out the details of the new school system. It described the goals and the expected outcomes of four levels of schools—primary schools, junior high schools, high schools, and universities. In addition to being more elaborate in planning, the second set of documents differed from the rst in two areas. One was that the new school system was no longer linked to the civil service examinations, silently pronouncing the death of the examination system.12 The other was that the school system was seen as a vehicle for promoting national identity. For example, teachers of lower-level primary schools (for age seven to twelve) were told to strengthen students’ “foundation for loving the nation” (ai guojia
9 For a discussion of the late Qing social and cultural changes, see Xiong 1994. 10 See Li and Wang 2000: 302–3. 11 Li and Wang 2000: 302. 12 Li and Wang 2000: 311. See also Liu Longxin 2001.
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zhi genji 愛國家之根基).13 Likewise, teachers of higher-level primary schools (for age twelve to sixteen) were told to help students develop their health, knowledge, and good character as “the citizens of the nation” ( guomin 國民).14 Its overt reference to the nation notwithstanding, the 1904 docu- ments did not promote a hegemonic nation-state. A case in point is the two-pronged approach to teaching history. On the one hand, the documents recommended the teaching of “national history” ( guoshi 國史 or zhonguo lishi 中國歷史) to educate students about the country’s long history and the “virtuous rule of the emperors of the current dynasty” (benchao liesheng dezheng 本朝列聖德政).15 On the other hand, the documents suggested the teaching of “the history of native place” (xiangtu lishi 鄉土歷史) so that students would be proud of their place of birth—its land, its indigenous products, its distinguishing leaders, and its collective achievements.16 The goal of this two-pronged approach was to develop a sense of collectivity among students to view their villages, towns, provinces, and nation as parts of an organic whole. The link between the local and the national could be tangible and intangible, depending on one’s locale. But the point was that this sense of collectivity had to be developed rst in one’s native place and then extended to the rest of the country. Cogently summarized by May-bo Ching as “from loving one’s native place to loving one’s nation” ( you ai xiang er ai guo 由愛鄉而愛國), this sense of collectivity was partly built on the Western notion of the nation, and partly stemmed from the Confucian concept of root and branch.17 Central to this late Qing national identity was the Confucian assumption that human emotive ties expand, like concentric circles, from what is near to what is distant. For this reason, it is not surprising to nd that during the late Qing, a popular Chinese term for the nation-state was guojia 國家 (nation and family) that explicitly referred to the continuum between one’s family/ lineage and one’s nation. This emphasis on linking the local and the national was an extension of the late Qing approach to local mobilization, known as “local self- government” (difang zizhi 地方自治). As Philip Kuhn has pointed out,
13 Li and Wang 2000: 312. 14 Li and Wang 2000: 313. See also Liu Longxin 2001: 492. 15 Qu and Tang 1991: 295–6. 16 Qu and Tang 1991: 295–6. 17 See Cheng 2003.
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late Qing governance was based on the model of “control-autonomy interaction” where the central government mobilized the country by delegating power to the local elite.18 A major goal of the “New Policies” (xinzheng 新政) was to effectively activate “local political energy” and channel it into the political structure of the nation-state. To achieve this goal, there were two expected outcomes of this mobilization. First was that members of the local elite were encouraged to actively manage local affairs, and to take over much of the local administration at their own expenses. The second outcome was that local activism would be linked to national programs such that the central government would have a direct control over local affairs without incurring extra costs. In this regard, the establishment of national school system was part and parcel of the Qing government’s plan to enlist local energy into the nation-state. And the emphasis on linking the local and the national in teaching history was an exempli cation of the late Qing approach to local mobilization. As Marianne Bastid and Ernest Schwintzer have shown, respected local leaders—such as Zhang Jian 張謇 (1853–1926) and Huang Yanpei 黄炎培 (1878–1965)—did participate in local self-govern- ment by forming local education associations to nance new schools and build a new curriculum.19 Some of these local education associations, most notably the Jiangsu Provincial Education Association ( Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui 江蘇省教育會), were so in uential in national politics that they became an unof cial forum for demanding local representative govern- ment during the nal years of the Qing dynasty.20 By all accounts, despite its failure to resuscitate the dynasty, the educational reform of the “New Policies” was successful in mobilizing the local elite.
The Japanese Model
Of the three history textbooks examined here, Liu Yizheng’s Lidai shilüe is unique. In addition to being the earliest text among the three, it was the only one approved and published by the Qing government. First published in 1902 by the Jiangchu shuju 江楚書局 (Bookstore of the Eastern Yangzi Region) in Nanjing, Lidai shilüe was a product of
18 See Kuhn 1975. 19 See Bastid 1988; Schwintzer 1992. 20 See Schwintzer 1992: 132–142; Bailey 1990: 71–112.
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the Qing government’s attempt to transplant the Japanese educational system into China after the Sino-Japanese War.21 The textbook was commissioned by the reformer Zhang Zhidong 張之洞 (1837–1909), and was adapted from Shina tsushi 支那通史 (A General History of China) by Naka Michiyo 那珂通世 (1851–1908). The author, Liu Yizheng, was a shengyuan 生員 (licentiate) who passed the entry level examination. He was a protégé of the philologist Miao Quansun 繆荃蓀 (1844–1919) who gave him the job of adapting Michiyo’s work into a textbook. While Liu was completing Lidai shilüe, he was sent to Japan as a member of the Qing mission to study Japanese school system. During his two months of touring, he was impressed by the country’s success in adopting the West- ern school system.22 After returning to China, he began teaching history at schools that were set up as pilot projects for the new school system. He rst taught at Jiangnan High School and then Liangjiang Teacher- training School. In both places he used Lidai shilüe as a textbook, and he claimed that the book received enthusiastic responses from students.23 In 1905, the Ministry of Education (Xuebu 學部) in Beijing put Lidai shilüe on the list of approved textbooks, thereby of cially designating it as a national textbook. Although a large portion of Lidai shilüe was adapted from Shina tsushi, it does not mean that Liu Yizheng made no contribution to the late Qing historical discourse.24 At rst glance, Liu appeared to have an easy job in converting Michiyo’s book into a textbook. Michiyo wrote his book in classical Chinese, and his writing was so uent and eloquent that it required little editing. Furthermore, being a well-trained sinologist, Michiyo was well versed in Chinese history, and his historical account was, on the whole, accurate and well supported. More important, adopting the Western style of periodization, Michiyo divided Chinese history into ancient, medieval, and modern periods, thereby offering
21 Liu Yizheng began to write Lidai shilüe in January 1902, and he nished the rst draft in September of the year. Upon its completion, Zhang Zhidong immediately asked the Jiangchu Bookstore to publish it. Zhang republished the textbook in 1903 and the Zhongxin shuju 中新書局 re-issued it in 1905. In this chapter, I use the Zhongxin shuju edition kept at the Regenstein Library of the University of Chicago. For an account of Liu’s writing of Lidai shilüe, see Sun 1993: 47. 22 Sun 1993: 9 –13. 23 Liu Yizheng 2002. 24 For a discussion of Liu Yizheng’s contribution in adapting Shina tsushi, see Ou 2003.
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a new framework of understanding China’s past from the perspective of the evolution of the nation. Easy as it might seem, Liu’s adaptation required three major changes. First, he needed to change the perspective of Michiyo’s book. Writing his book for Japanese readers, Michiyo presented China as a neighbor- ing country and a threatening power in East Asia. This was obviously not an image of China that Liu would have wanted to give to Chinese primary school students. So in Lidai shilüe, through cutting and past- ing, adding and deleting, Liu re-oriented Michiyo’s book such that it centered on the triumph and glory of the Qing. An example is how Liu described China. For Michiyo, China was a country in Asia to the west of Japan, and the Qing emperors inherited the country from the rulers of the Qin, Han, Tang, Song and Ming dynasties.25 For Liu, in contrast, China and the Qing dynasty were synonymous. He spoke of the “huge size of the Great Qing nation” (daqing jianguo zhi di 大清建 國之大) and compared it to other nations in the world.26 He stressed that the “Great Qing” was a major power in East Asia, and intention- ally avoided discussing where Japan stood in the East Asian power politics.27 Also, Liu avoided discussing the ethnic background of the Manchu rulers, prompting him to delete all of Michiyo’s sections on different ethnic groups in China.28 Second, to help readers fully appreciate the signi cance of Lidai shilüe, Liu added sections to explain why the tripartite periodization, although a foreign historical framework, was suitable for understanding Chinese history. To do so, Liu added a short discussion of historiography at the beginning of Lidai shilüe, entitled “The Purpose of History” (lishi dazhi 歷史大指). There, he compared two historical genres: the general history (tongshi 通史) that covers thousands of years, and the dynastic history (duandai shi 断代史) that focuses on a single dynasty.29 After indicating his preference for general history, he proposed to modify the genre to serve the needs of the 20th century. The new general history, he said, would provide an overview over a long span of time, exactly like what the old general history had done. However, its goal was no
25 See, for instance, the discussion of Chinese geography in Naka 1898: juan 卷 1, 1–3. Liu Yizheng deleted this section in Lidai shilüe. 26 Liu Yizheng 1905: juan 1, 1. 27 Liu Yizheng 1905: juan 1, 1. 28 For instance, in Lidai shilüe, Liu Yizheng deleted Naka Michiyo’s entire section on “ren zhong zhi bie” 人種之別 (appears in Naka 1898: juan 1, 4). 29 Liu Yizheng 1905: juan 1, 3.
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longer to serve the rulers, the specialists, or the educated elites; rather, it would be directed toward the public, particularly young learners, helping them understand the link between past and present.30 In this new historical genre—a type of writing that is similar to what we today call national history—Liu emphasized four characteristics: the discus- sion of the structure of government, the summary of thought and ideas, the focus on territorial boundaries, and the emphasis on foreign relations.31 Although not explicitly said, he saw these four areas as the basic knowledge of a “citizen” ( guomin 國民) who would, if needed, be willing to sacri ce for the nation. According to Liu, the best way to make these four areas clear to young readers was to adopt the tripartite periodization. Following Michiyo’s example, he divided Chinese history into three parts: the ancient period (shangshi 上世) covering from the Xia dynasty to the Qin dynasty; the medieval period (zhongshi 中世) cover- ing from the Han dynasty to the Tang dynasty; and the current period ( jinshi 近世) covering from the Song dynasty to the Ming dynasty.32 Since Michiyo only covered up to the Song dynasty in Shina tsushi, Liu’s third task was to complete the rest of the historical account.33 For Liu, it was a challenge to add the new chapters on the Yuan and the Ming dynasties. First, the added chapters had to match the previous chapters both in style and structure. Second, the added chapters dealt with recent events, some of which (e.g., the fall of the Ming) were still politically sensitive if not political taboo. Third, the added chapters were to give Lidai shilüe closure. Consequently, Liu had to address the question of what one would learn from the entire book. In comparison, Liu was more successful in dealing with the rst two problems than the third one. To preserve the coherence of the book, he imitated Michiyo’s writing style in composing the new chapters. To avoid politically sensitive issues, he offered just a summary of facts in his new chapters, giving no comments or observations on key historical
30 Liu Yizheng 1905: juan 1, 3. 31 Liu Yizheng 1905: juan 1, 4. 32 Liu Yizheng 1905: juan 1, 4. 33 From the various versions of Shina tsushi that I have found, including a translation of the book into modern Japanese in 1938, Naka Michiyo appears to have nished only the rst four volumes of the planned seven-volume work. He covered the his- tory of China from pre-historic time to the Northern Song. Hence, in Lidai shilüe, Liu Yizheng added the last three volumes covering from the eleventh century to the seventeenth century.
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events. But with regard to what one might learn from Lidai shilüe, Liu appeared to be hesitant and indecisive. Part of Liu’s problem originated from Michiyo. In Shina tsushi, Michiyo divided Chinese history into three parts to show that since the Han dynasty, China had been experiencing a gradual decline, with no progress on political, social, and economic fronts. There were, of course, eeting glorious moments when China added new territories or created more wealth. Yet, Michiyo saw these glorious moments as reinventing the wheel, creating false hopes for an inef cient and decaying system.34 Expectedly this was not the view that Liu would like to give to his young readers. In Lidai shilüe, he deleted all of Michiyo’s negative comments on China, and attempted to pres- ent a more favorable picture of the country in the added chapters. For instance, he discussed at great length the composite nature of the Yuan government which, he claimed, was aimed at serving its diverse peoples.35 In the chapter on the Ming dynasty, he added a discussion of the Christian missionaries in China, showing that the Chinese were always open to foreign ideas.36 However, despite these efforts, Lidai shilüe did not provide readers with a clear picture of the Chinese nation and its changes over time. In particular, as an experiment in adapting Japanese textbook, Lidai shilüe was awed in two areas. First was the lack of discussion of the meaning of the tripartite periodization. Rather than a scheme denoting change over time, in Lidai shilüe the tripartite periodization functioned as another marker of time, no different from dynastic names or reign titles. The three periods—ancient, medieval, and current—passed on like one dynasty gave way to another, signifying nothing but the passage of time.37 It is true that given Michiyo’s negative view of Chinese his- tory, Liu was hard pressed to convert the tripartite periodization into a scheme of dramatic changes with desirable results. Yet, in editing and expanding Shina tsushi, there were still things that Liu could have done to spell out what the three periods meant and how they were related to the formation of the Chinese nation. For instance, as he did
34 See Naka 1898: juan 1, 6–7. Naka’s view of China was part of the Meiji historians’ attempt to separate Japan from China. For a discussion of the characteristics of Meiji T y shi, see Tanaka 1993: 115–152. 35 Liu Yizheng 1905: juan 5, 1–51. 36 Liu Yizheng 1905: juan 6, 1–37. 37 An example is Liu Yizheng’s discussion of the “middle” (zhongshi ) period. In there, he described one dynasty after another, without showing what had changed during those few hundreds of years. See Liu 1905: juan 2, 1–66; juan 3, 1–97.
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in “The Purpose of History,” Liu could have inserted discussion of the implications of the three periods in the main body of Lidai shilüe. Or better yet, he could have added another chapter at the end of the book to fully explain the historiographical signi cance of the tripartite periodization. With no attempt whatsoever to clarify the meaning of the tripartite periodization, Lidai shilüe read like an abbreviated version of imperial history adorned with a new temporal frame. While it is unclear whether this shortfall was Liu’s fault or due to the government’s restrictive guidelines, it reveals the limitations of adapting Japanese textbooks. Perhaps the foremost challenge was that in adapting Japanese textbooks, the Chinese authors had to adjust to the original authors’ viewpoints which, in many cases, were not entirely compatible with the Chinese needs. The second problem in Lidai shilüe was its content. Focusing on government, diplomacy and territorial boundary, Lidai shilüe (like Shina tsushi ) was not completely a national history offering a complex view of the polity. Still shaped by the perspective of imperial history, Liu considered government narrowly as policy debate and political network- ing that involved only government of cials, diplomats, and military generals. To a great extent, Liu’s narrow view of government was based on Michiyo’s, which in turn re ected the Meiji Japan’s policy of implementing a socio-political reform from the top. On the other hand, Liu was also partly responsible for his silence on elitism. In no small measure, Liu’s narrow view of government stemmed from his own background. For him and the literati of his generation, govern- ment was an exclusive eld reserved for the best and brightest who shared, in Peter Bol’s words, “this culture of ours”—i.e., the common experience of passing the civil service examinations.38 Certainly, by glorifying the achievements of the past dynasties, Liu did give readers a sense of belonging to a great nation which remained constant despite the rise and fall of various dynasties. However, he said little about how to translate that sense of belonging into concrete actions to serve the nation. Nor did his government-centered view of politics allow room for citizens—educated and uneducated, rich and poor, young and old—to actively participate in the political process. As such, Lidai shilüe was clearly one sided if measured by the late Qing model of “control- autonomy interaction.” It was strong in emphasizing the need for full
38 See Bol 1992: 1–31.
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control from the top in administering political reform; but it was weak in stressing the importance of local autonomy and state-society interac- tion to motivate the learned community. Put differently, the problem of Lidai shilüe was that there was too much state-building in the book, and too little local participation. As a result, despite being one of the earlier textbooks that covered the entire history of China, Lidai shilüe was not enthusiastically received during the nal years of the Qing dynasty.39 Overall, it was a sincere but awed attempt to adapt the Meiji Japanese model to the Chinese setting.40
The Three Periods
In contrast to Liu Yizheng, Xia Zengyou made his mark by writing at length about the meaning of the tripartite periodization. Published in 1904, two years after Lidai shilüe, Xia’s Zuixin zhongxue Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu (hereafter Zuixin jiaokeshu) was printed by the privately owned Commercial Press in anticipation of the new school system. According to Douglas Reynolds, the early history of the Commercial Press can be divided into two periods: a “period of founding” (1897–1902) and a “period of joint Sino-Japanese enterprise” (1903–1913).41 Starting out as a small press in Shanghai, the Commercial Press became a dominant private printing press in the mid 1900s by specializing in publishing textbooks. With new printing technology imported from Japan, the Commercial Press quickly claimed a lion’s share of the textbook market, overshadowing even the government-supported presses. The extant sources do not show the circumstances under which Xia Zengyou was invited to write a history textbook for the Commercial Press, but three things are clear. First, Xia went to Beijing in 1889 to attend the metropolitan examination. Like Liang Qichao 梁啟超
39 In current writings on late Qing historiography, Lidai shilüe is either ignored or only mentioned in passing. This lack of interest in Lidai shilüe re ects the negative view of the history textbook dated back to the Republican period. An example is Zhou Yutong’s often cited overview of modern Chinese historiography. See Zhou 1941. 40 Besides Lidai shilüe, there were at least two other government sponsored history textbooks adapted from Japanese texts: Chen Qingnian 陳慶年, Zhongguo lishi 中國歷史 (1903) and Wang Rongbao 汪榮寶, Benchao shi 本朝史 (1903–4). Like Lidai shilüe, the other two textbooks were also not widely used. For a discussion of the limitations of these history textbooks, see Hu and Zhang 1991: 265–71. 41 Reynolds 1993: 121–2.
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(1873–1929) and Tan Sitong 譚嗣同 (1865–98), friends whom he met in Beijing, Xia had passed the provincial level examinations and was well versed in classical studies.42 Apparently he did not pass the municipal examination; nonetheless his status as a junior member of the literati opened doors for him to the burgeoning publishing industry. In the mid-1900s, he contributed articles to Xinmin congbao 新民叢報 and Dongfang zazhi 東方雜誌 under the pen-name Bieshi 别士 (a distinctive scholar),43 and based on his reputation as a proli c writer, the Com- mercial Press invited him to write a history textbook. Second, Xia wrote the textbook speci cally to satisfy the anticipated demand of the new school system. To market Xia’s book, the editors of the Commercial Press included it in a comprehensive series of primary textbooks and gave it an attractive title: “The most recent Chinese history textbook for primary school.” The title not only speci ed the target audience of the textbook—primary school students; it also claimed its authority and thereby its marketability as being the most updated textbook. Third, Xia appeared to enjoy more freedom in writing the textbook. In stark contrast to Liu Yizheng, Xia was instructed to write his own textbook rather than to adapt a Japanese book. Thus he did not need to adjust to the viewpoint of another author; nor did he need to deal with the complexity of transforming a foreign book into Chinese. Also, it did make a difference that Xia’s textbook was published by a private press. Unlike Liu, who was under the strict supervision of Zhang Zhidong and Miao Quansun because his textbook was sponsored by the Qing government, Xia could be more creative in interpreting the Chinese history, as long as his textbook would satisfy two conditions: conforming to the government guidelines, and selling well in the book market. Yet, despite the freedom that Xia enjoyed, Zuixin jiaokeshu was remarkably similar to Lidai shilüe. Both books began with remarks on the inadequacy of imperial history and a plea for a new general his- tory.44 In addition, both books presented the history of China based on a tripartite periodization, dividing the history into ancient, medieval, and current periods. In the two books, even the dates of the three
42 Liang 1996a. 43 Liang 1996a. 44 Xia 1933: fanli 凡例, 2. Xia Zengyou’s Zuixin zhongxue Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu was originally published in 1904. It was republished in 1933 by the Commercial Press under the title Zhongguo gudai shi (History of Ancient China). In this chapter, I use the 1994 Taiwan reprint of the 1933 edition.
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periods were identical—the ancient period covered the mythical lead- ers, the Xia, the Shang and the Zhou dynasties; the medieval period covered from the Qin dynasty to the Tang dynasty; the current period covered from the Song to the Qing.45 More astonishing still, not only were the dates of the three periods identical, the emphasis of the two authors on them was similar as well. For Liu, following Michiyo, the golden age of China appeared in the ancient period during which the basic structure of the Chinese government was formed after the Qin uni cation in 221 BCE. There might have been intermittent changes in the following two periods, but by and large the basic structure of the Chinese government remained constant over thousands of years. Likewise, Xia considered the ancient period to be the golden age that laid the foundation for the later two periods. To drive home his point, he compared the Zhou dynasty in China with ancient Greece in western civilization, emphasizing that in both cases an ancient period de ned the contours of a civilization.46 Based on the idea of the Renaissance (i.e., the return to the ancient literature and arts), he presented the history of China as a three-part story—the founding of the Chinese civilization in the Zhou dynasty, the deviation from the Chinese civili- zation during the medieval period, and the return to the foundational Chinese civilization in the Qing dynasty.47 For Xia, the challenges that Qing China faced at the turn of the 20th century were blessings in disguise. He admitted that foreign defeats and internal rebellions certainly created a sense of urgency and an atmosphere of apprehen- sion in China, leading some people to wonder whether the country would soon disintegrate “as had happened to Egypt and India.”48 But he reminded his readers that these challenges were actually signs of hope, making Chinese even more determined to return to the roots of their civilization. He predicted that, as Europeans had experienced after the Renaissance, the late Qing would “open a new epoch that had never been seen since the Qin dynasty,” if the Chinese could succeed in reviving their civilization.49 Their similarities notwithstanding, Zuixin jiaokeshu differed from Lidai shilüe in one important area. Unlike Liu who let the tripartite
45 Xia 1933: fanli, 1. 46 Xia 1933: 29. 47 Xia 1933: 5–6. 48 Xia 1933: 6. 49 Xia 1933: 6.
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periodization function like another symbol of time, Xia used it to tell a coherent story. Xia’s story contains many facts and dates that ll ve hundred pages, but its theme is simple: the need to return to the sources of Chinese civilization after centuries of missteps. Also it is a story of hope. It encouraged its readers to look forward to a bet- ter future by rejuvenating and reinventing the Chinese tradition. For this reason, Xia felt justi ed in devoting two- fths of his book to the history of the Zhou dynasty (particularly the birth of Confucianism) which, he believed, epitomized the ideals of Chinese civilization.50 To make his point clear, he used the analogy of a house. He compared Confucius to the foundation of a house, the Qin and Han dynasties to the rooms and oors of the house, and the other dynasties to periodic renovations done to the house.51 What this analogy shows is that as time unfolds, the Chinese have found ways to perfect a system that is originally founded by Confucius. Xia did not bestow such a high honor on Confucius just to promote Confucianism. In honoring Confucius as the founder of Chinese gov- ernment (zheng 政) and learning ( jiao 教), he called for a partnership between political and cultural leaders. According to Xia, this partner- ship was not new to China; instead, it had long been part of Chinese civilization. For instance, in discussing the contributions of the Qin and the Han dynasties, he stated: “Whereas Confucius created Chinese learning, the Qin founded Chinese government and the Han de ned the Chinese territorial boundaries.”52 Here, by highlighting learning, government, and territory as three equally important components of imperial China, Xia made clear that the goal of returning to the golden age was to reestablish the collaboration between political leaders and the educated elite. For him, this partnership of learning and governing was built on trust, as epitomized by the Han system of selection based on recommendation (zhengpi zhi fa 徴辟之法).53 On the one hand, the Han system allowed the educated elite to have full control of educa- tion, providing schooling to the best students recruited from around the country. On the other hand, it linked education to government by assigning students, after nishing schooling, to be apprentices for major political leaders. After years of service, students would be promoted
50 Xia 1933: 29–192. 51 Xia 1933: 225. 52 Xia 1933: 225. 53 Xia 1933: 509.
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to higher ranks in government based on their performance. For Xia, this combination of schooling and practical experience in politics was a prime example of the collaboration between political leaders and the educated elite in training future leaders of the country. He was so impressed by the Han system that he believed “China would not have faced its current problems, had the [Han] system still been in practice.”54 There is no clear evidence to prove that Xia had the late Qing edu- cational reform in mind when he discussed the Han system of selection. But the parallel is obvious because Xia, like many of his contemporaries, was concerned with the status of the educated elite when the civil service examinations were no longer the ladder of success. An example of this preoccupation is Xia’s discussion of the rise and fall of scholars’ fortunes in Chinese history. For him, scholars had changed their social status at least three times in Chinese history.55 First, from the ancient time to the end of the Han dynasty, scholars were classicists ( jingshi 經師) whose main duty was to uphold Confucian orthodoxy to legitimize the imperial government. Second, from the Han to the Tang dynas- ties, scholars were detached observers (mingshi 名士) who, in order to avoid political persecution, concentrated on non-political scholarship. Third, from the Tang to the Qing dynasties, scholars were candidates of the civil service examinations ( juzi 舉子) who studied nothing but the assigned texts of the examinations. Implied in this threefold devel- opment was Xia’s nostalgia for the pre-Qin cultural environment in which independent scholars could move from place to place to look for political employment and enjoyed an equal standing with political lead- ers. Also suggested in this threefold development was Xia’s negative view of the civil service examination system, which he believed was more an expedient means for suppressing intellectual creativity than a vehicle of social mobility. Since Zuixin jiaokeshu covered only up to the beginning of the Sui dynasty, it was half nished. As an incomplete book, some of the main arguments in Zuixin jiaokeshu were not fully developed. A glaring problem, for example, is Xia’s claim that the Qing would reinvent the Chinese tradition by returning to the golden age of pre-Qin China. As hopeful as it may sound, his call for reinventing the Chinese tradition remains
54 Xia 1933: 519. 55 Xia 1933: 389.
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more rhetorical than substantive. Except for a few brief statements at the beginning of the textbook, he offered little information on how the reinvention of tradition might take place. Nevertheless, compared to Liu, Xia was more forthcoming in addressing the relationship between learn- ing and governing. By being more balanced in dealing with the partner- ship between the cultural eld and the political arena, he was closer than Liu to the late Qing model of “control-autonomy interaction.” Because Xia stressed the partnership between learning and governing, his textbook remained popular beyond the 1911 Revolution, especially among scholars, school teachers, and college students who yearned for a more prominent role in the government. In 1933, Xia’s book was so popular in Republican China that the Commercial Press decided to reis- sue it under a new title, Zhongguo gudai shi 中國古代史 (Ancient history of China), when a new type of educated elite, professional academics, attempted to make their voice known in the government.56
The Golden Age
For Liu Yizheng and Xia Zengyou, the tripartite periodization made their textbooks inspiring. By contrast, analysis of the political phi- losophy of the Zhou dynasty made Liu Shipei’s textbook memorable. Born to a family of distinguished scholars in Yangzhou, Liu Shipei was trained from childhood in the guwen 古文tradition of Qing philology. With a solid classical training, he earned a juren 舉人 (recommended talent) title in 1902, but failed in the jinshi 進士 (advanced scholar) examination in the following year. Shortly before the Subao 蘇報 case in 1904, he befriended Zhang Taiyan 章太炎 (1868–1936), and after 1904 devoted himself to writing pamphlets to promote anti-Manchu revolution. In 1905, he joined the Guoxue baocun hui (Association for Preservation of National Learning), an anti-Manchu organization based in the foreign concessions of Shanghai.57 Financially supported by social celebrities in Shanghai and neighboring areas, Guoxue baocun
56 Xia Zengyou’s history textbook consistently received positive review after his death in 1924, leading to the Commercial Press’s decision to reprint the book in 1933. See Zhou 1941: 531–2. See also Wu, Yuan, and Gui 1989: 132–52; Wang Qingjia 2001: 596. 57 The above information is based on Zarrow 1998. See also Zarrow 1990: 32–45.
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hui published the journal Guocui xuebao 國粹學報 ( Journal of National Essence). The journal carried a wide range of scholarly articles on such topics as the Renaissance in Europe, the different schools of thought in pre-Qin China, and the history of the Han race. As a member of Guoxue baocun hui, Liu Shipei regularly contributed articles to Guocui xuebao under the pen-name, Guanghan 光漢 (“restore [the rule of ] the Han race”).58 Besides publishing Guocui xuebao, the Guoxue baocun hui also pub- lished history textbooks such as Liu Shipei’s Zhongguo lishi jiaokushu. At rst glance, it seems contradictory that being an anti-Manchu organi- zation, the Guoxue baocun hui would assist the Qing government in preparing for a national school system. But at a closer look, the pub- lication of history textbooks was compatible with the political agenda of the Guoxue baocun hui, namely, launching the dual revolution to topple the Manchu dynasty, and in turn, to end the absolute monarchy in China.59 This goal of achieving a dual revolution was clearly stated in the writings of Deng Shi 鄧實 (1877–1945) and Huang Jie 黃節 (1873–1935), the leaders of Guoxue baocun hui and the editors of Guocui xuebao. For them, the reason to rebel against the Qing was not only because it was an oppressive government of a foreign race, but also because it perpetuated the system of absolute monarchy dated back to the Qin Dynasty. Thus, the toppling of the Qing was to kill two birds with one stone, that is, to end the oppression by a foreign race and to end the oppression of an unjust political system.60 In 1905, the year when the Guoxue baocun hui was founded, the organization was poised to promote its political agenda by shaping the curriculum of the national school system. At a time when classical scholarship was still the dominant mode of learning and a symbol of social status, the Guoxue baocun hui was ready to use its members’ literati status to promote its political agenda. By designing and publishing history textbooks, it intended to plant revolutionary seeds in the minds of young students. A case in point was Liu Shipei’s Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu (hereafter Jiao- keshu). To spark revolution in young students, Liu wrote the textbook
58 Elsewhere I have discussed Liu Shipei’s role in using history to promote revolu- tion. See Hon 2004a. 59 Elsewhere I have discussed the relationship between anti-absolutism and anti- Manchuism in the Guocui group, see Hon 2004c. For further discussion, see Tang Zhijun 1989: 316–325; Ding and Chen 1995: 341–356; Zheng 1997: 111–54. 60 See Huang 1905; Deng 1905.
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in the form of a political treatise, seeking to explain philologically the meaning of major political concepts from the ancient times to the Western Zhou period (ca. 1050–771 BCE). In terms of content, his goal was to clarify the political vision of the Western Zhou people, rather than to narrate the history of ancient China. For this reason, the tripartite periodization played no role in Jiaokeshu. Re ecting the Japanese in uence of the time, Liu began the textbook with a long discussion of the alleged migration of the Chinese from Mesopotamia.61 The hypothesis, formally known as “the western origin of the early Chinese civilization” (xi lai shuo 西來説), was rst proposed in 1894 by Terrien de Lacouperie (1845–94) of University College in London. It was built on archaeological discoveries in West Asia that were linked by comparative philology to Chinese classical texts (particularly the Yijing).62 Lacouperie’s hypothesis, translated and transmitted in Japan, was important to Liu Shipei. For him, the migration of the Chinese from Mesopotamia provided an answer to the question of why the Western Zhou political philosophy contained so many contemporary European concepts. Despite the geographical distance and their cultural differences, Liu claimed, the Chinese and the Europeans shared similar political ideas, such as equality and balance of power, because both peoples had originated from Mesopotamia in ancient antiquity.63 For instance, Liu Shipei argued that the balance of power was a com- mon idea that Chinese and Europeans shared. Using philology to discuss philosophy, he explained the meanings of the characters jun (君, king) and qun (群, people) in the minds of the Western Zhou people.64 For him, the character jun 君stands for the legislative and administrative power of a king, as indicated in its two components—a magistrate ( yin 尹) and a mouth (kou 口). But even possessing legislative and administrative power, a king will not be a full- edged ruler until he receives popular support. Hence, for Liu, the ultimate political authority lies not in the hands of the king but in the people, as symbolized in the character qun 群—a ock of sheep ( yang 羊) following their leader ( jun 君). This
61 Liu Shipei 1906: juan 1, 1–52. Liu stated that his discussion of the Western origin of the Chinese race was based on Shina bunmeishi 支那文明史. Although Liu did not mention the names of the authors, Shina bunmeishi was co-authored by Shirakawa Jir (1875–1919) and Kokubu Tanenori (1873–1950). 62 See Lacouperie 1894: 1–81. For a biography of Lacouperie, see Butt 2002: 72–74. 63 Liu Shipei 1906: juan 3, 52. 64 Liu Shipei 1906: juan 1, 23–24.
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balance of power between the rulers and the ruled applied to rituals as well. According to Liu, an example can be found in the two Chinese characters for rituals, fengsu 風俗. Whereas feng refers to teaching ( jiao 教) initiated by the government, su suggests local customs (signi ed by the particle ren 人). Thus, for Liu, rituals are never xed; instead, they are exible, malleable, and adaptive depending on the dialogue between the government and its people.65 In discussing the Western Zhou political system, Liu Shipei paid special attention to the limits of the government’s power. He admitted that as time passed, the Zhou kings gathered more power, extending their control over matters relating to religion, land distribution, and property transmission. But the basic structure of the Zhou system, he argued, remained in tact. It was still a system of checks and balances wherein the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers were separately controlled by different players in the political arena. To underscore this point, he discussed at great length the rights (quanli 權力) enjoyed by the Zhou people, such as the rights of free speech, assembly, and joining the government. At the same time, he reminded readers that the Zhou people paid equal attention to performing civic duties, such as paying taxes and serving in the army.66 All in all, in Liu’s mind, the Western Zhou political system resembled a contemporary European government, characterized by “its combination of governing and learning” (zhengjiao heyi 政教合一) and “its use of rituals in shaping social behavior” ( yi li fang min 以禮坊民).67 Obviously, in Jiaokeshu Liu Shipei focused not on what really hap- pened during the Western Zhou but on how its history might shed light on the political structure of late Qing China. As a history textbook, Jiaokeshu said little about the history of ancient China; but it inspired young students to think about what an ideal Chinese government would look like in the 20th century. More important it taught a valu- able lesson regarding how to read the classical texts allegorically and creatively to serve contemporary needs.68 In 1906, when Jiaokeshu was
65 Liu Shipei 1906: juan 1, 48. 66 Liu Shipei 1906: juan 2, 23–30. 67 Liu Shipei 1906: juan 3, 50. 68 In current writings on Liu Shipei and the Guocui scholars, there is a tendency to de-emphasize their contribution in reinventing classical studies in the new political context of late Qing China. They are described either as “outdated” or “conservative.” For a sample of this view, see Schneider 1976; Hu and Zhang 1991: 272–9; Wang Qingjia 2001: 601–2. My discussion below aims to call attention to the contemporary signi cance of the Guocui scholars’ creative re-invention of classical studies.
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published, the civil service examinations had already been abolished for a year. For many former examination candidates, the abolition of the civil service examinations was a traumatic event because it raised a host of questions concerning classical learning: Would classical stud- ies still be the center of scholars’ attention? Would they be gradually marginalized, as poetry and prose had been in earlier times when no longer tested in examinations? Would they be reinvented to serve the new system of the nation-state? In the 1900s, these were not idle questions to junior literati such as Liu Shipei and his friends at Guoxue baocun hui. For better or worse, they had already invested years, if not decades, in studying the classical texts and perfecting their philological skills to prepare for the examina- tions. Now the examinations had been abolished, and classical learning was no longer directly linked to political power and social status. Rather than giving up the fruits of their hard labor, they sought to adjust to the new environment by converting their classical learning into new forms of cultural capital. In Jiaokeshu, Liu proved that classical learning could still play a role in political discourse after the end of the civil service examinations. Through creative interpretation and allegorical imagination, he demonstrated that classical texts were the repository of ideals and wisdom, educating young students about their rights and duties as citizens of the nation.69 In addition, as Liu Shipei suggested, classical learning could be an effective means of local mobilization. For Liu Yizheng and Xia Zengyou, before they began commenting on the relationship between government and society, rst they had to write hundreds of pages to demonstrate the underlying pattern of Chinese history. Sometimes they were so overwhelmed by historical facts that they could only brie y touch on the state-society relationship. Instead, by using philology, Liu Shipei directly explained his understanding of the “control-autonomy interaction.” While at times the accuracy of Liu’s analyses of the Western Zhou system may have been doubtful, his readers could hardly have missed his argument for a balance of the power between the rulers and the ruled, the state and society, and the center and the periphery. Clearly, among the three authors, Liu Shipei was the most radical in interpreting the “control-autonomy interaction.” He would not accept government control of learning as Liu Yizheng did; nor would he settle, like Xia
69 For a further discussion of the reinvention of classical studies in early 20th century China, see Tang Zhijun 1989: 246–365.
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Zengyou, for the collaboration between the learned community and the government. Instead, in idealizing the Western Zhou, he looked forward to a political system in which philosophers would be kings.
The Social Approach to Historiography
From this comparison of three late Qing history textbooks, we can draw two conclusions. First, we need to re-examine the Chinese adoption of linear progression. The current view in the eld assumes that when Chinese authors adopted the Western form of national history, espe- cially the tripartite periodization, they automatically accepted linear progression in time.70 This may have been true in some particular cases; however, to many Chinese authors at the turn of the 20th cen- tury, time did not consistently move forward even though they adopted the tripartite periodization.71 As discussed above, for Liu Yizheng, Xia Zengyou and Liu Shipei, time actually could be seen as moving backward in the sense that lessons from ancient antiquity could aid in creating an ideal political system in the present and future. Of course, underlying their notion of time is the Confucian idea of the “golden age,” which presumably sets the standard for humanity for centuries to come. But their propensity to look backward rather than forward was not necessarily a result of their cyclical thinking. Rather, it was due, as Liang Qichao put it, to their belief in “liberation by returning to the antiquity” ( yi fugu wei jiefang 以復古為解放).72 It is, of course, not easy to identify one single source of this belief in “liberation by returning to the antiquity.” Perhaps part of it came from the longstanding Confucian tradition of glorifying the Zhou dynasty. Perhaps part of it came from the recent success of Meiji Japan in modernizing the country by “restoring” (ishin 維新) the imperial system.
70 See Duara 1995: 17–50; Xiaobing Tang 1996: 1–45; Q. Edward Wang 2001: 1–50. 71 Note that the current scholarship on the Chinese “new historiography” is centered on Liang Qichao. See Duara 1995; Xiaobing Tang 1996; Q. Edward Wang 2001; Karl 2002. While there is no doubt that Liang Qichao is a key gure in modern Chinese historical discourse, focusing on him creates an imbalance in the study of modern Chinese historiography, leaving out many equally important historians. As I have shown, the historical discourse in early 20th-century China was far more complex and variegated than a focus on just Liang Qichao would suggest. 72 Liang Qichao, 1996b.
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But if we take their words seriously, both Xia Zengyou and Liu Shi- pei saw a parallel between late Qing China and Renaissance Europe. Repeatedly they compared their Chinese “golden age” with classical Greece, and considered themselves as following in the footsteps of the Renaissance humanists in returning to the ideal world of the past. For them, as suggested in the word “renaissance,” return means the rebirth of life after reconnecting with the past. For this reason, despite the implied linear progression in the tripartite periodization, Xia Zengyou did not consider the temporal scheme to be progressive or linear. Although he occasionally discussed the gradual progress from one dynasty to another in his historical narrative, Xia put his hope in returning to the “golden age” of the Zhou dynasty after centuries of missteps. For him, the Zhou dynasty was not a time in the past but an ideal for the future. Apparently there was an element of progressiv- ism in Xia’s return to the Zhou dynasty, and yet his progressivism was undoubtedly rooted in an idealization of the past. The second conclusion is that late Qing historical discourse was far more complex and diverse if we look at it from the social perspective. As stated earlier, the social approach—i.e., relating historical discourse to the changing role of the educated elite—need not replace other approaches. Approaches focusing on methodology, concept, or world view are equally valid in elucidating the complex nature of modern Chinese historiography. However, the social approach adds a new dimension to our understanding of late Qing historical discourse, namely, the connection between historical discourse and socio-political change. Certainly, it is widely accepted that late Qing historical discourse was part of the social and political transformation of China after the mid-19th century. The challenge, though, is how to make the connec- tion explicit. In this chapter, I have attempted to make the connection clear by focusing on the impact on the learned community of the Qing government’s decision to replace the civil service examinations with a national school system. In comparing the three history textbooks, it is evident that the abolition of the civil service examinations had profound social and political implications. Socially speaking, the abolition of the civil service examination was tantamount to a re-de nition of the educated elite, causing many members of the literati to lose their social privilege. The three authors examined here were, in one way or another, making adjustments to their post-examination lives. Liu Yizheng transformed himself into a school teacher. Xia Zengyou became a proli c writer.
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Liu Shipei assumed the role of a political theorist. Politically speaking, the founding of a national school system triggered a re-thinking of the political structure of late Qing government. As the Qing government assumed more responsibilities as a nation-state, it exposed its weak- nesses and became increasingly vulnerable to criticism. The three his- tory textbooks examined here are examples of how quickly the Qing government lost its credibility in its attempt to become a nation-state. In Lidai shilüe (1902), Liu Yizheng was con dent that the “Great Qing” would provide effective leadership in rejuvenating China. In Zuixin jiaokeshu (1904), Xia Zengyou remained optimistic about the outcome of a Qing-led reform. But when we reach Jiaokeshu (1906), we nd Liu Shipei demanding the sharing of power between the rulers and the ruled to create a participatory government. This steady erosion of trust in the Qing government indicates that the creative ambiguity of the “control-autonomy interaction” might have back- red on government leaders. Instead of being a platform to garner local political energy to serve the central government, it turned out to be a forum for the educated elite to demand power. In this respect, late Qing history textbooks should be examined as part of the negotiation of power between the state and the society, and between the national and the local, during the nal years of the Qing dynasty. In raising the educated elite’s hopes in political participation but refusing to delegate power to them, the Qing government created widespread dissatisfaction and disillusionment among members of the learned community. As Joseph Esherick has pointed out, it was more this expanding “climate of dissatisfaction and disillusionment” than the revolutionary movement that eventually brought down the Qing.73 And, in the three history textbooks, we see clear traces of this expanding climate of dissatisfac- tion and disillusionment. We also see the sprouting political aspirations of the new educated elite who eventually made the imperial system obsolete. Above all, if history writing is indeed a “vector of memory” bringing the past to the present,74 these three history textbooks created a memory of the past that famed the discussion of social and political change in early 20th-century China.
73 Esherick 1976: 143–76. 74 For the signi cance of “vector of memory,” see Rousso 1991: 1–11, 219–270.
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Kuhn, Philip A. (1975), “Local Self-government under the Republic: Problems of Control, Autonomy, and Mobilization,” in Wakeman, Frederic Jr, and Carolyn Grant (eds.) (1975), Con ict and Control in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 257–98. Lacouperie, Terrien de (1894), Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilization from 2,300 B.C. to 200 A.D. London: Asher & Co. Li Guojun 李國鈞 and Wang Bingzhao 王炳照, (eds.) (2000), Zhongguo jiaoyu zhidu tongshi 中國教育制度通史 (A History of Chinese Education System) volume 6, part 2. Jinian: Shandong jiaoyu chubanshe, 1840–1911. Liang Qichao (1996a), “Wang you Xia Suiqing xiansheng” 亡友夏穗卿先生 (In Memory of My Friend Xia Suiqing), in Yinbing shi heji: Wenji 飲冰室合集﹕文集 (Collected Writings of Ice-Drinking Studio: Articles) (1996), vol. 44. Beijing: Zhong- hua shuju, 20–21. —— (1996b), “Qing dai xueshu gailun” 清代學術概論 (A Study of Qing Thought), in Yinbing shi heji: Zhuanji 飲冰室合集﹕專集 (Collected Writings of Ice-Drinking Studio: Monographs) (1996). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 34: 6. Liu Longxin 劉龍心 (2001), “Xueke tizhi yu jindai zhongguo shixue de jianli” 學科 體制與近代中國史學的建立 (The Curriculum System and the Establishment of Modern Chinese Historiography), in Luo Zhitian 羅志田 (ed.) (2001), Ershi shiji de Zhongguo: Xueshu yu shehui—Shixue juan 二十世紀的中國﹕學術與社會—史學卷 (Scholarship and Society in Twentieth Century China: Section on Historical Stud- ies). Jinan: Shandong renmin chubanshe, 449–585. Liu Shipei 劉師培 (1906), Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu 中國歷史教科書 (Chinese History Textbook), in Liu Shenshu yishu 劉申叔遺書 (Collected Writings of Liu Shenshu) (1997), vol. 4. Shanghai: Jiangsu guji chubanshe. Liu Yizheng 柳誼徵 (1905), Lidai shilüe 歷代史略 (A Brief Account of the Past). Shang- hai: Zhongxin shuju. Originally published in 1902. —— (2002), “Zizhuan yu huiyi” 自傳與回憶 (Autobiography and Memories), in Liu Zengfu 柳曾符 and Liu Jia 柳佳 (eds.) (2002), Qutang xueji 劬堂學记 (Record of Learning of Qutang). Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 8–9. Naka Michiyo 那珂通世 (1898), Shina tsushi 支那通史 (A General History of China). Shanghai: Tongwen xueshe. Ou Zhijian 歐志堅 (2003), “Lishi jiaokeshu yu minzu guojia xingxiang de yingzao: Liu Yizheng Lidai shilüe ququ Nake Tongshi zhina tongshi de neirong” 歷史教科書與民族 國家形象的營造﹕柳誼徵《歷代史略》去取那珂通世《支那通史》的內容 (His- tory Textbooks and the Construction of the Image of Nation-State: The Selective Appropriation of Naka Michiyo’s Shina tsushi in Liu Yizheng’s Lidai shilüe), in Bian Xiaoxuan jiaoshou bashi shouchen lunwenji 卞孝萱教授八十壽辰論文集 (The Collection of Essays on the Eightieth Birthday of Professor Bian Xiaoxuan). Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 71–96. Qu Xingui 璩鑫圭 and Tang Liangyan 唐良炎 (eds.) (1991), Zhongguo jindai jiaoyushi ziliao huibian: Xuezhi yanbian 中國近代教育史資料匯編﹕學制演變 (Collection of Historical Documents on Modern Chinese Educational History: Changes in School System). Shanghai: Shanghai jiaoyu chubanshe. Reynolds, Douglas R. (1993), China, 1898–1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University. Rousso, Henry (1991), The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944. Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schneider, Laurence A. (1976), “National Essence and the New Intelligentsia,” in Charlotte Furth (ed.) (1976), The Limits of Change: Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 57–89. Schwintzer, Ernest P. (1992), “Education to Save the Nation: Huang Yanpei and the Educational Reform Movement in Early 20th Century China.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington.
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Sun Yongru 孫永和 (1993), Liu Yizheng pingzhuan 柳誼徵評傳 (A Biography of Liu Yizheng). Nanchang: Baihuazhou wenyi chubanshe. Tang Zhijun 湯志鈞 (1989), Jindai jingxue yu zhengzhi 近代經學與政治 (Classical Learn- ing and Politics in Modern China). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju. Tang, Xiaobing (1996), Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity: The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Tanaka, Stefan (1993), Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wang, David Der-wei (1991), Fin-de-Siècle Splender: Repressed Modernities of Late Qing Fic- tion, 1849–1911. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wang, Q. Edward (2001), Inventing China Through History: The May Fourth Approach to Historiography. Albany: State University of New York Press. Wang Qingjia 王晴佳 (Q. Edward Wang) (2001), “Zhongguo shixue de kexuehua— zhuanke hua yu kua xueke” 中國史學的科學化—專科化與跨學科 (Turning Chinese History into Science: Professionalization and Inter-disciplinary Approaches), in Luo Zhitian 羅志田 (ed.) (2001), Ershi shiji de Zhongguo: Xueshu yu shehui—Shixue juan 二十 世紀的中國:學術與社會—史學卷 (Scholarship and Society in Twentieth-century China: Section on Historiography). Jinan: Shandong daxue chubanshe. Wu Ze 吳澤, Yuan Yingguang 袁英光, and Gui Zunyi 桂遵義 (eds.) (1989), Zhongguo jindai shixue shi 中國近代史學史 (History of Modern Chinese Historical Studies). Yancheng: Jiangsu guji chubanshe. Xia Zengyou (1904) [1994 reprint of 1933 edition], Zhongguo gudai shi 中國古代史 (History of Ancient China) [original title: Zuixin zhongxue Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu 最新 中學中國歷史教科書 (The Newest Chinese History Textbook for Middle School]. Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshu guan. Xiong Yuezhi 熊月之 (1994), Xixue dongjian yu wanqing shehui 西學東漸與晚清社會 (The Rise of Western Learning and Late Qing Society). Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe. Yü, Ying-shih (1994), “Changing conceptions of National History in Twentieth-century China,” in Erik Lönnroth, Karl Molin, and Ragnar Björk (eds.), Conceptions of National History: Proceedings of Nobel Symposium 78. Berlin: Walter de Gruyer, 155–75. Zarrow, Peter (1998), “Liu Shipei,” in Wang Ke-wen (ed.) (1998), Modern China: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Nationalism. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 193–4. —— (1990), Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Zheng Shiqu 鄭師渠 (1997), Wanqing guocui pai: Wenhua sixaing yanjiu 晚清國粹派﹕文化 思想研究 (The Guocui Group of the Late Qing: A Study of Culture and Thought). Beijng: Beijing shifan daxue chubanshe. Zhou Yutong 周予同 (1941), “Wu shi nian lai Zhongguo zhi xin shixue” 五十年來中 國之新史學 (Chinese New Historiography in the Last Fifty Years), in Zhu Weizheng 朱維錚 (ed.) (1983), Zhou Yutong jingxue shi lunzhu xuanji 周予同經學史論著選集 (A Collection of Zhou Yutong’s Writings on Classics and History). Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubenshe, 534–5.
hon&culp_f5_78-105.indd 105 5/17/2007 4:29:32 PM hon&culp_f6_106-142.indd 106 5/22/2007 4:49:01 PM PART TWO
GENERAL HISTORY AND WORLD HISTORY
hon&culp_f6_106-142.indd 107 5/22/2007 4:49:02 PM hon&culp_f6_106-142.indd 108 5/22/2007 4:49:02 PM DISCONTINUOUS CONTINUITY: THE BEGINNINGS OF A NEW SYNTHESIS OF “GENERAL HISTORY” IN 20TH-CENTURY CHINA
Mary G. Mazur*
In the midst of the transformative currents in early 20th century thought and political culture in China, a modern genre of Chinese history known as “general history” (tongshi 通史) appeared. The most familiar form of historical writing to general Chinese readers today, this genre was created by historians to ful ll the need for a sense of China’s iden- tity, the need to understand China’s heritage from the past during this time of rapid change. The earliest phase in the development of these general histories began before the collapse of the Qing dynasty, about the time the idea of nation was emerging in the 1890s and 1900s. It was also when the rst halting steps were being taken in reforms that led to what would become the post dynastic polity. My aim here is to examine the beginnings of this new genre to assess what made it dif- ferent from past historical writing. Over the course of the next several decades, the historians creating the genre were consciously working at shaping a form of new historical writing for civil society, writing free of the authoritative gestalt of the dynastic polity with its organic neces- sity for a historical narrative submissive to its internal requirements for legitimation. During and preceding the period in which this new historical form was beginning to reweave the tapestry of historical memory out of threads from the past and the present, the “present”1 was an agonizing time of internal rebellion and division, of humiliating military defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1895, aggressive moves by other foreign
Earlier versions of this article were presented at annual meeting panels of the American Historical Association (1994) and Association for Asian Studies (1997). A translated version Ma Zimei 1997, 56–65. My appreciation goes to Charles Hayford, Prasenjit Duara, Joshua Fogel, Tze-ki Hon, Donald Price, Guy Alitto, Kevin Doak, and Jeffrey Wasserstrom for comments, encouragement and advice on various versions. 1 Wilson 1992 stresses the framework of the “present” in studying the political culture of the transformational Bakumatsu period in 19th century Japan. Cohen 1997 develops the same kind of contextual approach.
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imperialist powers, and weakness in the dynastic leadership. The con- straints of the of cial examination bureaucratic recruitment system, with its canonical curriculum that had dominated political culture for centuries, were fast becoming a major focal point of concern in the burgeoning reform effort. Those who rst called for and theorized the new historical genre in these years felt a sense of “mission”2 to write history to meet the needs of the present and future. We can ask: what did these historians see as the needs of their “present” and the future ahead? One answer was to demonstrate the autonomous existence of Chinese cultural identity, separate from the dynastic state framework of past histories. Another intention was to provide narratives of the past that, by strengthening cultural consciousness, would lead to a vital sense of national identity for the foundation of the emerging polity in the present and future. There was discontinuity and yet continuity in this use of the historical past to inform the present cultural identity and create a national con- sciousness. As the past was questioned and existing histories critiqued, it was reordered and rewritten, but still we see that the narrators con- tinued as signi cant agents in relation to the polity, as their historian forebears had for thousands of years. Here, my additional premise is that the growing awareness of the distinctness of cultural identity over time and the development of the general history genre in China were a part of the worldwide develop- ment in new historical studies as the 20th century opened. This analysis differs from the interpretations of early modern historical writing in China as mainly in uenced by the Japanese model, as described by Joshua Fogel and others, or as strictly a part of the so-called defensive rationalization process of the Chinese struggle for modernization and Westernization, as proposed by Joseph Levenson.3 Several papers in the rst section of this collection have discussed the late 19th and early 20th century Qing years, the prelude to the owering of the new historiography. Peter Zarrow looks at the late Qing reform program’s primary school history textbooks. In his essay, “Educating the Citizens: Visions of China in Late Qing History Textbooks,” Tze-ki Hon has introduced three historians: Liu Yizheng, Xia Zengyou, and Liu Shipei, who made major contributions to the emergence of the new historical writing.
2 For “the mission of history,” see Zhang 1904. 3 Fogel 2004; Levenson 1965; and Levenson 1970.
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In this second section of this collection, we look further at the seminal period of the last years of the 19th century and early decades of the new century. In these years of dynastic collapse and the formation of a republican government, just as the whole polity was subject to search- ing thought and deep change, conceptions of how history should be analyzed and written were undergoing serious questioning and change. Tongshi, i.e., general history, especially became the focal point of histori- cal discussion. In this paper, my discussion of the theoretical writing on historiography and general history of two of the most in uential Chinese writers of the time, Liang Qichao 梁啟超 and Zhang Taiyan 章太炎 (Zhang Binglin 章炳麟), will be followed by my choice of two early key examples of modern general histories by the historians Xia Zengyou 夏曾佑 and Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛. I will bring out the little recognized, early and signi cant in uence on Liang of a translated history of 19th century Europe by Robert Mackenzie well before Liang went to Japan. My discussion of Xia Zengyou’s tongshi, discussed by Tze-ki Hon from a different standpoint in his essay, will point out Xia’s seminal efforts to break through traditional themes that had structured history and emphasize streams of action and disjuncture in the past, previously largely ignored or deemphasized. In examining Gu Jiegang’s tongshi, we will look at the penetrating historical view of one of the 20th century’s most important Chinese historians.
Forerunners of Modern Theorizing of General History
For as long as the entity that today is called “China” has existed, the practice of writing the past, that is to say “history,” has been an integral part of the ordering and rule of society. Those who possessed knowledge of the past and wrote of it, the shi 士 or knight-scholars, were powerful in civil society for they could understand “how men had fared when they lived in accord with or in de ance of the moral injunctions of the classics.”4 In China, in historical time, history and political rule have always been intertwined; one did (does) not exist without the other. This fundamental and continuous interdependence of the two has no parallel in our own experience of contemporary civilization. These writers of history in the traditional society were scholars who were invested with great moral authority by the nature of their task,
4 From the Zuo zhuan. See Chang 1983: 88; Wright 1963: 37.
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their most important reader being the ruler who dared not ignore what the historical record contained. The subject matter of the historian was of concern to the ruler and the elites and hence re ected the value system of this group. One of the main purposes of the history written was to substantiate the rule. Since legitimation was dispensed or withdrawn through praise and blame in the historical record, over the centuries each reign made certain that the narrative recorded the story favorably for it and the dynasty. With few exceptions, this was the nature of the vast production of historical writing, whether of cial or private, up to the end of the 19th century.5 This deeply ingrained valuation of the role of the historian remained in the political culture in the 20th century even as historical writing was discussed and debated. Familiar as we are in Western polities with the nonengaged, sideline commentator position of the historian, it is not easy to comprehend the sensitive nature and engagement intrinsic in the role of historian in China.6 More than a hundred years before Liang Qichao and Zhang Taiyan began to write about the need for a new form of historical writing as the Qing collapsed at the turn of the century, one of their forerunners had written of the need for a new kind of historical writing. The pioneering mid-Qing historian Zhang Xuecheng 章學誠 (1738–1801) had called for a true general history (tongshi ) that would establish a critique of past histories. A primary requirement of Zhang’s for this history was that the historian must pay particular attention to the importance of historical context and the details of related events. In his call to historians, Zhang Xuecheng said that, contrary to the history that had been written in the past, the new histories should avoid repetition, select the important from the unimportant, and include interpretation and evaluation of right and wrong. In short, he sought the distinguishing characteristic of analysis, rather than simply a record or chronicle. Signi cantly, in Zhang’s vision this general history would have the capacity “to establish the principles to rule the nation.” Although he never wrote a general history himself, this critical notion of history and its use was available at the turn of the century to stimulate the reformers who looked to a re-formed history as an instrument for rede ning the past and creat-
5 Balazs 1964: 135. 6 For the Chinese historian’s engagement in the role of historian vis-à-vis the state in the period from the 1930s until 1965, see Mazur 1997: 63–85.
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ing autonomous historical narratives that would be the foundation of historical consciousness in the future nation.7
Writing History and the Transformation from Examination Canon to “Culture”
Around the turn of the century, the question of what we will call cul- ture and cultural identity emerged for writers of history as the central issue intertwined with the role of history and new ideas of nation. “Culture,” in the sense we are using it here, very generally signi es “the social and intellectual formations of a group.”8 In this situation of foment, with the abolition of the examination system in 1905, the entire Confucian academic-bureaucratic system undergirding the polity ended in what was gradually understood to be a profound seismic change.9 The system’s demise meant the political-social gestalt that had shaped the world of Chinese thought and the lives of the intelligentsia for centuries was weakened, with no orienting or de ning structure in the political culture to provide continuity. The world of thought and politics was no longer an institutional unity standing on the bedrock of the orthodoxy of the classical canon as prescribed and controlled by the examination system. In this situation there were serious implications for historical conceptions and writing. As the examinations ceased to structure the minds and lives of the leaders in the polity, thought was freed from political practice. Expansion and broadening, rethinking and questioning the political culture and its basis in past as well as present thought and values became possible. It seemed that the classical heritage with its permutations actually existed separately and could be examined piece by piece beyond institutional, canonical control. It became possible to deal with the heritage of the past in the context of the contemporary situation and to consider present
7 He Bingsong 1928: 7. 8 American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 1975. Williams 1958, in his work on the conception of culture, discusses the development of the idea and the use of the word itself in Anglo-European society in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The development in China a hundred years later of the modern idea and use of the word bears similarities, but takes its meaning from the ancient idea in China. 9 Franke 1960; Borthwick 1983; Mazur 1980. Borthwick, 85–86, points out that in abolishing the examination system the government had, without realizing it, “done away with a large part of its spiritual authority.”
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thought and needs previously shut out by the examination canon. As the world of thought became independent from the structural body of the polity, it came to be conceptualized separately as a part of China’s “culture” wenhua 文化.10 However, while it now stood as an autonomous conception, “culture” (the social and economic formations of the group) was not actually a radically new idea in China at all. From the classical period the char- acter wen had carried the meaning of “writing” or “civil,” as opposed to “military.” Hua represented the idea of change or transformation. Together in Chinese they also sometimes signi ed “civilization,” as the word “culture” did in English. Even as far back as the Han dynasty, wenhua had been used to represent cultivation by education in civil rule.11 Since the Qin-Han era, wenhua had represented the highest level of orthodoxy, the Great Tradition.12 Now, as they coped with the shifting position of the classical heritage, intellectuals began to endow the word wenhua with the meaning of the social and intellectual con- ceptions within that heritage and within their present social context. Consequently, ideas far beyond the classical canon could be considered. It was in this atmosphere that new ideas about the content of history were discussed.
Theorizing Modern General History
In the course of this political and cultural transition two men, Liang Qichao and Zhang Taiyan, were important agents of change in the transformation in historical writing. Widely read and respected, the in uence of each on the development of general history was through theoretical works on historical writing. Neither actually ever wrote a
10 In the Comprehensive Chinese-English Dictionary 1991, wenhua is de ned as culture, or civilization. In English, culture in this sense means “the social and intellectual forma- tions of a group,” American Heritage Dictionary. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it is the “civilization, customs, artistic achievements, etc., of a people, esp. at a certain stage of its development or history.” For background on this section esp. Schneider 1976, 57–89 and Furth 1976, 113–50. See also Kenji 1990; Wong 1989. 11 Ciyuan vol. 2, 1356, illustrates wenhua with the model expression wenzhi he jiaohua, used by Liu Xiang in the Han dynasty. 12 For a very different view of the relation of culture (culturalism in his construc- tion) and nation see Levenson 1965, and Townsend’s 1992 discussion of Levenson’s construction, 97–130.
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general history of China, although in later years Liang began a project on cultural history.13 The man most closely connected with stimulating the idea of writing New History linked with strengthening the idea of nation at the end of the Qing was Liang Qichao (1873–1929). As a young man he had stud- ied with the iconoclastic scholar reform leader Kang Youwei 康有為. In his widely read writings over the next years, Liang addressed the crucial, nodal areas of the nature of society and polity over time and the questions of change and the relation of men, society, and nation. In 1897 the young Liang developed his fundamental theme of qun 群, the formation of the people into groups, and the key role of popular grouping in the transformation of the polity in the essay “Shuo qun” 說群.14 He identi ed the critical issue as the transformation of the people and the country into a nation, which, even before he was exiled at the fall of the reform movement in 1898, he was referring to as guojia qun 國家群, nation-group.15 As Liang’s ideas on transformation of the polity developed, he gave key importance to the knowledge the group had of the historical past and to the writing of the past into history for the group. As a brilliant scholar candidate in the early 1890s, he had prepared for the civil service examinations by studying the canon of classical texts, which led him to a deep knowledge of the past. At the same time, while preparing for the examinations, Liang had read translations of Western books. One volume in particular in uenced him—the translation by the missionary Timothy Richard16 into Chinese of Robert Mackenzie’s Nineteenth Century,17 rst published in China in
13 Q. Edward Wong 2001, passim, for the view that the crux of the changes in historical writing in China was a result of the May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. This has been a popular view among Western and Chinese analysts who were drawn to the notion of the May Fourth era as a revolutionary demarcation point in cultural change. However, study of the late nineteenth century and the rst half of the twentieth century has convinced me that deep change, even iconoclasm, began much earlier and continued to come to fruition long after the May Fourth era. 14 For Liang’s ideas on qun, see Liang 1936. For Liang, see Hao Chang 1971; Huang 1972; Tang 1996; Karl 2002. 15 See Liang 1936. This is discussed in Hao Chang 1971: 109. 16 See Bohr 2000 for Timothy Richard (1845–1919), a Welsh Baptist missionary who supported the reform movement in China. 17 Ma Kenxi, Taixi xinshi lanyao (The Outline of Occidental New History) translated by Li Timoutai (Timothy Richard) (Shanghai: Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge among the Chinese, 1895); ninth edition (1902) used here. The English original was Robert Mackenzie, The History of the Nineteenth Century (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1880). Collingwood 1946: 145–46, refers to the Mackenzie history as a third-rate historical work, apparently because it upheld the idea of progress.
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1895, the year of China’s humiliating defeat at the hands of Japan. Reading this history, known in Chinese as Taixi xinshi lanyao 泰西新史 覽要 (The Outline of Occidental New History) with Richard’s Preface relating it directly to China’s situation, was for Liang a crucial exposure to Western historical writing at the critical moment of defeat by the Japanese. It afforded him a real eye-opener into how history might be written. The signi cance of the book’s in uence on Liang Qichao and the intelligentsia during the years of crisis in China cannot be under- estimated, although heretofore overlooked in studies on the period. This history, published in Chinese translation in over a million cop- ies, was read and discussed avidly in mid-1890s China by many people interested in reform, including the Emperor Guang Xu, his tutor, and the two viceroys, Li Hongzhang 李鴻章 and Zhang Zhidong 張之洞. Published in at least nine legitimate editions, with many more in pirated editions, the books were sold throughout the country.18 In 1896, two years before the reform movement crested, Liang Qichao, at the time actually Timothy Richard’s secretary, published a bibliography of impor- tant Western books available in China under the title Xixue shumu biao 西學數目表. In this widely circulated bibliography, Liang particularly recommended this history to his readers for its high value.19 In the Mackenzie history the multitudes of readers across China discovered a history quite different from the histories to which they were accustomed. Within one relatively short volume, in straightfor- ward style written for a popular audience, they found a general history of 19th century Europe and the United States. Published in Chinese translation by Richard as Taixi xinshi lanyao, the book included not only internal political events in England, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, the Turkish Empire, and the United States, but also the trans-European Napoleonic campaigns, intellectual thought, society and economy, the British empire in India, and a chapter on foreign missionaries. Rela- tionships among the various countries were emphasized, particularly
While Collingwood, bene ting from hindsight from two world wars and the Great Depression, saw what to him was the fallacy of Mackenzie’s positivism, Liang in his “present” did not have the bene t of that prescience in 1895. In fact, Collingwood may not have carefully read the book. For one example among many, Mackenzie 1880: 206–17, is pessimistic about England’s ability to maintain its economic lead in the world due to inability to compete. 18 For the publication and readers of Taixi xinshu lanyao in China see Soothill 1924: 183 and 221. The history had also been reprinted many times in England. 19 Liang 1896: 3b–4. See also Chen 1962: 111–12.
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with regard to the French Revolution, the Napoleonic campaigns, and English imperialism. A reading of Mackenzie’s Nineteenth Century reveals that the substance and point of view is akin to the new historical thinking emerging in Europe and England in the 1880s and 1890s, in uenced by such his- torians as Karl Lamprecht in Germany who were moving away from the political emphasis of the Rankean school of historical writing.20 Lamprecht, a positivist maverick among European historians in late 19th century Europe, held that the German idealism of the political histories of von Ranke and his followers restricted the understanding of what was actually going on in the world at any given time. Lam- precht was turning instead to a broader view, one of culture as the conceptual framework for history, emphasizing both the broad social aspects of national civilizations and their economies. American histo- rian Earle Wilbur Dow, in the American Historical Review in 1898, wrote of Lamprecht and the “New History” he was creating: “Questions of civilization, compared with those properly political, are of equal, if not of far greater importance.”21 The Mackenzie history of 19th century Europe is part of this New History current. The translator Timothy Richard recognized this, referring to Mackenzie’s history as “new his- tory” in his preface. In recommending The Outline of Occidental New History to his read- ers, Liang Qichao found, in its account of the century just closing in Europe, a common chord with what he was convinced historical writing should be about in China. In his essay on grouping he emphasized the importance of people and communities of people in events. For Liang, the people in civil society were the fabric of the past and the present that must be taken as history’s proper subject, not merely the rulers and events related to the dynastic state. This was at the heart of the new learning and the new history for Liang from his early years on. The Richard’s translation of this Mackenzie history so widely read during these years, undoubtedly contributed to the shift in China toward the discussion of “new history.” Xiaobing Tang has pointed out that a shift from emphasis on “Chinese learning versus Western learning to old learning versus new learning occurred in general political discussions”
20 Lamprecht 1891, 1905. For Lamprecht see Iggers 1983: 197–200 and passim, on Lamprecht’s positivistic attack on German idealism and promotion of a historical view broader than the Rankean political history. See also Novick 1988: 28. 21 Dow 1898: 431–448.
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around 1895 in China.22 Timothy Richard had chosen for his transla- tion the Chinese title that can be translated into English as The Outline of Occidental New History: 23 Chapters and Supplement on the Important Events of the Last 100 Years of the Occident. As this “new history” of the West circulated widely in China in the midst of the humiliating defeat at the hands of Japan, it would have fed discussions about the scope of the polity and how history ought to be written for the future. Within three years after Richard’s translation was published, the Emperor Guang Xu’s “Hundred Days Reform” campaign, led by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao to institute deep institutional reforms, raised high hopes for change in China. Disastrously, these hopes were dashed by the coup led by the Dowager Empress, the subsequent imprisonment of the Emperor, and the ight or arrest and execution of the reformers. In Richard’s Preface to his translation of Nineteenth Century, he wrote of China’s 1895 defeat by Japan in the Sino-Japanese War, appealing openly to the reform faction in the ruling group—Prince Gong, Li Hongzhang, and Zhang Zhidong—as intelligent people who wanted to correct the mistaken course China was taking. He wrote that they must learn from other countries in the world, that it is shameful to willingly fall behind. He fears that the reformists do not understand reform methods in other countries.23 Timothy Richard openly pointed out the importance of the New History as a guide: “A clear mirror is ef cacious to reveal the beautiful and the ugly and New History is ef cacious to reveal the ourishing and replacement (of the old).” He thought these people, the readers, are eager for books that are published as guides like Mount Tai, books that will provide “assistance for the voyage of China.” For him this book was a secret key to open the way “to study broadly Western Science to make China ourish.”24 In speaking to the readers of his translation Richard lauds history as the means for Chinese to learn about modern people, about the recent situation in the world, about nations and the way to govern the present world. These were all ideas that t the ancient Chinese notion of history as the guide, but here with a far broader vision of the historical signi cance of the past and present. These ideas fed Liang Qichao’s conception of history’s role in the polity.
22 Xiaobing Tang 1996: 16. This is an important study of Liang’s contributions to nationalism and historical writing. 23 Ma Kenxi (Timothy Richard) 1895: preface. 24 Ma Kenxi 1895: 3.
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Readers found models for the writing of history, as well as for the behavior of modern nations, in the Outline of Occidental New History. For example, the chapter on the United States is a careful essay on the American Civil War in its political, social, and economic facets; another chapter discusses the in uence of the war of American independence on the French. From the standpoint of a country still suffering from the effects of the Taiping Rebellion, the problems and recovery from such a “rebellion” as the American Civil War would have communicated much about the viability of democracy under stress. In the Preface, Timothy Richard drew pointedly on the trope of history as a mirror for Chinese readers because he knew well that history was a model Chinese had used as a guide in the past. Beyond the new form of this history, there was more about the Mackenzie history that appealed to the Chinese situation. Europe had been in dark times at the beginning of the 19th century as it was coming out of the French Revolution, but during the course of the century, according to the narrative written for the popular audience, the situation had improved profoundly. Autocracy had fallen, ordinary people were freer, economically far better off. Life was peaceful and more democratic.25 In the Chinese present of the 1890s, times were dark, and new strategies needed for the polity. Mackenzie’s history is about society across all social strata. Neither an elite centered history nor one dealing with static aspects of society, its narrative is about national societies in dynamic change, beset with problems yet overcoming dif- culties, something very different from the histories Chinese had read before. Among the variety of topics Chinese readers found in the history were the conditions experienced by ordinary people, the in uence of the American independence movement on the French, the longing for political discussion in France, social conditions in Great Britain, and the mistakes the British made in the Turkish Empire. Certainly the closing note in the last chapter, praising change and progress, contributed to readers’ reception of the history in China. There were many facets of Mackenzie’s history for the readers to iden- tify with: the vivid descriptions of the appalling conditions in European society at the beginning of the century, his stress on the expansion of the people’s role in government, and, certainly not the least, the broad, inclusive parameters of the society in the historical narrative.
25 Ma Kenxi 1895: 7–29.
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This was undoubtedly Liang’s rst reading of the New History currently being written in Europe. After eeing to Japan in 1898 fol- lowing the debacle of the Hundred Day’s Reform, Liang would read more European and American history translated by the Japanese and Chinese. He was also certainly in uenced by Japanese historical writ- ing and experience in modernizing. However, his direct experience of European historical writing in the Mackenzie history of 19th century Europe provided fertile ground for his thought, as did his own ideas on the grouping (qun) of people in 1897, before he left China. From Liang’s writing in the years after this, we know that his own concep- tion of New History became a means of promoting change in China. Although Liang’s years of refuge in Japan were important in the scope of his whole life, to evaluate his in uence in shaping the new genre of tongshi the starting place must be his interest in the Mackenzie history. Liang was a man of wide-ranging interest and broad vision which led him to explore many ideas during his years of exile in Japan.26 During these years he also traveled widely in Europe and in the United States and Hawai’i. In a long essay, “New History” (Xin shixue 新史學),27 in 1902, Liang put forth his ideas for the creation of New History in China by call- ing for the writing of a new history to provide a view of China’s long history for the sake of the country.28 The way the rst words of “New History” convey the importance of writing history is reminiscent of Richard’s expression in his preface on history as a clear mirror and a guide for the strengthening of China. Both men re ected the Chinese conception of the central role of history in the polity. Liang wrote that history was ourishing in the Occident and he connected this with the ourishing of European nationalism. Liang’s idea was that when
26 Fogel 1984, 2004 have provided important explication of the experience and in uences on Liang during his exile in Japan. See also Karl 1999: 1096–1118. Rebecca Karl introduces Liang Qichao in her very interesting paper on a small number of intellectuals, many of them (but not all) Chinese who gathered in Japan in the early years of the twentieth century to form a radical group that voiced an Asian identity, Liang was one of the group and his use of the label “Asia” ( yazhou) as particularly signi cant. As for Liang’s in uence on the new tongshi genre in Chinese historical writ- ing however, his interest in the identity of Asia as differentiated from the West seems to have had little particular relevance. His interest was in China in the whole world with emphasis on national identity. 27 Liang 1902a: 1, 7. 28 Xiaobing Tang 1996: 3 and passim, discusses the momentous change in Liang’s thinking represented by “Xin shixue.”
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people know their country’s history, they “will unite and the society will evolve.” But Liang then asks: how is it that “although history in China ourishes, its weakness still exists?” He answers with a critique of the of cial histories as nothing but “family genealogies”—those that historians have been unable to generalize. They only transmit but do not create (analyze the past). The old history must be changed “to create a new historiography.” In “New History,” Liang laid out new parameters for historiography when he identi ed four sources of problems in the previous writing of Chinese history. He said that in the past, historians had understood that there were dynasties, but not that there was a country. They had written about individuals who were powerful heroes on the stage of history, but not about the masses of people. They had written about the past, but had not concerned themselves with the present, and they had not made the past a mirror for the present. Finally, they had understood the facts, but not the ideas of the past. Now, Liang said in his manifesto for a new Chinese historiography, historians must write a new history that meets the needs of China in the present age; they must explain the relationships and the cause and effect of events, not merely relate the facts; they must investigate the experience of all of the people in groups and movements, and they must pay particular attention to change.29 Liang’s goal was to put history in the service of the whole polity, his aim to create a national consciousness. In this Liangian “New History” there was no doubt that the purpose was to provide a mirror for the present, for political and economic issues. But his purpose extended further. Liang was advocating the use of the legitimating power of history to legitimate the nation as histories in the past had served to legitimate the imperial rule. He wanted to co-opt the political power of history for the new nation when he wrote that it was the masses that were legitimate, not the emperors; for this reason history must be written with the people in mind. The ruler could only rule a nation in which the people participated in the union.30
29 Liang 1902a: 2–4. 30 In 1902, the same year that Liang wrote The New History, he also wrote a com- panion piece, On The New People (see Liang 1902b). Here he also insisted that the writing of China’s history was crucial to the development of a sense of nationhood and national consciousness and to the development of the people’s relationship to the nation. For Liang’s ideas about the collectivistic nature of the people and the relation of these groups to the polity see Hao Chang 1971: 165–190.
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Later, in the 1920s, the years of Liang’s most mature thought on historiography, he would give two series of lectures at Qinghua Univer- sity where he expanded his ideas about the writing of the New History and emphasized the need for teaching tongshi, general history, which by this time he was calling cultural history, to provide youth with an overall conception of the nation through an understanding of its his- tory. At Qinghua, he laid plans to write a cultural history that would have been a general history, but he died before he was able to nish it.31 His student in these years, the historian Zhang Yinlin 張蔭麟, has written an important evaluation of the position of Liang Qichao (Liang Rengong 梁任公) in 20th century Chinese thought.32
Zhang Taiyan: Theorizing General History
A second major contributor to early thinking about general history in this era was the classical scholar and revolutionary anti-Manchu politi- cal leader Zhang Taiyan (1868–1936), also known as Zhang Binglin. In his 1904 essay “Ai Qing shi” 哀清史 (Lament for Qing History), Zhang advocated the writing of general histories (tongshi ) to inform the people, concluding with a “Summary for a General History of China.” Here he set forth his ideas for the contents of these new histories.33 The construction of this genre of history was intended to embody the historians’ ideas of the truth, freed from the control of the ruler, to remedy China’s problem of a weak, dying dynasty. The Qing, had, in fact, throughout the dynasty suppressed documents unfavorable to their dynasty and conducted inquisitions to silence historians. As with those he was criticizing, Zhang’s reconstructed history would have a political purpose, his being to create an autonomous history free of dynastic control that would enable the creation of an independent political consciousness in the polity.34
31 For Liang’s writings on General History ( pubian shi and tongshi ) see Liang 1922: esp. 35 and Liang 1926: 1–2. For discussions of Liang’s work see Qi Sihe 1949: 21 and Xu 1986 & 1989. 32 For an important evaluation of Liang in this period see Su Chi (Zhang Yinlin) 1929. In the present volume for Zhang Yinlin see Brian Moloughney, “Zhang Yinlin’s Early China.” 33 Zhang Binglin 1904: 156–59, quote on 159. 34 Dikotter 1992 sees racialism as the overarching theme of much of the thinking of this period. Although Zhang Taiyan certainly led anti-Manchu opinion and conscious-
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The need to educate the people for the coming new age, particularly young people, motivated his concern. First he considered models from past histories which he saw as narratives without abstract comment or evaluation: Sima Qian’s Shiji 史記 (Records of the Historian); Sun Yue’s history written in chronological order; and the histories created by Yuan Shu that took types of events or themes and followed them throughout their development, jishi benmo 紀事本末. After considering them, Zhang discarded all as models because they lacked the deductive method that yielded comment and evaluation. He turned instead to his own combination of methods from the East and the West for his formulation of the new genre. Actually, Zhang advocated two different models for modern his- torical works. In the rst, he proposed evolutionary change be traced through division of history into time periods. For the second model or approach, methods of comparison and classi cation must be used to develop a subject. He likened the latter arrangement to an artist drawing the peaks and valleys of mountains, the former to drawing the long course of a river. Zhang’s characterization of the two forms is suggestive of the two genres, General History (tongshi ) and Specialized History (zhuanshi 專史), into which modern Chinese historical writing eventually settled.35 Much as Liang Qichao, Zhang Taiyan saw, in the decline of late Qing China, that the traditional purposes of history no longer served the polity of the present. History had a mission, and challenges of the times called for the creation of a new kind of history: The scope of the mission of history is very different at the present from the past and consequently the style of history writing must change. Today’s history books must not depend only on the literary records of China. All of the ancient legends and the practical traces of the races existing under the earth can supplement what is missing in the old history books. Foreigners talking about China always praise it a great deal and admire its long history; this is not untrue. For at the beginning of the world, the situation of the East and West was the same. With the cultural evolution [the situation] between the yellow race and the white race became dif- ferent, so we must compare the similarity and difference to understand which is good and which bad and the corresponding causes. Therefore
ness of race was fed by Social Darwinism, Dikotter’s emphasis seems to distort the point that the fundamental concern of many was the preservation of the sovereignty of the country and the strengthening of the country as a state. 35 Zhuanshi has come to mean monograph.
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the history of Greece, Rome, India and the modern West is related to China. As far as psychology, society, and religions, the principles of their development are quite similar; this is the key to writing history.36 Stirring here in Zhang’s 1904 comment we can hear the currents of social psychology and cultural history in European historiographic thought. Social Darwinism’s stress on causality threads through his desire for evaluation of the good and bad in the past. However, beyond these currents coming from outside China, a very important indigenous factor in uenced Zhang and other historians in their ideas on the recasting of history. This was a time of discovery of abundant, hitherto unavailable, sources of historical artifacts and documents. Many things were unearthed in archeological diggings beginning in the 19th century. Sites of early Shang dynasty cities such as at Anyang, bronzes with their inscriptions, scapula and tortoise shell artifacts, stone stele, pottery, the ancient Buddhist manuscripts and wall frescoes in Dunhuang caves, rediscovery of vernacular literature and textual evidence of early myths, the later recovery of hidden and lost Ming/Qing period documents—the list is long. These discoveries of historical materials had great import for the analysis and reconstruc- tion of historical events. It became possible to identify with certitude disruptions in the orthodox history where continuity had previously been accepted without question. Historians now could rethink what China was. Zhang saw the future writers of general histories choosing from among documents and facts what was to be written. In his words, “Although beginning with the Tang Dynasty there was a special [of cial] bureau to write history according to periods, today when general history is written the purpose must be to determine it according to the importance of the subject and to use detail to describe when needed, but to be brief when necessary.”37 In his vision, the broad general histories would pro- vide condensations of past history, and the old history texts would be preserved to provide detail. Implicit in his scheme for the creation of general history was the assumption that independent private scholars such as he (the forerunners of professional academic historians), not government bureaus, would construct these histories. History no longer would be controlled by the dynasty or the government. In this way, what was most important to pass on to future generations would be
36 Zhang 1904: 161–62. 37 Zhang 1904: 161–62.
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written and taught in the historical narrative, beyond the demand for legitimation of the rule. Nonetheless, Zhang’s assumption that re-creation of the historical narrative in this way would bene t the polity re ected the notion of custodianship enjoyed in the past by historians in China. Actually, Zhang Taiyan’s sketchy outline of a general history blends Chinese traditional and Western modern in both form and content. After a beginning sec- tion of tables (a traditional format), the author, in the second section, would deal with social and economic institutions and characteristics of life (quite a modern avor) such as: race, housing, water control and construction, handicrafts and technology, agriculture and commerce, language, religions, scholarship, ritual and customs, dress and social status, law, military and defense. In the third section, named Records, key political events would be treated thematically, without commitment to comprehensiveness and not necessarily systematically. In his example, the rst subsection in Records would be the Zhou political system, the second the Qin Emperor system. The third section would skip the entire Han period and move on the Southern Zhou, a southern minority kingdom, while the fourth subsection would skip again to the separated military border commanders in the Tang period. His selection of the eras of basic change or breaks in political organization for the structure of the narrative emphasizes times of radical political disjuncture, some of them formative of new modes of political organization, such as the Zhou and the Qin. While the in uence of the Western emphasis on change is at work in Zhang’s prescription, it lacks any idea of inexorable linearity. His fourth major section, of more traditional hue, was to be biography. These were to be the biographies of certain strong emperors, grouped together rather than arranged in separate dynastic sections. Generally, his choices were either revolutionaries or reformists, again breaking the accepted model, with no effort made to be comprehensive. His last major category, special biographies, would include people of all sorts, as well as several collective biographies of types such as assassins and political parties.38 His heavy emphasis on biographies re ects the in uence of the Sima Qian Shiji model of historical writing. Zhang, unlike Liang Qichao, did not stress mass or group participation as an essential part of the historical narrative.
38 Zhang 1904: 161–62.
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Although Zhang Taiyan’s General History was never written, he was convinced in 1904 that the writing of general histories about events and qualities in the past that had relevance for the future was essential for the education of the people. The sense of mission that Zhang and others felt for writing these general histories was intensi ed by the gap left by the demise of the examination system and the pressing need for an appropriate historical curriculum. The traditional canon must be replaced with a modern canon that served the people’s need to know the country’s past and present.
Xia Zengyou’s General History: A New History for Popular Readers
Indeed, the question of how the past should be written for the needs of the present was on the minds of many in these years of change. Those who were concerned about the content of history knew that it was important for education39 but even more for the shared cultural life of people of all ages in the civil sphere. Two years after Liang Qichao, exiled in Japan, had published his seminal article on New History and contemporaneous with Zhang Taiyan’s theorizing about general his- tory, Xia Zengyou, a friend of Liang and Tan Sitong and a member of the reform group in China, wrote what seems to have been the rst general history of China written originally by a Chinese and published in China.40 Zuixin zhongxue Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu 最新中學中國歷史 教科書 (The Newest Chinese History Textbook for Middle School) was published in 1904 by the Commercial Press, a private publisher in Shanghai. This is the press that began to supply textbooks for the new schools. Xia’s history was widely used by the schools during the Republican period. Written as a middle school textbook, Xia Zengyou’s work has been considered a ne early example of modern historical writing, according to Teng Ssu-yu. Teng has pointed out that Xia did not intend the history for beginners, but for mature students who had already received a relatively rigorous training in the classics.41 These
39 Early textbooks written at the end of the Qing have been discussed in the rst section of the present book by Tze-ki Hon and Peter Zarrow. 40 Xia’s book was republished by Shangwu yinshuguan as Zhongguo gudai shi 中國古 代史 (History of Ancient China) in 1933. Xia was a close friend of both Liang and Tan Sitong, who was executed after the reformers were declared traitors in 1898. In the present discussion the Zhongguo gudai shi edition is used. 41 Teng Ssu-yu 1949: 131–156, praised it. In an interview with the present author
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were the students who had already attended or would have attended the Qing xue yuan academies and later attended the modern middle schools. A general history of China, Shina tsushi 支那通史 (General History of China), had been published in 1891 in Japan by the Japanese historian, Naka Michiyo 那珂通世. In 1902, two years before Xia Zengyou pub- lished his general history in China, this work of Naka’s was published in China by Liu Yizheng 柳誼徵 as Lidai shilue 歷代史略 under his own name as his own work. Liu had made additions and adaptations to the work, originally written by Naka in Chinese, but from the perspective of a Japanese writing about a foreign country. However, Liu did not acknowledge that the main body or core of the history he published was borrowed from the Japanese historian’s general history. In the rst section of the present volume, Hon Tze-ki has explored Liu Yizheng’s publication of this volume in China as well as Xia Zengyou’s history and a text by Liu Shipei, in “Educating the Citizens: Visions of China in Late Qing History Textbooks.”42 In the preface to his history, Xia wrote about the ideas of evolution and progress that stemmed from Darwin’s Origin of the Species, stressing his intention to structure the book with change as its central principle, a new approach at this time in historical works in China.43 Xia wanted to emphasize the causes that had produced contemporary society. Historical gures were only mentioned when they had a part in the ourishing or fall of dynasties—fame was not enough merit for a hero to be included. Xia used the same principle in regard to society. For example, detail on social customs and regions was only included when relevant to periods of great change.44 Xia had become familiar with Social Darwinism before he wrote the history.45 Xia’s conviction that his general history was a path-breaking endeavor to create a new historical genre with no prior model is evident in his introduction. He writes of the lack of “cart tracks” to follow for Chinese historical
in 1985, Teng Ssu-yu discussed the Xia history and its importance as an early model of modern general history and as an in uential textbook that had been widely used for many years. It should be noted these middle schools were at least at the level of American high schools. 42 See Zarrow’s essay on late Qing textbooks in the rst section of this volume. 43 Xia 1933: 1–2; Zhou 1941: 12–18. 44 Xia 1933: preface, vol. 2. 45 Zhou 1941: 12–18 for Xia Zengyou. For Darwinist texts in China in these years, see Huxley 1898; Spencer 1903. For the spread of Darwinism, see Pusey 1983.
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studies at this juncture, although he knows that there are ample “cart tracks” for those writing Western historical studies.46 Xia was clearly in uenced in his project by Western general history writing which was reaching him in at least two ways. He would have read the 1895 translation of Mackenzie’s Nineteenth Century recommended by his close friend, Liang Qichao, and was so widely discussed throughout China especially by the reformers in Beijing in the mid-1890s. The stress in this kind of New History on the pace of change and the struggles in 19th century Europe had the effect of in uencing readers to look at history in terms of change rather than the stasis that dominated the climate of dynastic histories. The stress in New History encouraged readers to look beyond the ruling class to the breadth of the people, their lives and movements. After Xia went to Japan, he was also exposed to Western historical writing through Japanese histories of China that had been inspired by Western, particularly German histories. Naka Michiyo’s Shina tsushi, written in the style of Western general history and published in 1891 in Japan but actually written originally in Chinese,47 particularly attracted Xia. In Naka’s history periodization xed historical time in three eras: ancient, medieval, and modern, the time arrangement European his- torians were using. In Xia’s outline for the complete General History, he had divided historical time into three periods: rst, the ancient period covering the era from the mythical Three Emperors to the Qin; sec- ond, the medieval period from Qin through Tang; and the last period extending from the Song to contemporary times.48 Unfortunately, Xia died tragically in 1924 after a long period of depression before he completed the volumes he had planned; the work he published before his death only reached the Sui Dynasty, prior to the Tang.
46 Xia 1933: preface. 47 Naka Michiyo 1891, introduced into China with a preface by Luo Zhenyu in 1899. Luo was an ardent proponent of learning from Japan. Zhou Yutong, 1941 has evidence that Xia knew of Naka’s work and of other Japanese general histories of China. I am grateful to Joshua Fogel for his personal communication on the general histories of Naka and Xia. See Fogel 1979: 219–235, esp. 221. A copy, with some adaptation, of Naka’s history of China was published by Liu Yizheng under the title Lidai shilüe 歷代史略 without acknowledgment of the original writer. 48 Xia 1933: 5. For Naka as a model for Xia see Zhou 1941: 17. Xia used the same periodization and chapter divisions that Naka had used. According to Zhou Yutong, Xia drank himself to death in 1924, probably as a result of depression that had begun with the disastrous failure of the Hundred Days Reform and the execution of his close friend, Tan Sitong.
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While there is abundant evidence that one of the ways knowledge of Western historical writing came into China was through Japan, the engine for the development of general history in China actually was deeply powered by indigenous factors addressing dire internal problems and the pressing need created by internal change in the prior century as well as by stimuli from the West. For example, Xia Zengyou’s deliber- ate choice to use simple, popularly known names for historical gures in his general history was something new in a history of China. This history published in China, written by a Chinese, was intended for a broad readership, not merely the ruling group and the elite literati stratum of the past.49 In his history, Xia was aiming to educate and stimulate people to want change in China. Shunning Zhang Taiyan’s chosen structural arrangement for his history arranged in the fashion of premodern Chinese histories with Basic Annals of the rulers, Trea- tises, Tables and Biographies of heroes, Xia Zengyou chose instead the Western model of chapters following one another in the general chronological arrangement of early, medieval, and modern. However, lest we conclude he was following the Western model as a simple pattern, it must be noted that he established a very important difference from the usual Western idea of chronological sequence. While he did arrange the history chronologically, his narrative was far from a straight linear progression through history. As had Zhang Taiyan, Xia also abandoned the traditional effort to encyclopedically cover every dynasty, every ruler to display China’s imperial glory. Rather, Xia Zengyou chose to emphasize the junctures where signi cant change or dislocation occurred as con icting forces came into contact. His new approach (reminiscent of Zhang Xuecheng’s ideas in the 18th century on the way to write a history) was evident in the proportion of emphasis he gave in the relatively brief history to non mainstream, relatively heterodox subjects. These included the ourishing of necro- mancers and religious Daoism that began in Later Han and extended into the following period, emphasis on the advent of Buddhism coming from India into China, and stress on pre-Confucian religion in earlier times. In fact, Xia’s emphasis on the early interaction of religion and philosophy in Chinese thought pre gured important new work that is being done currently on the development of early pre-Han religion.
49 Xia deliberately chose the simplest, most popular, form of all names for the bene t of the readers, according to his preface.
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The central question of the origin of Chinese historical civilization Xia Zengyou treated in a straightforward matter-of-fact way that today does not attract our attention, but in the context of the readers of the early 20th century was a sensitive issue. The question of the prehistoric past of China and the actual existence of the earliest rulers—the Three Kings and Five Emperors—was to become a very sensitive political issue in the 1920s and 1930s. Xia handled it by treating these gures as legends. His method was to treat them in a matter-of-fact explana- tion where he made the demythifying point that the earliest the ancient gures are found in the records is in early Zhou texts.50 At the time he was writing, his attribution of the formation of China’s culture to the Zhou period, rather than to the dim pre-Zhou past, was an iconoclastic treatment. This can be seen by comparison with some of the historians of the late Qing, discussed in Peter Zarrow’s essay in the rst section of this volume. However, Xia’s account went without challenge from of cials or scholars, perhaps because they were involved in the disrup- tive contemporary problems of institutional change, formation of the new educational system, and the abolition of the civil service examina- tion system. As we will discuss shortly, twenty ve years later, in a very different political climate, the same subject was to become an issue of national political controversy, resulting in the Ministry of Education’s ban of another general history textbook.51 Another signi cant departure in the Xia tongshi was his focus on the place in the past of non-Han groups such as the Turkic Xiongnu, Northern Wei, Toba Wei, and others. What today we would call eth- nicity (in the early 1900s translated as race, later as nationalities, or as national minorities) was one of the historical factors in China’s past that Xia particularly emphasized.52 In short, Xia’s historical narrative emphasized as positive the het- erodox aspects of the culture subject to multiethnic in uences, as well as of a society in ux politically and socially. It highlighted the role of change in China’s past, giving decreased attention to long periods of stability. Furthermore, largely absent from his narrative is the concept of progress in the sense of advance upward—his is a morally neutral narrative. Since the historic past was the great legitimator of action as
50 Xia 1933: 7. 51 The textbook was Gu and Wang 1924. See footnote 56. 52 Fincher 1972: 59–69; Townsend 1992: 97–130.
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well as the “clear mirror,” even in his present Xia turned his new focus to the disjunctive and disruptive changes in history that had been there all along but seldom stressed, rather than feature the ordered stability and successes of past rule, as had the old histories to meet the dynastic ruler’s need for stasis and legitimation. Bringing these changes into the historical narrative provided a perspective on the past that suited a China needing to cultivate the motivation and ability to change for success in the present.
Gu Jiegang’s General History: The Benguo shi
In the early 1920s, a young, iconoclastic scholar named Gu Jiegang53 was also thinking about the development of new forms of historical writing. Gu had studied with both Zhang Taiyan and the eminent scholar and leader of the literary revolution, Hu Shi, an outspoken proponent of learning from Western countries. Gu, himself a scholar of the classics but not as oriented to Western thought as Hu Shi, was to become a leader in critical analysis of the classical heritage and one of the founders of historical geography. In his Autobiography Gu describes how, in 1922–1923, encouraged by his mentor Hu Shi, he wrote one of the earliest general histories of China for the Commercial Press to be used as a middle school text. He was assisted in the endeavor by Wang Zhongqi 王鍾麒, a friend and editor at the press.54 Gu is customar- ily recognized as the author of the history by later historians, such as Laurence Schneider and Xiaofeng Tang.55 The writing style of Gu’s Benguo shi 本國史, given the English title History of China for Junior Middle Schools by the Commercial Press,56 was a very simple, concise vernacular with a direct pedagogic method, rst stating an interpretation clearly and then backing it up with simple exposition of the relevant facts. In his Autobiography Gu makes the point that he was insistent on writing the history “entirely from my own point of view.” According to him, he aimed to create “a living narrative so
53 For a biography of Gu see Schneider 1971. 54 In Ku 1931, Gu Jiegang describes his being hired by the Commercial Press to write the book in (see 95–103). For a differing account of authorship of this tongshi see Culp 2001: 17–62. 55 Schneider 1971; Xiaofeng Tang 2000: 94. 56 Gu and Wang 1924.
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that readers might have an opportunity to look at historical movements in their entirety and so be inspired to pursue their studies further, from a genuine historical point of view.”57 At the beginning of the rst of the three volumes he sets forth four fundamental themes: the relationship of history and geography, histori- cal evolution, the various nationalities (ethnic groups) in China’s history, and divisions of historical time. With the simple de nition of history as “the evolutionary process of everything,”58 he equated history with the process of change, not stasis. However, Gu made the spatial and geographical approach to history and the historical past his primary paradigm. Consequently, in the opening section of the historical nar- rative he situated China in the world, and then proceeded to identify it geographically as a particular state in a region of the world. In this way he symbolically underscores the equivalence of China with other states in the world. It was in this nexus of the interrelationships of geography, ethnicity, and history that Gu Jiegang made some of his most seminal and powerful contributions to historical scholarship over the next decades. Today he is considered to have been a principal founder of Chinese historical geography.59 Since Gu Jiegang stressed spatial location, it followed that, in his conception of history no state is isolated; each is situated and has relationships with other countries. These relationships must be stud- ied also, bringing into the center of the historian’s lens issues such as the nature of nationality (ethnicity) within China, of the in uence of foreign countries on China’s culture, and the questions of how China had in uenced other countries and how China’s present territory was shaped by its relationships.60 Thus for Gu, ethnicity and geography are rmly linked in China’s history at the same time that China is located in a mesh of intercultural, interstate relationships. Change shaped the social organization of mankind and the history of the times.61 According to Gu Jiegang’s concept of the historical narrative, rather than producing a simple linear history, evolutionary changes occurred over time in sectors of society, not only at the change of dynasties
57 Ku 1931: 95. 58 Gu and Wang 1924: vol. 1, 1–22; quote on 1. 59 Personal communication from Hou Renzhi 侯仁之, Beijing University. For the importance of Gu Jiegang as a leader in the 20th century emergence of the eld of historical geography in China see Xiaofeng Tang 2000: 94–113. 60 Gu and Wang 1924: vol. 1, 4. 61 Gu and Wang 1924: vol. 1, 4.
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or through the success and failure of heroes. To learn about change over time, he tells his readers, four aspects of men’s activities must be studied: nationalities (that is, ethnic groups), society, politics, and intellectual thought and the arts. Gu’s focus was to explain the collec- tive development of man in these four aspects. For him, penetrating, in-depth study of these factors should be left to professional experts in their specialized studies. To his readers he explained change and cul- tural relationships are the nexus within which the history of mankind must be understood: “History is the life of the whole of humankind, therefore we must have . . . (an) understanding of its development. . . . At least, we must have an overview of the evolution of these main aspects and understand the cultural relationships.”62 Gu’s attention to ethnicity (nationalities) was extraordinary for the 1920s present. He describes seven ethnic groups in China among whom the Hua (the Han Chinese) people are but one.63 He brings the ethnic- ity of these groups right into the center of Chinese history, rather than treating the question of nationalities as peripheral. In uences from outside the Han group brought vigor to Chinese culture and civilization. Gu sees Confucianism itself as static. Without the in uence of Bud- dhism coming into China from India, there would have been a static state without vitality. However, among his contemporaries in Nationalist China were many who promoted Great Hanism: the identity of the Chinese state and culture as a Han state with Han culture.64 For these people Gu’s views as embodied in his tongshi threatened what they saw as the core identity of the Chinese state and society. For them these ideas were impermissible. In an overview of the chapter headings in Benguo shi,65 volume one is divided into two major sections, de ned by historical period. In the rst section, “Remote Antiquity: Before the Qin,” Gu dives in with a chapter on the evolution of society and the founding of the kingdoms; second, he has a chapter on the legend of the ood. Next comes feudal system and clan doctrine, then a chapter on feudal lords and society of
62 Gu and Wang 1924: vol. 1, 5. 63 Gu and Wang 1924: vol. 1, 12. 64 Chow 2001, 47–83, presents an in depth discussion of the ideas of earlier thinkers, especially Zhang Binglin (Taiyan), on Hanren as the essential Chinese. Zhang Taiyan’s ideas on race were very different from Gu Jiegang’s. Zhang had been consumed by opposition to the Manchu Qing rulers, because they were not Han. 65 Benguo shi was published by the Commercial Press in three volumes: Shang, Zhong, and Xia.
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the time, and so on, with the chapter organization stressing analytical themes. The second section of volume one, “Middle Ancient: From the Beginning of the Qin to the Close of the Five Dynasties,” begins with a chapter on the Qin uni cation and the establishment of a uni ed government, then the second chapter takes up the Great Wall and the Xiongnu. A later chapter deals with the collapse of the political center. Chapter nine in this section focuses on the arrival of Buddhism and the ourishing of Daoism. The second volume, on the Middle Period, covers from the begin- ning of the Song to the close of the Ming, but it does not dwell on the dynastic perspective of the polity in these times. Rather, Gu takes the reader into theme oriented chapters on the establishment of acad- emies and schools of thought, the military strength of the Mongols and communication with Europe, the government of the Yuan and the characteristics of scholarship, overseas communication, and the in uence of Christianity in the period. Moving on to the third volume, which is in two parts, the rst section deals with the Qing period. In the rst chapter the reigns of the rst three Qing emperors, Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong, are gathered together. The second chapter focuses on Yellow Lamaism—Tibetan and Mongol, then chapter three takes up textual criticism (kaoju 考據) and the examination system. The Opium War is the subject of the fourth chapter, while the fth chapter plunges into its topic: the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Nian Rebellion. After ve more chapters in part one, part two of this last volume deals with the post 1911 Revolu- tion period in ve chapters, the last of which is “Literary Revolution and the Vernacular Language Movement.” From this overview we see that Gu opens his lens to take in diverse aspects of the past, many of which brought fundamental change and introduced new factors in the Chinese polity. When we consider that three years after Gu Jiegang’s Benguo shi was published, the anti-evolution Scopes Monkey Trial took place in the United States, in this context, Gu’s words, “Needless to say, human beings gradually evolved from the monkey-like to human beings . . .,”66 together with his challenge of sacred Chinese culture heroes, seem bold and sophisticated even today, as confrontational debates over Creation- ism and Intelligent Design linger on in the United States. In fact, by
66 Gu and Wang 1924: 9.
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relegating the ancient founding gures strictly to myth in his history, the iconoclast Gu had set the stage for what became a storm of opposition to his book and its publisher some years later.67 After the Nationalist Party came to power in 1928, according to Gu’s own account many years later, the Ministry of Education decided to ban the book on the grounds that the material in the history was unacceptable as a textbook for young people in school, even though the book had already been in circulation for several years. The offense was that he had challenged the stories of the founding culture heroes, the Three Kings and Five Emperors from the period of the Great Flood, and dismissed them as legends that were mere “ ction,” that could not be taken as reliable historical facts since there was no scienti c evidence of their existence.68 This treatment of the earliest kings and emperors as myths, plus Gu’s raising the multi-ethnicity of China to a high status, brought disaster on the Commercial Press after the Nationalist Republic was founded in 1928, although it didn’t seem to hurt Gu’s own reputation in academic circles at all.69 The press had planned to publish more than a million copies of the history for sale to schools, but the Education Ministry forced the withdrawal of the textbooks by threatening the Commercial Press with an enormous punitive ne.70 Although this incident was negative, the act of censorship only served to con rm the conviction of historians writing these general histories of the importance of their project to the transmission of the cultural heri- tage that stimulated and shaped national consciousness. Twenty years earlier, when dynastic China still existed, no one had blinked when Xia Zengyou’s history contained a similar handling of the ancient stories of origins. The difference was not that history was more or less important to the construction of the nation in the two periods. On the contrary, with the new Nationalist party-state trying to unify a badly fragmented
67 For example Gu dismissed as legend the creation of Pangu, the rst Chinese man, supposed to have been made from clay. He compared the Chinese creation story to the way Darwinian thought illuminated the biblical Adam and Eve as myth, showing that it should be eliminated as a real explanation and understood, rather, as legend. This interpretation of the Pangu and other early stories as legends brought Gu Jiegang serious trouble a few years after publication even though Xia Zengyou’s history had also dealt with the early stories as prehistoric legends. 68 Gu and Wang 1924: 18. For the whole incident see Gu 1982. 69 Fu Sinian once referred to Gu as “the Newton and Darwin of Chinese ancient history.” See Xiaofeng Tang 2000: 94. 70 Gu 1982: 18–19. Dai Jitao was the spokesman for the Guomindang in the incident.
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China, the stakes of legitimacy were much higher. In the Nationalist Republican present of 1928 there was a serious need to make sure the symbolism at the heart of the vision of national identity would ensure allegiance of the populace to the Republican state. Gu’s propensity for objectivity and autonomy stood in the way of this goal as interpreted by the narrowly nationalist ministers of the state. Writing general his- tory, despite the intent of historians to write the past independently, was in fact still a political enterprise, as history had always been. The past must once again be constructed to meet the needs of the state. Now, the contest was about who was going to control construction of the past: the independent academic and publishing world or the state and its ministers. In this case the Nationalist Party impinged on the emerging world of modern professional academic historians in a way reminiscent of the dynastic rulers in validating the rule of the state.
General History Established
By the 1930s a number of historians were publishing general histories. These were usually created for general reading and teaching by profes- sional historians, often from the author’s lecture notes. Most of these historians were academics on the faculties of universities such as Qing- hua, Beijing, Sun Yatsen, Furen, Yanjing, and Nanjing, making their livelihood by their profession of teaching and writing. Among the tongshi authors there was common agreement that there is far more than politics to the history of the past. Society, indeed the entire civil sphere must be the substance of the historical narrative. Some of the best known authors of later general histories are Deng Zhicheng 鄧之誠, Fu Sinian 傅斯年, Zhang Yinlin, Zhou Gucheng 周谷城, Qian Mu 錢穆, Jian Bozan 翦伯贊, and Fan Wenlan 范文蘭, as well as Liu Yizheng and Chen Dengyuan 陳登原, both authors of cultural histories. While some histories were more widely read than others, all contributed to the creation of narrative history of the nation’s past. This was an era of intellectual excitement and blossom, referred to in retrospect as the “Golden Era” among those who were students of these teachers at the time.71
71 Ho Pingti in personal communication with the author.
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It doesn’t help our insight into the development of this new genre of historical writing if we assume that our own conceptions of schools, textbooks, civil society, and nation drawn from our late 20th, early 21st century experience come from the same environment which nurtured these developments in China’s historical writing.72 In dynastic China, historians were scholars—men trained in the classics by senior scholars who were most often part of landowner families in rural China. The scholars’ role in the dynastic polity was usually de ned by the bureau- cratic system of of cial appointment, institutionalized by the imperial examination system that had been the established road since the Sui- Tang period, carried on and perfected in the Ming and Qing eras. Pingti Ho describes this “Ladder of Success” in his de nitive work on the system.73 These scholars shaped the historical works and furnished the historians until the late 19th century. History was studied through classical texts, records, and histories written within this paradigm. Toward the end of the 19th century, pressures on China from foreign lands and the incapacity of the dynasty to deal with the challenges raised the concern of the intelligentsia as we have discussed here. It was in this situation that scholars like Liang Qichao, Xia Zengyou, Liu Yizheng, and Zhang Binglin began to address the issues of the content and writing of history. Many of the works called “textbooks” here in this collection of essays were de nitely not conceived of and written as textbooks in the sense of the term used today in our secondary schools and colleges. Indeed, they were written as histories for young scholars who were well educated in the classics and serious about the study of their culture. Often these students had already been through several years of serious study in xue yuan 學院 (academies) or perhaps sishu 私塾 (private schools), or had studied privately with a well-known local scholar and now wanted the imprimatur of the new schools to carry on their lives in the changing polity.74 As the late Qing and early Republican era school system developed many serious students enrolled in classes. These were the students for whom the so-called “textbooks” published by the Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshuguan) and other publishers were targeted. Actually, the
72 Tze-ki Hon has pointed to this problem in his essay on early textbooks and I want to underscore it here also. 73 Pingti Ho 1962. 74 For the experience of the father of Wu Han in Yiwu Xian, Zhejiang in the early 1900s as he studied to attain an appointment to an of cial position, see Mazur 1993.
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books were written as general histories for readerships far beyond the classrooms, not as a separate genre of textbook as in our own cultural situation. The texts discussed here, authored by Xia Zengyou and Gu Jiegang, are examples of tongshi published by the press to be purchased and used as textbooks in schools but conceptually written for the broad popular audience. The volume by Zhang Yinlin discussed in Brian Moloughney’s chapter is a general history that was widely read and used in college general history classes. While the volume published by Zhang Yinlin only covers the rst centuries up to the Song, the original plan, never carried out, was that Wu Han 吳唅 would write the volume on the middle period of China’s history, with Qian Jiaju 千家駒 and other historians dealing with the modern era. During the 1940s Wu Han used Zhang’s volume in his general history classes at Southwestern (Xinan lianda) and Qinghua Universities.75 Some of the historians situate China’s place in a world far more extensive than China and intend that China be seen as being of equal status with other peoples; others don’t go beyond China. Some emphasize geography and ethnicity; some utilize the new discoveries of historical artifacts to push back the boundaries of prehistory. Some explain the folk hero stories from pre-history as simply that—legends granted a secondary position—whereas others accord the stories a prime place at the beginning of the narrative. There is also variety in the periodization of time. Even the Marxist-in uenced general histories published in the 1940s by Jian Bozan and Fan Wenlan were richly nuanced and not given to extreme dialectical materialist interpretations. Broadly speaking, all of the general histories created in the rst half of the 20th century were narratives with the same mission: to give read- ers a sense of the historical roots from which China, now becoming a nation, had come, and to create knowledge and appreciation of the nature of the present society, nation, and culture. In sum, the emergence of the new genre of general history in Chinese historiography has been a critical change in modern historiography. Contrary to the view that the historical effect of Darwinism was to intro- duce the idea of inevitable, linear causation, the impact of evolutionary
75 Mazur 1993. Also Ma Zimei (Mazur) 1996. Wu Han carried Zhang Yinlin’s original unpublished manuscript to Kunming for him when Zhang ed Beijing at the moment of the Japanese invasion in 1937. Zhang lived with Wu at Wu’s home when he rst reached Kunming. Personal communication with Qian Jiazhu.
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thinking on historical thought is far more complex. First, rather than causation being linear, heterodox and variant possibilities of causation became possible. The old orthodoxies could be challenged, so they need not be adhered to—change is not abnormal at all. Secondly, within the passage of time, possibilities are achievable through diverse challenge and variety. Through variant factors, man might, through will, have an impact on the future. With this in mind, it seems that the penetra- tion of Darwinian thought into the practice of history was one of the most seminal discontinuities that shaped the transformation of Chinese historiography. The existence of discontinuity meant that notions of change and variety in society began to in uence historians’ examination and narratives of the past to refocus on periods of signi cant change, rather than on periods of stasis and social harmony. The acceptance of diversity also meant that dynastic continuity (linearity) and homeo- stasis lost its appeal in the historical account. The past began to be disconnected by the historians from its singular identi cation with the dynastic state and institutions, as the existence of a multifaceted polity became possible. History was no longer dominated by the canon of the classics, tied to the state examination system. Dynastic China itself had ended with the Qing inability to cope with the need to change and the modern Western challenge. Periods of discontinuous deep change in society, such as the era of the spread of Buddhism in China, became more germane to understanding the past. The present itself, with the introduction of ideas directly from the West or through Japan, was an equally signi cant discontinuity, not to be feared, since it was not a unique phenomenon in Chinese history. The dynamic of Darwinism was as seminal for the production of change in its era as Buddhism, for example, had been in a much earlier era. The re-creation of the heritage as a freestanding, multifaceted culture, no longer bound by the traditional neo-Confucian canon to the dynas- tic setting tied to the examination system, was fundamental to the emergence of this new historical genre. This conception of Chinese culture appealed to the country’s broad popular readership, as well as to teachers and students who needed a suitable curriculum. Historians saw continuity in being the narrators, the de ners and custodians of the culture and its history, as they recast history to meet the needs of the new polity. These historians were creating narratives that enlisted and yet transformed the past in the creation of a national identity for the nation-state that was emerging from the old dynastic state.
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He Bingsong 何炳松 (1928), Tongshi xinyi 通史新義 (The new meaning of general history). Shanghai: Commercial Press. Ho Pingti (1962), The Ladder of Success in Imperial China. New York: Columbia University Press. Huang, Philip C. (1972), Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Modern Chinese Liberalism. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Huxley, T.H. (1898), On Evolution (Tianyan), Yan Fu (trans.). Iggers, Georg G. (1999), The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press. Karl, Rebecca E. (1999), “Creating Asia: China in the World at the Beginning of the Century,” in American Historical Review 104, 4 (October 1999), 1096–1118. —— (2002), Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. Durham: Duke University Press. Kenji, Shimada (1990), Pioneer of the Chinese Revolution, Zhang Binglin and Confucianism. Joshua A. Fogel (trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ku Chieh-kang (Gu Jiegang) (1931), The Autobiography of a Chinese Historian, Arthur Hummel trans. Leiden: Brill. Lamprecht, Karl (1891), Deutsche Geschichte. —— (1905), What Is History? E.A. Andrews trans. New York: Macmillan. Levenson, Joseph (1965), Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, a Trilogy. Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press. —— (1970), Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and the Mind of Modern China. Berkeley: University of California Press. Liang Qichao (1896), “Xixue shumu biao 西學書目表 (Bibliography of Western Learning),” in Zhixue congshu chuji 質學叢書初集. Zhixue hui, 3b–4. —— (1902a), “Xin shixue 新史學 (On new history),” in Yinbing shi wenji (1926), 4. —— (1902b), “Xinmin shuo 新民說 (On the new people),” in Yinbing shi heji zhuanji 3, 4, 1–162. —— (1922), Zhongguo lishi yanjiu fa 中國歷史研究法 (Methods of researching Chinese history). Taibei: Taiwan Zhonghua shuju, 1–36. —— (1926), Zhongguo lishi yanjiu fa (bubian) 中國歷史研究法補編 (Methods of research- ing Chinese history: supplement). Taibei: Taiwan Zhonghua shuju. ____ (1936), “Shuo qun xu 說群序 (Preface to the Treatise on Collectivity),” in Yinbing shi heji: wenji 飲冰室合集﹕文集. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan. Ma Kenxi (Robert Mackenzie) (1902), Taixi xinshi lanyao 泰西新史覽要, Li Timoutai (Timothy Richard) trans. Shanghai: Society for the Diffusion of Christian and Gen- eral Knowledge among the Chinese. (The book was rst published 1895. I use the ninth edition (1902) in this article). Ma Zimei 馬紫梅 (Mary G. Mazur) (1996), Shidai zhi zi: Wu Han 時代之子﹕吳唅 (Son of His Times: Wu Han), translated into Chinese by Zeng Yuelin 曾越麟 et al. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. —— (1997), “Bu lianxu de lianxuxing: Guanyu ershi shiji Zhongguo ‘Tongshi’ xin zonghe de yixie chubu xiangfa 不連續的連續性﹕關於二十世紀中國“通史”新綜 合的一些初步想法 (Interrupted Continuity: Some Re ections on the Writing of China’s General History in the Twentieth Century),” translated into Chinese by Wu Yanhong 吳艷紅, in Shixue lilun yanjiu. 史學理論研究 2 (1997), 56–65. Mackenzie, Robert (1880), The Nineteenth Century: A History. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons. Mazur, Mary G. (1980), “The Reception of Early Modern Primary Educational Reform: A Case Study of the Hsu-chou Area.” MA Thesis, University of Chicago. —— (1993), “A Man of His Times: Wu Han, the Historian.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago. —— (1997), “The Four Zhu Yuanzhang zhuans,” in Ming Studies, 38 (1997), 63–85. Naka Michiyo 那珂通世 (1891), Shina tsushi 支那通史 (General History of China). Novick, Peter (1988), That Noble Dream. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Pusey, James Reeve (1983), China and Charles Darwin. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Research, Harvard University. Qi Sihe 齊思和 (1949), “Jin bainian lai zhongguo shixue de fazhan 近百年來中國史 學的發展 (The development of Chinese historiography in the last hundred years),” in Yanjing shehui kexue 燕京社會科學 2 (October 1949). Schneider, Laurence A. (1971), Ku Chieh-kang and China’s New History: Nationalism and the Quest for Alternative Traditions. Berkeley: University of California Press. —— (1979), “National Essence and the New Intelligentsia,” in Charlotte Furth (ed.) (1976), The Limits of Change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 57–89. Soothill, William E. (1924), Timothy Richard of China. London: Seeley, Service and Co. Spencer, Herbert (1903), Study of Sociology (Qunxue yiyan), translated by Yan Fu. Su Chi 素痴 (Zhang Yinlin) (1929), “Jindai Zhongguo xuexushi shang zhi Liang Ren- gong xian sheng 近代中國史學史上之梁任公先生 (Liang Rengong’s position in modern Chinese intellectual history),” in Xueheng 學衡 67, 85 ( January 1929). Tang, Xiaobing (1996), Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity: The Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Tang, Xiaofeng (2000), From Dynastic Geography to Historical Geography: A Change in Per- spective Toward the Geographical Past of China. Hong Kong: The Commercial Press International. Teng Ssu-yu (1949), “Chinese Historiography in the Last Fifty Years” in Far Eastern Quarterly 8, 2 (February 1949), 131–156. Townsend, James (1992), “Chinese Nationalism,” in Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 27 ( January 1992), 97–130. Williams, Raymond (1958), Culture and Society, 1780–1950. New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press. Wilson, George M. (1992), Patriots and Redeemers in Japan. Chicago: University of Chi- cago Press. Wong, Q. Edward (2001), Inventing China through History: the May Fourth Approach to His- toriography. Albany: State University of New York Press. Wong, Young-tsu (1989), Search for Modern Nationalism: Zhang Binglin and Revolutionary China, 1869–1936. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Wright, Arthur (1963), “On the Uses of Generalization in the Study of Chinese His- tory,” in Louis Gottschalk (ed.) (1963), Generalization in the Writing of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Xia Zengyou 夏曾佑 (1933), Zhongguo gudai shi 中國古代史 (History of Ancient China). Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan. The book was rst published in 1904 with another title, Zuixin zhongxue Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu 最新中學中國歷史教科書 (The Newest Chinese History Textbook for Middle School). Xu Guansan 許冠三 (1986 & 1989), Xin shixue jiushi nian, 1900 —新史學九十年 1900 –(Ninety years of New History, 1900 –), 2 vols. Hong Kong: Zhongwen daxue chubanshe. Zhang Taiyan 章太炎 (Binglin 炳麟) (1904), “Ai Qing shi 哀清史 (Lament for Qing history),” in Qiu shu 訄書. Shanghai: 59, 156–162. Zhou Yutong 周予同 (1941), “Wushi nianlai Zhongguo zhi xinshi xue 五十年來中 國之新史學 (Chinese New History studies in the last fty years),” in Xuelin 學林 (1941).
hon&culp_f6_106-142.indd 142 5/22/2007 4:49:05 PM ZHANG YINLIN’S EARLY CHINA
Brian Moloughney
The extraordinary social and political changes of the late Qing and Republican periods provided great challenges for scholars. The new education system and the vernacular literature movement meant that the audience for almost all forms scholarship was growing. But it was also of a fundamentally different character. Scholars found themselves confronting a completely new environment, an environment in which they had to try to manage the transition from fragmenting empire to emerging nation-state. For many historians this meant grappling with the issue of what a ‘national’ history might mean, and how to tell that national story in a way that would give meaning to the inherited cultural legacy yet also engage the new audience for scholarship and thus help shape the emerging nation-state. Some historians were un- forgiving, intentionally carrying the rich historiographical tradition of the past into the present and expecting readers to rise to this level. If this was well done, as with Liu Yizheng’s (柳詒徵 1880–1956) Zhong- guo wenhua shi 中國文化史 (A Cultural History of China) or Qian Mu’s (錢穆 1895–1990) Guoshi dagang 國史大綱 (An Outline of the Nation’s History), then an audience was found, albeit one that was deliberately focused on the retention of considerable skill with the classical language.1 Other scholars decided that a new general history must be of completely different order. If it was to reach as wide an audience as possible, such a history could not be written in the same way as had histories in the past. Not only must it be written in the vernacular language, its style and content needed to respond to the great social changes of the recent past. The most successful book of this kind was Zhang Yinlin’s (張蔭麟 1905–1942) Zhongguo shanggu shigang 中國上古史綱 (Outline of the His- tory of Early China, hereafter Early China), which was rst published in 1941 and has been continuously in print ever since.2
1 See Liu 1932, and Qian 1940. 2 The book has appeared in a number of different editions and under a variety of titles. For details on this see Zhou 2002a: 355. The edition I have used for all references is Zhongguo shanggu shigang published in Taibei by Liren shuju in 1982 [Hereafter Zhang
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Zhang’s motivation for writing Early China was similar to that shared by most other writers of general histories during these years, patriotism and a concern for the fate of the Chinese nation and its peoples. He wrote most of the book while living in Beijing in the period between the Japanese conquest of Manchuria in 1931 and then the invasion of China proper in 1937, and he completed the remaining chapters over the next few years after joining the mass exodus to Kunming.3 In the preface to the book Zhang stated: In the context of these troubled times, looking back over the achievements during the past ten years of the new history, from the collation and the synthesizing of materials through to the articulation of new historical perspectives, I want to write a new general history of China in order to help the nation understand itself in a time of unprecedented change. Is this not what a historian ought to do?4 Zhang believed that good history could help Chinese people through this dif cult time of invasion and war. In a letter written soon after the Japanese takeover of Manchuria, Zhang wrote that while “the current situation of the country gives people little cause for optimism, if we try to keep focused on wider historical trends we will see that the aggressive Japanese invasion will not last . . . If I only look to the current situation I am pessimistic, but if I look to the future then I am not.”5 As Hon Tze-ki has argued, Zhang believed that good history could provide his fellow citizens with “a sense of mission.”6 One of the lessons of the past was that there had been times in which China had endured similar turmoil, yet it had emerged from this strengthened. Without being overtly patriotic, well written history could help generate a sense of resolve amongst Chinese people, enabling them to look beyond the devastation of the present and to work towards a better future. This was what motivated Zhang Yinlin when he decided to write his general history of China.
Yinlin 1982]. I have chosen to translate the title of the book as Early China because this most closely re ects its contents. 3 On this exodus and intellectual life in Kunming during this period see Israel 1998. 4 Zhang Yinlin 1982: preface, 9–10. 5 Zhang Qiyun 1967: 25. 6 Hon forthcoming.
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Artful History
Zhang Yinlin’s desire to reach as many people as possible does not mean that we should see him simply as a populist. From the very beginning of his career he demonstrated very high scholarly standards. Zhang was born in November 1905 in Shilong 石龍 township, Dongguan 東莞 county, which is about half way between Hong Kong and Canton. He was to die at a very young age, at only 37 (in 1942), of chronic nephritis.7 While he had a very short life, it was extremely productive. In 1921, aged 16, he entered Qinghua (清華 the school and then the University), where he stayed for eight years studying literature, history and philosophy, both Chinese and Western. And from the age of 18 onwards he was publishing articles and reviews in the leading schol- arly journals of the day. His rst signi cant publication brought him instant notoriety. This was a critical response to an article by Liang Qichao (梁啟超 1873–1929), arguably the leading intellectual of his generation, and thus not someone to confront lightly. Zhang identi ed problems in Liang’s interpretation of the fragmentary evidence related to the philosopher Laozi 老子, and provided critical textual analysis to explain why he disagreed with Liang’s reading of this material.8 In other words, Zhang Yinlin’s methodological approach to these issues was based in kaozheng 考證 scholarship, or evidential research, one of the most important methodologies in Chinese historical scholarship since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Zhang showed a deep understanding of the nature of kaozheng scholarship, and in doing so won the admiration and respect of Liang Qichao and others. But Zhang believed that such a skill was not in itself suf cient for the historian. Historical understanding involved more than just excellent research skills. As Li Hongyan has argued, Zhang placed more emphasis on shicai 史才, the ability to develop and convey an empathetic understanding of the past.9
7 For a good brief biography of Zhang Yinlin that concentrates on his scholarship see Li Hongyan 2005. Other biographical material can be found in Zhang and Qian 1967 and Zhou 2002b. 8 Zhang Yinlin 1923, and Liang Qichao 1941: vol. 5, 50–68. 9 Li Hongyan 2005: 259. Although Li does not mention it, Zhang’s use of the term shicai 史才 can be traced to Liu Zhiji’s Shitong, where, in the chapter Hu cai 核才, it states: 夫史才之難, 其難甚矣. See Liu Zhiji 1985 reprint: 328.
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After graduating from Qinghua, Zhang Yinlin spent two years at Stanford University studying philosophy and sociology, subjects he pursued deliberately in order to broaden his appreciation of different perspectives and methodologies so that he would be a better historian. During these years he continued to publish reviews, commentary and articles in Chinese journals. This work can be best described as eclectic. He wrote on many different topics and covered many different elds: history, the philosophy of history, philosophy and literature. He also translated Western works into Chinese, including poetry, and articles on culture, education, politics, and language.10 While closely involved in the transformation of Chinese historical thought and writing in early 20th century China, Zhang Yinlin stood aside from the mainstream of developments and was not closely aligned to any particular school. The various attempts to group historians into schools, each de ned by the distinctive positions from which Chinese historians approached the business of researching and writing about the past, have not been very successful and there is no consensus about what these schools were. Some follow the suggestion of Feng Youlan (馮友蘭 1895–1990) and argue that there were three main groups: those who believed in the inherited accounts of the past (xingu 信古), those who doubted the validity of those accounts ( yigu 疑古), and those who sought to explain the past (shigu 釋古).11 The last group are seen as the modern, professional historians. Others prefer a more institu- tional approach, aligning historians either with Beijing University (Hu Shi 胡適 1891–1962, and his students), Qinghua University (Wang Guowei 王國維 1877–1927, and those in uenced by him), or the Yan’an group, the Marxists. In another recent approach, Zhang Shuxue 張書學 de nes historians as positivists, relativists or Marxists.12 Then there are those who see historians as primarily focussed around particu- lar concerns: those who concentrated primarily on issues of methodol- ogy, those who were concerned with continuing and developing Qing evidential scholarship, and those whose main concern was with the collection and ordering of historical materials. The historians associated with Beijing University are usually seen to exemplify the modern face
10 For a complete list of Zhang Yinlin’s publications, including books, articles and translations see Zhou 2002a. Zhang used the name Suchi (素痴) in many publications. 11 Feng 1984: 222. 12 Zhang Shuxue 1998.
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of ‘May-Fourth’ historiography, with its emphasis on establishing his- tory as a scienti c discipline.13 The problem with all these approaches, however, is that the divisions between schools, the divisions between various groups of historians, are never very clear. The diversity of historical writing of the period undermines these divisions. In one schema a historian can be placed in one particular school, while in another the same historian is placed in a different group and is seen to represent apparently contradictory positions. For instance, for some Wang Guowei was the leader of the Qinghua group, while for others he should be seen as a positivist. Zhang Yinlin provides a problem for any of these approaches, as he seems close to all but aligned to none. For instance, he taught at Qinghua, but could also be included in the group who sought to explain the past. At the same time, as we shall see below, he was critical of scholars intent on de ning the new history as a scienti c discipline. One of the things that set Zhang Yinlin apart from his contemporaries was his emphasis on the literary aspect of the historian’s work. Unlike most, who sought to ground historical practice in scienti c methodology and separate it from literature, Zhang argued that it was necessary to mould evidence into a reliable yet engaging story, that historical writing was a ‘creative’ act. This was a concern that emerged very early in his writing and would continue throughout his life. In an article published in the journal Xueheng (學衡 Critical Review) in 1928 Zhang explained his views about the artfulness of history. Ought history be a science? Or is it an art? I say that it is both. Most specialist historians would sneer on hearing this claim. But the sneering of the specialists is not suf cient to be swayed. Ordinary people know that it requires excellent literary skill to write history, yet specialist historians deny this. And for it to be considered an art, history must go beyond just the display of excellent literary skill! If we compare history and ction, what is it that distinguishes them? Everybody knows that the difference between them is that one deals with the imaginary, while the other deals with the real. But is this distinction suf cient to claim that history is beyond the bounds of art? To paint a picture of an immortal is art. To draw life, to draw the real, and make it lifelike is art. What ction and history have in common is in dealing with that which has life, emotion and expression, which are all aspects of art. Because that which is made manifest in history is the real, its source materials must be collected and arranged in a scienti c manner. But simply having materials, no matter
13 Q. Edward Wang 2001.
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how accurate they are, is not to have history. And to synthesize these materials in a scienti c manner is also not history. Why not? The true recognition of life, emotion and expression comes through art [. . .]. Ideally, there are two aspects to history: 1) delity to source materials, 2) faithfulness in artistic expression.14 Post linguistic turn, this may not seem particularly radical or contentious. But at the time it was published in China this was a radical view, one that challenged the dominant perceptions about what history should be. For most historians in early 20th century China, the professionalization of the discipline meant the creation and entrenchment of scienti c methods of research.15 The transformation of that research into pub- lications, the writing of history, received little or no attention. Zhang Yinlin remained committed to the inherited notion that literature and history were one (wen shi bu fen 文史不分), and he did so in the face of the increasing demands to separate off the one from the other. During this period, scholars were becoming academics and in the process they tried to establish rm disciplinary boundaries. This meant that history could not be literature.16 Yet Zhang Yinlin’s work continually crossed those boundaries, encompassing not only history but also philosophy and literature. Zhang believed that the tendency in modern historiography to emphasize only the scienti c aspects of historical research undermined its fundamentally humanistic aspects. He was not at all opposed to new developments. Indeed, he was prob- ably more familiar with the nature of historiographical developments outside of China than most at the time, and of the value of many of the new methodological approaches, but he criticized those who felt new methodologies were all that was needed for good history. On its own, an emphasis on scienti c methodology impoverished history, reducing it to little more than a form of narrow-minded positivism. The speci c function of history, he claimed, was in portraying the traces ( yiji 遺蹟) that have survived from the past, yet this was not all there was to historical studies because history must also portray the spirit of that which was in the past. It is the artistic nature of history that adds esh and blood to the bone of the scienti c nature of historical research. Zhang argued that “the value of consciousness was that it gave the ability to appreciate truth, beauty and goodness.” This was
14 Zhang Yinlin 1928. 15 Q. Edward Wang 2001: 51–99. 16 Ibid.
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a stage beyond the ‘scienti c truths’ that Hu Shi and others placed so much importance on.17 Another aspect of Zhang’s challenge to his professional colleagues was based on what might be called aesthetic grounds. He believed that the artistic aspect of history is integral to its very nature; it is not something external to it. As a record of past humanity, the aesthetic beauty of history lies in its subject, it is an objective aspect of its very nature: “It is the exploration of beauty in the writing of history that I call the artistic aspect of history, and the examination of coherence (or pattern) which I call the scienti c aspect of history.”18 These two components, the artistic and the scienti c, are inter-related: in essence they are two aspects of the same thing. Similarly, the metaphorical and rhetorical features of historical writing were not mere embellishments but essential skills that enable the historian to relate the nature of the human world and to create a lasting and enriching impression. Zhang noted how in Chinese prose and poetry past events were often deployed deliberately to develop an emotional response in readers, indicating again what he felt to be the fundamentally aesthetic nature of historical composition.19 Zhang re ected on this in an essay on the evidential basis for the poem “Hanchao rusheng xing” (漢朝儒生行 ‘Scholars of the Han’) by the Qing scholar and poet Gong Zizhen (龔自珍 1792–1841). In the poem, Gong noted how the archive contains documents that convey the events of the past (in this case the Han dynasty) but it can- not “capture the many different sentiments of the time.” Yet without an attempt to capture those sentiments, Zhang felt that history would fail, and it would do so on two counts: it would not be faithful to the past, but it would also fail to have meaning in the present.20 Related to these issues was the question of accessibility. For Zhang, the most important social value of historical research and writing lay in the person of the reader. Scienti c methodology may help verify the truthfulness of evidence, but it is of little help in conveying an appreciation of the past to others. It is through its artistic aspects that history can achieve its social value of broadening and deepening the
17 Zhang Yinlin 1941. Hu Shi did accept that history had an artistic function, but he gave it much less emphasis than the scienti c nature of the endeavour, to which he attached overriding importance. See Hu 1926: 340. Much of this discussion is indebted to Li Hongyan 1991. 18 Zhang Yinlin 1932b. 19 For a study of this see Owen 1986. 20 Zhang Yinlin 1933.
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knowledge of readers. Not only did he seek aesthetic value and acces- sibility in others’ works, he also stove to achieve these things in his own writing. His work was widely admired not just for the high standard of the scholarship displayed but also because of his skills as a writer. This was one of the reasons that Fu Sinian (傅斯年 1896–1950) decided to approach Zhang when he was asked by the government to commission a new general history of China.21 By this time Zhang had returned from Stanford and was teaching in the Department of History at Qinghua University in Beijing. In an article published in 1934, soon after his return to China, Zhang had written about what he saw as the most important tasks facing historians at the time, one of which was the writing of new general histories and textbooks. Fu Sinian’s invitation followed soon after.22 Over the next few years, up until the Japanese invasion in 1937, Zhang worked on this project, and had written all but the last three chapters when he was forced to evacuate the capital. He went rst to Zhejiang University, and then on to Kunming, where he completed the nal three chapters and the famous preface not long before he died. The original plan was for Zhang Yinlin’s book to be the rst in a series of books that would cover all of Chinese history and which could be used as textbooks in secondary schools. Zhang covered the period up to the Eastern Han dynasty, and others were to continue the story down into the present. But with Zhang’s death this plan was abandoned, and his text was left to stand alone as a history of early China.23
General History
Zhang had given a great deal of consideration to what would be required to produce a good, accessible general history and in the preface to the book he sets out criteria for the composition of such a work. Zhang believed that the quality of the new general histories
21 Fu 2003: vol. 5, 218. 22 Zhang Yinlin, “Guanyu lishi xuejia de dangqian zeren” 關於歷史學家的責任 (On the Historian’s Duty) in Da gong bao: shidi zhoukan (28 September 1934). 23 It is for this reason that I prefer to translate the title of the book as Early China. The original plan was for Wu Han 吳唅 to write the next volume in the series, cover- ing the period from the Tang on to the Qing, Qian Jiaju 千家駒 the volume dealing with the period from the Opium War onwards while Wang Yunsheng 王芸生 would deal with the period of the Japanese invasion.
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produced over the past thirty years was fairly poor. Many of them failed to nd an audience, either because they were too long and detailed, or because they did not manage to stimulate any interest in readers. This was a problem, because it was through general histories, particularly those that were used as textbooks in schools and universities, that many people gained their knowledge of Chinese history. If people were to develop a sense of pride in the achievements of the Chinese past then the general histories produced must be of a higher quality. Zhang had no illusions about the dif culty of this task, particularly in light of the length of the Chinese past and the richness of its historical materials. Not all things could be included and not all should. There needed to be some criteria for use in assessing what was of value. This was the purpose of the prefatory essay to Early China. Not only was it intended to inform readers of the methodology Zhang employed in writing the book, it was also intended to help others think more carefully about what was involved in producing a general history so that the overall quality of such works might improve. This was a topic that had received little attention from other his- torians. He Bingsong (何炳松 1890–1946) had written an extended essay on the subject, in which he drew extensively on his reading of Western theorists such as Langlois and Seignobos to argue that history was a social science. The essay focuses almost exclusively on explain- ing research methodologies, and says little about the composition of a historical text or the need to engage an audience.24 Fu Sinian also wrote brie y about the challenges and aims of general history, noting that it should help develop an understanding of people and their lives, cultivate a sense of patriotism, develop an appreciation of cultural change, and stimulate inquiring minds.25 Zhang also saw general history in these terms, but he developed a much more extensive discussion of what was required to write a general history. It is probable that Zhang Yinlin drew on Western historians in developing his criteria for the composition of a general history, an argument that Li Huazhao makes, but it is unclear exactly who these historians are. It is also the case that Zhang integrates these ideas with his own understanding of historical practice, both Chinese and Western, to develop the arguments he makes
24 Langlois and Seignobos 1897, and Siegnobos 1901, and He 1930. For a comparison of Zhang Yinlin’s writing on tongshi with that of He Bingsong see Xu 1986. 25 Fu 2003: vol. 5, 54–5.
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in the preface. And, as Li notes, Zhang’s success in developing these principles into practice was “unsurpassed in terms of opening up new developments in popular historical writing.”26 There were a number of factors that Zhang considered crucial to the composition of a general history. Firstly, the historian should consider the novelty of particular events. If the events were distinctive, both in terms of their intrinsic nature and their relationship to other events, and if they therefore occupied an important place in the origin of the society, they should be considered for inclusion. Similarly, if historical events had demonstrable long-term effects or were of fundamental cultural value then they should be considered suitable for a general history. Zhang also believed that part of the relevance of history was related to the fact that people were interested in the past as a way of understanding present circumstances, and the source of those circum- stances. Thus he believed historians, particularly writers of general histories, must be concerned to establish the genetic relationships between the origins of circumstances and their current manifestations. Such relationships were extremely complex and dif cult to tease out in all their detail, so attention should be focused only on those issues that were of greatest contemporary relevance. Finally, he argued that while Chinese historians had always considered the signi cance of events in terms of their exemplary nature, in terms of whether or not they conveyed meta-historical principles, this was not a criterion which modern writers should be greatly concerned with.27 Once the historian had decided what to include it was then useful to provide a sense of chronological order to the material. In terms of the gathering and ordering of material, Zhang Yinlin admired the biannian 編年 (chronological) methodology displayed by the Song historian Li Tao (李燾 1115–1184) in Xu Zizhi tongjian changbian 續資治通鑒長編 (An Extension of the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government). He recommended all writers of tongshi 通史, or general histories, read this and follow its example.28 But while such a format was valuable for the rst stages of historical work, for the ordering of historical informa- tion, this was only the beginning of the process of composition. This material had then to be transformed into a coherent historical narra-
26 Li Huazhao 2002: 82. 27 Zhang Yinlin 1982: preface, 9–17. For an extensive discussion of this preface, see Diu 1968: 104–113 and 120–123. 28 Diu 1968: 123.
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tive. Zhang argued that the synthesis of evidence involved determining relations of cause and effect and tracing patterns of development, but he was opposed to the notion that historical events were the product of universal laws. He also argued that it was important not to burden the text of a history written for a popular audience with long quota- tions from sources and detailed footnotes. For instance, while Zhang admired Feng Youlan’s scholarship, he was critical of the rst volume of Feng’s Zhongguo zhexue shi 中國哲學史 (History of Chinese Philosophy) because Feng ignored its accessibility to readers, and included far too much quotation from source materials. Zhang suggested that there were many places where it would have been better to use his own words to make the text more comprehensible to general readers.29 Such methods might be appropriate for textual analysis, but Zhang believed they were completely out of place in a general history, which ought to be engag- ing and accessible. The author needed to be thoroughly familiar with the relevant source material and the issues involved, but the purpose of the work was not to parade that knowledge or to become absorbed in the detail of particular issues. Instead, the emphasis in such a work should be on establishing a lively and coherent narrative so as to draw readers into the story being told. Only if a history was well written, Zhang believed, would it be possible to create an interest in the past amongst a general non-scholarly audience. One of the reviewers of Early China argued that what non-specialist readers wanted in a history of this kind was a story, China’s story, based on real events but told in a manner that would provide for readers a sympathetic engagement with what was known of early Chinese history. This was exactly what Zhang had tried to achieve, a lively, interesting and engaging account of Chinese history that people would want to read. There are no footnotes, nor any of the usual scholarly apparatus that specialists would expect in a work of history. But this was not a book for specialists; it was designed to bring the story of Chinese history before a general audience. In his review of the book, Tang Chaohua argued that Zhang had succeeded in writing such a lively and accessible history for all readers, and for this reason he argued that Early China marked the beginnings of a new type of history.30 Other reviewers used
29 Feng 1931, and Zhang Yinlin 1931. See also Li Hongyan 1991b: 45, for a discussion of this. 30 Tang 1937.
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words like ‘graceful’ and ‘elegant’ to describe the book. All praised it for being succinct and accessible.31 It draws on a wide range of mate- rials, and yet demonstrates clear judgment in terms of the selection of what is most relevant. Zhang develops a distinctive interpretation, based on wide reading in source materials and of other scholars, but the narrative is concise and coherent. The book very quickly gained a wide audience. Perhaps more than all his articles, the success of this book was the greatest challenge he gave his colleagues in terms of the need to understand that history was both art and science.
Early China
Having set out the parameters for the composition of his work in the preface, Zhang begins his history proper by distancing himself from other general histories that reach back to cosmological origins. In the past, people liked to begin histories with phrases such as ‘When the earth separated from heaven’ (天地部判) or ‘When the world emerged from primeval chaos’ (混沌初開). In recent times, people prefer phrases like ‘when the heavens coalesced’ (星云凝結) or ‘when the earth took shape’ (地球形成). In this book I have no desire to reach back into such a distant past. He also notes that he will not consider the emergence of “Beijing Man” from his hominid ancestors and what the Zhoukoudian sedimentation tell us about such early forms of life on the North China Plain. Rather, he begins his account of early China with the Shang dynasty, and what the oracle bones uncovered from the ritual archive of the last Shang kings at Anyang tell us. In other words, Zhang Yinlin begins his story with the emergence of written records, arguing that it is really only from then onwards that the history of China can be told. Here, and throughout the text, Zhang also indicates the limits of the archive, sug- gesting what can and what cannot be known about the past. Zhang’s account of the Shang period sets the pattern for what will follow throughout the book. In the second paragraph he tells us that he will focus on three things: material culture, social change and intel- lectual developments.32 For the Shang, he begins with an account of
31 Most of the signi cant reviews of Early China are included in Zhou 2002b. 32 Zhang Yinlin 1982: 23.
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the agricultural system, “the basis of production,” what grains were cultivated and what tools employed in this cultivation.33 He then moves on to discuss what can be known about social organization during the Shang, which is limited because of the paucity of the records, and, nally, he tells us something of the religious and intellectual life during the Shang, nishing with a brief discussion of Shang musical instru- ments. The result is a very good, succinct synthesis of what could be known from archaeological work, the textual legacy and recent histori- cal scholarship.34 Having established what can be known about the Shang period, Zhang then turns to re ect on the pre-Shang era. He notes that little can be said with any certainty about this period, and that there are far too many questions that cannot be answered. What evidence there is tells us more about how people in later ages understood the period than it does about the period itself. But he notes that this is an interest- ing story in itself, and discusses the main features of these traditional accounts of very early Chinese history.35 Here Zhang Yinlin distinguishes himself from many other historians who chose to see these traditional accounts as simply fabrication, telling us nothing about the period they claim to depict.36 Zhang remained agnostic on many issues that had been the subject of much debate during the Gushi bian 古史辨, or Disputing Antiquity, movement of the 1920s and 1930s, arguing that there simply wasn’t the evidence to answer many of the questions that had been raised in these debates. He was particularly critical of the methodology employed by Gu Jiegang (顧頡剛 1893–1980), who, in his most iconoclastic phase, seemed driven by little more than a desire to eradicate all received understandings of early Chinese history. This critique does not feature in Early China, but it is worth considering as it reveals much about the scholarship that lay behind Zhang Yinlin’s account of early Chinese history. In order to deconstruct the received version of Chinese history, Gu Jiegang had focused his attention on Yu 禹, a central gure in the ancient past. Most importantly, Yu was believed to have been the
33 Zhang Yinlin 1982: 25. 34 Zhang Yinlin 1982: 24–32. 35 Zhang Yinlin 1982: 33–36. 36 This is a point Chen Mengjia 陳夢家 makes. He contrasts Zhang’s approach with that of Xia Zengyou 夏曾佑, who tried, he believed, to draw too hard and fast a line between myth and history. See Chen 2002: 91.
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founder of the Xia dynasty, the rst of the three great dynasties of the ancient period (Xia, Shang and Zhou). Gu Jiegang questioned this association, suggesting that the relation between Yu and the Xia was simply a fabrication of the Warring States period; indeed, he argued that in the early Zhou dynasty Yu was believed to be divine, a god or a deity, and not a human. It was only much later that this deity was reconstructed as a cultural hero and the founder of the Xia dynasty.37 Zhang Yinlin’s critique of Gu Jiegang’s argument is wide-ranging, confronting each and every aspect of Gu’s case, yet it is grounded in a single methodological perspective. Zhang argues that Gu Jiegang relies on a particular form of historical argument, the argument from silence (mozheng 默證), to develop his analysis, but that he does not understand the limits of this form of argument. It is this lack of awareness of the very limited value of this form of argument that leads Gu Jiegang into problems.38 Zhang notes that many things do not survive in the textual record, but because of this we do not simply claim they did not exist, yet this is exactly the way Gu Jiegang builds his arguments. For example, Gu argues that while Yu appears in the book of Book of Songs (Shijing 詩經) and the Book of Documents (Shujing 書經) Yao 堯 Shun 舜 do not. Thus, the obvious meaning to be derived from this is that in the traditions regarding Yao, Shun and Yu, those relating to Yu appeared rst, while those relating to Yao and Shun were constructed later. Zhang’s response to this is as follows: This argument completely contravenes the limits of the suitability of the argument from silence. We should ask ourselves whether or not the Shijing and the Shujing . . . provide a comprehensive record of the historical perspectives of this period, and whether or not the writings from that time contain a systematic account of all events of the time of Tang 唐 [Yao 堯] and Yu 虞 [Shun 舜]. We should also ask whether or not it was necessary for these texts to be concerned with events relating to Yao and Shun. The answer to such questions is obvious to those with any common sense. Suppose there was the unfortunate situation in which all records of the pre-Tang periods [i.e. before the 7th century] were lost. If we relied on Gu Jiegang’s methodology and tried to ascertain the historical reality of the pre-Tang period from the textual legacy of the Tang, the poems, the prose and the court diaries, we can only hope that the achievements
37 These arguments were set out rst in a letter to Qian Xuantong 錢玄同, and then developed further in subsequent essays. See Gu 1931a, 1931b. 38 Zhang Yinlin 1925, reprinted in Gu 1931c: vol. 2, 271–288.
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of the great Guangwu period [Eastern Han, r. 25–57] would not be seen simply as a creation by people in later times.39 Zhang Yinlin systematically confronts each aspect of Gu Jiegang’s argument in this way, arguing that the misguided use of inappropri- ate methodology leads Gu to conclusions which cannot be sustained. Moreover, he shows that Gu continually misreads the textual archive, expecting it to provide evidence for things that cannot reasonably be expected from it. Another example of this relates to Gu Jiegang’s attempts to contest claims that Yu was the founding emperor of the Xia dynasty. Gu argued that if Yu was indeed the founder of the Xia, the textual record would provide evidence of this. In particular, he argued that in the Book of Songs or in the Book of Documents we would expect to nd the two characters together, as Xia Yu 夏禹, thus indicating that Yu was of Xia, the founder of Xia. But no such combination of characters can be found in these texts. In fact, it is not until much later, during the Warring States period and the Qin and Han dynasties, that we begin to see this combination of characters. Thus, Gu Jiegang argues that the linking of Yu with the Xia dynasty was a deliberate fabrication of this later period, from the Warring States period onwards. In earlier times, during the Western Zhou, people did not link Yu with the Xia dynasty; indeed, they believed Yu was a deity, not a human being.40 In response, Zhang Yinlin returns to the same point he made earlier. Neither the Songs nor the Documents were intended as comprehensive records of either the Xia dynasty or of Yu, so we should not expect that the relationship of the two should inevitably have been a concern of their many different authors, as Gu claims. If we follow Gu Jiegang’s reasoning, are we to conclude that because, in poetry collections from the Han and the Ming dynasties, we do not nd phrases like Emperor Liu Bang (帝劉邦) or Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (帝朱元璋), or Han Liu Bang (漢劉邦) and Ming Zhu Yuanzhang (明朱元璋), that there was no Han emperor called Liu Bang nor a Ming emperor called Zhu Yuanzhang.41
39 Gu 1931c: vol. 2, 273. 40 Gu 1931c: vol. 1, 115–118. 41 Gu 1931c: vol. 2, 275.
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As these examples demonstrate, Zhang Yinlin was so astounded at the nature of Gu Jiegang’s arguments that his response nearly becomes a form of ridicule. This was not because he was fundamentally opposed to attempts to re-examine China’s ancient past—he was not. But on many of the issues raised by Gu Jiegang he remained agnostic. The archive simply did not allow such certainty. What could be said, however, was people in later periods, especially the Zhou, came to understand events in the distant past in this way. And in this he concurred with Gu Jiegang that these accounts tells us much about the cultural life of the people who produced them. To go further than this, however, and claim that these accounts were unfounded, was not possible. The evidence simply did not allow this. One of the central themes of Early China is the transformation from a dispersed feudal society ( fengjian diguo 封建帝國) under the Zhou to a more centralized bureaucratic empire ( junxian diguo 郡縣帝國) under the Qin and Han dynasties, the foundation of the imperial period that lasted down into the 20th century. Zhang begins this story with his account of the rise of the Zhou and it continues on throughout the book. He interweaves social, economic and political factors in his account of this transformation, and binds these into a coherent story with considerable narrative force. It was the social system established during the Zhou, Zhang argues, that laid the foundation for Chinese society and culture, thus he devotes considerable attention to detailing what can be known of this. Material culture provides the basis for his account. He always begins with it, noting that ways in which different forms of production empower different social forces. For instance, he argues that China developed an advanced agricultural economy during the Zhou, one based on a sophisticated metallurgy, and this empowered the aristocratic families that dominated the feudal states of the period. These families were often in con ict with each other as they sought greater control of land, water and labor. But as these states grew, and became more complex, new social forces emerged to challenge the authority of the aristocratic families. As agriculture became more commercialized, and with increasing urbanization, cities became the focus for new political and commercial elites, especially merchants and scholars, and these groups captured some of the authority of the aristocratic families. In developing his narrative account of these changes, Zhang provides an analysis of the changing role of all the main social groupings, from common people and slaves through to merchants, military gures and of cials. He also discusses the dominant features of both family and
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religious life.42 The shift from the looser feudal system of the early Zhou to the more centralized polities of the Warring States period also saw a transition from a rigidly hierarchical social system built around special hereditary prerogatives to a comparatively more open and uid system that allowed greater social mobility. In conjunction with this, new elites emerged whose focus was less regional and more integrated. These elites would guide the process of centralisation that resulted in the formation of bureaucratic empire under the Qin and Han. Here, again, it is worth exploring the scholarship that lies behind the narrative of Early China. Despite his emphasis on material culture and the importance of the forces of production, Zhang Yinlin was not a Marxist. For instance, he argued that the term ‘feudal’ was being used far too indiscriminately, and that in all of China’s long history it was only the Zhou period that could be considered feudal.43 But he was interested in the way in which anthropological and sociological per- spectives might enrich historical understanding. He was one of the few mainstream historians to look favourably upon Guo Moruo’s (郭沫若 1892–1978) Zhongguo gudai shehui yanjiu 中國古代社會研究 (Research on Ancient Chinese Society).44 Despite the criticisms directed at this book, Zhang saw it as a legitimate and distinctive way to research China’s earliest history. He believed that Guo’s book raised all sorts of interesting issues, especially with its focuses on issues of production and social organization, and its attempt to determine patterns in historical change, whether or not there was any historical logic or reason behind the many changes in social structure. Zhang also notes that way in which Guo made good use of anthropology to develop a more comprehensive history of ancient China. Despite this, he felt that the main thrust of Guo’s research followed too closely that of Lewis H. Morgan’s Ancient Society, which was published some 50 years before (1877). It was now outdated, Zhang believed, and most contemporary anthropologists had discarded many of its arguments. Guo accepted unconditionally these late 19th century ideas of social evolution and used them to interpret Chinese history, with the result that often his arguments and conclusions were far-fetched and many of the most original points he makes could
42 Zhang Yinlin 1982: 36–80. In English-language studies, a similar approach to early Chinese history is found in Hsu 1965. 43 Zhang Yinlin 1982: 218–220. 44 Guo 1930, and Zhang Yinlin 1932. For a discussion of these debates see Dirlik 1978: esp. 137–179.
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not be sustained. Nevertheless, Zhang was full of praise for what Guo had tried to achieve, and the motivation for producing it. His attempt to bring a materialist perspective to bear on Chinese history was worth- while, despite its shortcomings. Zhang’s own book can be seen as an attempt to retain some of the insights that came from Guo’s focus on the material and the social, but without his determinism and teleology. He integrated the historian’s attention to texture and complexity with the sociologist’s attention to form and structure. But Early China is not just a story of social change. Early on Zhang Yinlin indicated that he would convey something of the character and actions of a few outstanding individuals, as these lives were integral parts of the Chinese cultural heritage. Mostly the stories are very brief, as when he tells us of the travels of Zhang Qian (張騫?–114 BCE) in order to convey the expansion of the Han empire and the opening of China to the new cultural in uences that came from the west, especially Buddhism.45 But the most extensive biographical section of the book comes with the chapter devoted to the life and times of Confucius.46 Zhang sees Confucius as a paradigmatic gure in Chinese history, and much of China’s subsequent culture can be traced to the in uence of this man. Hence, in telling the story of Confucius, Zhang is able to convey much about one of the core components of the Chinese cultural heritage. He begins with a discussion of the environment in which Confucius emerged, but spends most of the chapter explor- ing his views on politics and education, as these are the two aspects of his legacy that were to have the greatest impact. The section on education, in particular, forms the heart of this chapter, and includes discussion of Confucius’ patronage of the arts, his interest in poetry and music, and in history. These things would have been well known to many Chinese readers, especially as this was part of the Chinese cultural heritage that had come in for considerable criticism during the New Culture Movement. Zhang avoids the polemical nature of much of these debates, conveying the signi cance of Confucius for Chinese culture in a succinct and accessible manner. The more settled patterns of the early Spring and Autumn period were radically transformed during the Warring States era. Zhang notes that there was as much change in ten years during the Warring States
45 Zhang Yinlin 1982: 218–220. 46 Zhang Yinlin 1982: 101–121.
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as there had been during a century during the Spring and Autumn period.47 And in one of the few direct references to more recent times, Zhang notes that the only comparable period in Chinese history to the period of radical change during the century between c. 420 BCE and c. 320 BCE was the period since the Opium War.48 In other words, he believed that the Warring States was a crucial period in Chinese history, and a period of much relevance for modern readers. As well as dealing with the forces contributing to social and political change, the centralization of life and administration, Zhang deals with the intellectual developments that contributed to this process. He brie y introduces the main currents in the so-called ‘Hundred Schools’ of thought, but concentrates mostly on the Legalists and the contribution these scholars made towards economic development under the Qin and the process of uni cation. Throughout the text, Zhang uses quotations sparingly. The early chapters contain the odd quote from the Songs, but for most part the narrative force is provided by Zhang’s own discussion and analysis. But when he comes to this section on the Warring States he provides a little more source material for readers. There are several quotations from Xunzi (荀子 c. 313–238 BCE), as well as a description of the annual budget for a peasant household, and, for contrast, an account of the opulence of courtly life from the Chuci 楚辭 (Songs of the South).49 The other signi cant quotation in the book comes at the head of the chapter on Qin Shihuang (秦始皇 259–210 BCE) and the formation of the Qin empire. Here Zhang quotes in full Li Bo’s (Li Bai 李白 701–762) famous poem about the First Emperor, the rst in the series of his Gu Feng 古風 or Old Style poems.50 Zhang writes that this poem was really his inspiration for the chapter, and what follows is an exposition of the issues raised by Li Bo. The poem involves a narrative of Qin Shihuang’s conquests, but also his overreaching and grandiloquence. Undoubtedly, many readers would see a contemporary relevance in this. Zhang uses the story of Qin Shihuang to reinforce his view that
47 Zhang Yinlin 1982: 123. 48 Zhang Yinlin 1982: 132–133. 49 Zhang Yinlin 1982: 123–143. Zhang provides no notes, but the annual budget is a fairly well known text, attributed to Li Ke 李克 the author of the Fajing 法經, or Classic on Law, which is included in the Hanshu 漢書. For a brief discussion of this see Hsu 1965: 109. 50 Zhang Yinlin 1982: 171. For a translation and brief discussion of this poem see Owen 1985: 196–8.
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history can give readers a sense of perspective. In the short term there may be little but con ict and devastation, but in the long run things resolve themselves, and often in new and interesting ways. We also see here a manifestation of Zhang’s belief in artful history. The poem is quoted in full not only to convey a story, but also to generate an emo- tional response in readers. For Zhang, the past was a rich reservoir from which much good could be gained. Good popular history should draw on that reservoir in order to enrich people’s lives so that they might be better able to confront the challenges before them. The last chapters of the book complete the story of the emergence of a uni ed, bureaucratic empire. Here the great stories from Shiji 史記 of the Qin-Han transition are retold in a modern narrative, as is the expansion of the empire under the Han. In these last chapters Zhang’s narrative skill is most evident. For this period the textual legacy is much greater, and thus more could be included, yet he does not allow these chapters to grow out of proportion to the rest of the book. Not only does he keep this section in balance with the earlier sections, he also maintains the narrative strength at the heart of the book. Themes established in the earlier chapters are continued. His topic here is really the formation of the bureaucratic imperial system, which will last down into the 20th century, and he wants to convey its central features, what was inherited from the early phase of Chinese history, and what was transformed. Readers end the book with a clear sense of the great drama of early Chinese history, but also with a rich appreciation of the foundations of Chinese culture. The concentra- tion on material culture, social change and intellectual developments is maintained throughout the book, and this means Zhang Yinlin is able to convey to ordinary readers a story that has resonance with their own lives. This ability to speak across the centuries ensured that Early China found a sympathetic audience.
Zhang Yinlin’s Contributions
During the early 20th century, political chaos went hand in hand with social and cultural transformation. The refashioning of historical thought and writing was part and parcel of this process. Most historians believed that the way out of the political chaos that followed the col- lapse of empire, the rebuilding of China, required a new sense of the past and its place in the present. And for most, conceptualising China
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in national terms was a crucial step towards the creation of a viable nation-state. The challenge was to recast Chinese history as a ‘national’ story, and to convey that story in a way that would give meaning to the inherited cultural legacy yet also help shape the emerging nation-state. The richness of the inherited traditions of historical thought and writ- ing made this task even more challenging. Some suggested past practice was redundant and should be abandoned, but for most this was not a possibility. The formulation of a new national history had to be done in a way that maintained the integrity of the cultural traditions that gave meaning to the Chinese community. Without these there could be no Chinese nation. This challenge became even greater following the Japanese conquest of Manchuria in 1931 and then the invasion of China proper in 1937. Could history help Chinese people through this dif cult time of invasion and war? Zhang Yinlin believed that it could. Cultivating a sense of history amongst Chinese people was one way of generating the necessary cohesiveness and commitment that might enable them to endure the current turmoil and work toward a better future. But good national history must do more than this. It must re ect the radically different understanding of the Chinese past that had emerged as a result of the transformation in historical practice over the preceding decades. During this time, the foundations of modern professional historiog- raphy had been established, and any new national history had to be engaged with the results of that work. In addition, it must also speak to as wide an audience as possible. General history was just that; it was written for a non-scholarly audience, not for an audience of aca- demics. The methods that might be employed to convey the results of historical research to academic colleagues were entirely inappropriate for the writing of general history. One of the things that distinguished Zhang Yinlin from his contemporaries was that he was more attentive to these issues of audience, and perhaps because of this he was more successful in bringing the results of academic research before as wide an audience as possible. Zhang Yinlin’s concern with the question of audience re ected a distinctive understanding of modern historical practice. He argued that history was much more than an academic enterprise. Zhang did not disagree with the increasing emphasis on the scienti c nature of historical research that came with the attempt to establish history as modern discipline. But unlike many of his colleagues, he argued that this did not mean that history should be separated off from other
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forms of literary endeavour. On the contrary, he argued that history was both science and art, and that its artistic aspects were integral to its very nature. The rhetorical and metaphorical features of historical writing were not mere embellishments; they were fundamental to the nature of historical understanding. Similarly, while a modern scienti c methodology, with its roots in kaozheng scholarship, was crucial for his- torical research, it was of little help in conveying an appreciation of the past to others. It was through its artistic aspects that history could achieve its social role of broadening and deepening knowledge amongst readers. And when Chinese people were confronted by the challenges they faced in the 1930s, when the very survival of China itself was in question, the social and political signi cance of historical knowledge was of even greater importance. Zhang Yinlin’s Early China is a rich book, with many aspects to it. While it is important to note that the book was written during a time of invasion and war, and that part of his purpose was to help Chinese people through this dif cult period, he also wanted to do more than this. Zhang wanted to provide an example of how a new form of tong- shi might be written, a history that re ected the best of contemporary scholarship and spoke to the general reader. And in this he was largely successful. At the same time, there is a sense of real substance about this book. Without resort to hyperbole, Zhang conveys the richness and complexity of China’s early history. In doing so he gives readers a sense that China is much more than the current moment, that it will live on beyond the turmoil and troubles that beset it in the present, just as it had done through times of trouble in the past. The book itself has also managed to live beyond the current moment. It is one of the few histories written in the early 20th century that has managed to reach across generations and still be read more than half a century after it was written.
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Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1941), Yinbingshi heji, wenji 飲冰室合集 (The Collected Works from the Ice Drinker’s Studio), 12 volumes. Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju. Liu Yizheng 柳詒徵 (1932), Zhongguo wenhua shi 中國文化史 (A Cultural History of China). Nanjing: Zhongshan shuju. Liu Zhiji 劉知幾 (1985 reprint), Shitong 史通 (Understanding History), Zhang Zhenpei 張振珮 annotator, 2 volumes. Guiyang: Guizhou renmin chubanshe. Owen, Stephen (1985), Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics: Omen of the World Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. —— (1986), Remembrances: The Experience of the Past in Classical Chinese Literature. Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Qian Mu 錢穆 (1940), Guoshi dagang 國史大綱 (An Outline of the Nation’s History). Hong Kong: Commercial Press. Siegnobos, C. (1901), La Méthode historique appliquée aux sciences sociales. Song Xi 宋晞 (1953), “Pingjia Zhongguo shanggu shigang 評介中國上古史綱 (A Review of An Outline History of China),” in Xueshu jikan 學術季刊 1 (1953) 4, 136–137, reprinted in Song Xi 宋晞 (1974), Zhongguo shixue lunji 中國史學論集 (A Collection of Essays on Chinese History). Taibei: Taiwan kaiming shudian, 269–272. Tang Chaohua 湯朝華 (2002), “Zhang Yinlin: Zhongguo shigang—yige waihangren de hua 張蔭麟:《中國史綱》—一個外行人的話 (Zhang Yinlin’s An Outline History of China: An Outsider’s Perspective),” in Zhou Chen 周忱 (ed.) (2002), Zhang Yinlin xiansheng jinian wenji 張蔭麟先生紀念文集 (A Collection of Essays in Memory of Zhang Yinlin). Dongguan: Hanyu dacidian chubanshe, 83–88. Originally published in Shuren yuekan 書人月刊 1, 1 ( January 1937). Wang Jiafan 王家范 (1999), ‘Daodu’ 導讀 (Reading Guide) in Zhang Yinlin 張蔭麟 (1999 reprint), Zhongguo shigang 中國史綱 (An Outline History of China). Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1–29. Wang, Q. Edward (2001), Inventing China Through History: The May Fourth Approach to Historiography. Albany: State University of New York Press. Xia Zengyou 夏曾佑 (1933), Zhongguo gudai shi 中國古代史 (A History of Early China). Shanghai: Commercial Press. Originally published as Zuixin zhongxue Zhongguo lishi jiaokeshu 最新中學中國歷史教科書 (The Most Recent Textbook on Chinese History for Secondary Schools), 3 volumes, 1904–6. Xu Guansan 許冠三 (1986), Xinshixue jiushinian 新史學九十年 (Ninety Years of New History). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Zhai Zongpei 翟宗沛 (2002), “Ping Zhang Yinlin xiansheng xinzhu ‘Zhongguo shigang’ diyice 評張蔭麟先生新著<中國史綱>第一冊 (A Review of Zhang Yinlin’s new work, Volume One of An Outline History of China),” in Zhou Chen 周忱 (ed.) (2002), Zhang Yinlin xiansheng jinian wenji 張蔭麟先生紀念文集 (A Collection of Essays for Zhang Yinlin). Dongguan: Hanyu dacidian chubanshe, 96–103. Originally published in (Chongqing) Wenshi zazhi 2, 2 (February, 1942). Zhang Qiyun 張其昀 (1967), “Jingdao Zhang Yinlin xianzheng 敬悼張蔭麟先生 (In Memory of Zhang Yinlin),” in Zhang Qiyun 張其昀 and Qian Mu 錢穆 (eds.) (1967), Zhang Yinlin xiansheng jinian zhuankan 張蔭麟先生紀念專刊 (A Special Issue in Memory of Zhang Yinlin). Hong Kong: Longmen shuju, 23–28. —— and Qian Mu 錢穆 (eds.) (1967), Zhang Yinlin xiansheng jinian zhuankan 張蔭麟先 生紀念專刊 (A Special Issue in Memory of Zhang Yinlin). Hong Kong: Longmen shuju. Originally published as a special issue of the journal Sixiang yu shidai 思想與 時代 18 (January 1943). Zhang Shuxue 張書學 (1998), Zhongguo xiandai shixue sixiang yanjiu 中國現代史學思想 研究 (A Study of Modern Chinese Historical Thought). Changsha: Hunan jiaoyu chubanshe. Zhang Yinlin 張蔭麟 (1923), “Laozi shenghou Kongzi baiyunian zhi shuo zhiyi 老子生後孔子百餘年之說質疑 (Questioning the Claim that Laozi was Born more
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than One Hundred Years later than Confucius),” in Xueheng 學衡 21 (September 1923), 1–5. —— (1925), “Ping jinren Gu Jiegang duiyu Zhongguo gushi zhi taolun 評近人顧頡剛 對於中國古史之討論 (A Critique of the Modern Scholar Gu Jiegang’s Interpreta- tions of Early Chinese History),” in Xueheng 學衡 40 (April, 1925), 1–18. —— (1928), “Lun lishixue zhi guoqu yu weilai 論曆史學之過去與未來 (On the Past and Future of Historical Studies),” in Xueheng 學衡 62 (March, 1928), 1–28. —— (1931), “Ping Feng Youlan Zhongguo zhexue shi shangjuan 評馮友蘭《中國哲 學史》上卷 (A Review of the First Volume of Feng Youlan’s A History of Chinese Philosophy),” in Da gong bao: wenxue fukan 大公報: 文學副刊 25 May 1931 and 1 June 1931. —— (1932a), “Ping Guo Moruo Zhongguo gudai shehui yanjiu 評郭沫若《中國古代社 會研究》(A Review of Guo Moruo’s Research on Ancient Chinese Society),” in Dagong bao, wenxue fukan 大公報, 文學副刊 (4 January 1932). —— (1932b), “Lishi de meixue jiazhi 曆史的美學价值 (The Aesthetic Value of His- tory),” in Da gong bao: wenxue fukan 大公報: 文學副刊 25 July 1932. —— (1933), “Gong Zizhen ‘Hanchao rusheng xing’ benshi kao 龔自珍“漢朝儒生 行”本事考 (A Study of the Sources for Gong Zizhen’s ‘Scholars of the Han’),” in Yanjing xuebao 燕京學報 13 ( June, 1933), 203–208. —— (1934), “Guanyu lishi xuejia de dangqian zeren 關於歷史學家的責任 (On the Historian’s Duty),” in Da gong bao: shidi zhoukan 大公報: 史地周刊 28 September 1934. —— (1941), “Zhexue yu zhengzhi 哲學與政治 (Philosophy and Politics),” in Sixiang yu shidai 思想與時代 2 (1 September, 1941). —— (1942), Zhongguo shigang: diyice 中國史綱: 第一冊 (An Outline History of China: Volume One). Hangzhou: Zhejiang daxue shidi jiaoyu chubanzshe. —— (1948), Zhongguo shigang (shanggu pian) 中國史綱 (上古篇) (An Outline History of China (The First Volume)). Taibei: Zhengzhong shuju. —— (1953), Zhongguo shigang (shanggu pian) 中國史綱–上古篇 (An Outline History of China—the First Volume). Taibei: Zhonghua wenhua. —— (1982), Zhongguo shanggu shigang 中國上古史綱 (Early China). Taibei: Liren shuju. —— (1998), Zhongguo shi gang 中國史綱 (An Outline History of China). Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu chubanshe. —— (1999), Zhongguo shigang 中國史綱 (An Outline History of China). Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe. —— (2004), Zhongguo shigang 中國史綱 (An Outline History of China). Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe. Zhou Chen 周忱 (2002a), “Zhang Yinlin xiansheng zhushu xinian 張蔭麟先生著述系年 (A Chronological Record of Zhang Yinlin’s Writings),” in Zhou Chen 周忱 (ed.) (2002), Zhang Yinlin xiansheng jinian wenji 張蔭麟先生紀念文集 (A Collection of Essays in Memory of Zhang Yinlin). Dongguan: Hanyu dacidian chubanshe, 344–360. —— (ed.) (2002b), Zhang Yinlin xiansheng jinian wenji 張蔭麟先生紀念文集 (A Collection of Essays in Memory of Zhang Yinlin). (Dongguan: Hanyu dacidian chubanshe.
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Wai-keung Chan
In 1929, a best-selling history textbook almost led to the bankruptcy of its publisher. In the early spring of that year, an obscure Shandong college president led a complaint with the Guomindang (GMD) gov- ernment, requesting the banning of a high school history textbook penned by the celebrated historian Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛 and published by the Commercial Press.1 According to the complainant, this best-selling book “disrespected the sages and broke the law” because it vehemently denied the existence of the virtuous ancestors of the Chinese races, the Three Emperors and Five Kings.2 Curiously, this pungent remark struck a deep chord in the leading GMD ideologue Dai Jiato 戴季陶, who took the occasion of the complaint to assert in public the indis- pensability of the memory of the Three Emperors and Five Kings to the survival of the Chinese nation. He proclaimed: “Only by having the common ancestors can the Chinese be uni ed.”3 Following Dai’s clamorous defense of the mystical progenitors, the government adopted a resolution to ban Gu’s textbook and levied a colossal ne—one million and six hundred thousand Chinese dol- lars—on its publisher. The general manager of the Commercial Press, Zhang Yuanji 張元濟, staggered by the vast ne which had brought the press to the brink of bankruptcy, hastened to Nanjing from Shanghai to ask Wu Zhihui 吳稚暉, a powerful doyen of the GMD, to persuade the government to revoke the resolution. Facing Wu’s unrivaled power of persuasion, the government granted the Commercial Press a waiver of the ne, but the history textbook remained banned. In May, an article, “The Ministry of Education of the Nationalist Government Forbidding the Publication of ‘Reactionary’ Educational Materials” appeared in the Beijing Morning Daily. Later, Dai Jitao mounted a savage attack on
1 Gu and Wang 1929. 2 Gu 1980–81: 5, 391. Also see Gu 1936: 25. 3 Ibid.
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Gu Jiegang by mobilizing other GMD of cials to ridicule Gu’s icono- clastic approach to the study of ancient history.4 In 1980, recalling this bitter clash between the Commercial Press and the government, Gu, already an ailing octogenarian, still denounced it as a disgraceful “literary persecution in the history of China’s Republic.”5 This stormy incident, usually overlooked by students of modern Chi- nese intellectual and educational history, strikingly illustrates the extent to which the GMD government, like many modern Western states,6 used historical memory to shape national identity and racial harmony.7 In the hope of forging a single and unifying national identity, the GMD government vehemently and relentlessly controlled and censored history textbooks. So ascendant was it in command of history education that its sense of history gradually permeated the general public in the rst decade of its rule (1927 to 1937).8 However, after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), its tale of the nation was questioned and contested. The war was in some ways an intellectual battle between the two states—the Guomindang and the pro-Japanese regimes—which used different versions of the past to reconstruct their identities and legitimize their political goals. As one state sought to impose collective amnesia about certain historical gures and events, its rival endeavored to resurrect the memory of them in order to disqualify or delegitimize its opponent. The two states obviously believed that they must mas- ter the memory of the nation in order to win the war. As a result, a simple historical symbol could take on different meanings, evoking a wide range of political identities in different political contexts. Amidst this intellectual clash between the states, historians and writers further complicated the competition by offering their own different accounts of the past.
4 For an insightful analysis of the bitter clash between Gu and Dai over the myths of the Three Emperors and Five Kings, see Hon 1996. Also see Mary Mazur’s article in this book. 5 Gu 1980–81. 6 Harp 1998: chapter 5; Nora 1996–98: vol. 2, 125–211; FitzGerald, 1980. See also Fedyck 1980; Apple and Christian-Smith 1991. 7 Although the essential role of history education in Chinese nation-building has been recognized by some historians, no systematic and thorough study of it has ever been undertaken. Until today, only two articles and two unpublished master’s theses have been devoted to the history education in modern China. See Culp 2001; Hsiung, 2000; Wong 1987. 8 For an extensive study of the history textbooks of the period from 1911 to 1937, see Culp 2001.
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Based on recently discovered sources—educational decrees and regu- lations, correspondence of the Ministry of Education, school textbooks, teachers’ manuals, educational journals and memoirs—I will examine the diverse ways that historical memories were used to create new meanings of the nation during the Sino-Japanese War.9 This study has three main objectives. First, it will examine how the Guomindang and pro-Japanese regimes invented new memories of the nation by erasing the embarrassing past in school textbooks. Second, it will analyze the ways in which these different memories competed with each other in constructing new national identities. Finally, it will discuss how memories of the nation presented in textbooks were received and appropriated by teachers and students in different political environments.
Guomindang Education Policy during the War
Before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, Chiang Kai-shek ( Jiang Jieshi), the leader of the GMD, constantly urged Chinese to save their country by strengthening education. Education, according to Chiang, was the nation’s most powerful weapon.10 However, the outbreak of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in July 1937 saw this potential weapon lose its effectiveness when schools were bombed, textbooks and equip- ment lost, and teachers and students forced to ee inland. As a result, the Nationalist government’s main task during the war was to recon- struct education facilities and simultaneously rectify certain preexisting defects in the education system and curriculum. In the spring of 1938, the Defense Advisory Meeting (Guofang canyi hui 國防參議會) was orga- nized by the GMD to hear suggestions for handling the crisis.11 At the conference, Jiang Baili 蔣百里 and Wu Zhihui, two powerful GMD members, asked the government to encourage students to concentrate
9 This article will not deal with history education in the Communist-controlled areas because it was not until 1945 that the Communist forces started editing and publishing their own history school textbooks. In addition, during the Republican period, history professors usually assigned readings of different kinds to their students at universities. In view of the fact that very often there was no main text in a university course, this paper will only focus on history education in elementary and high schools. 10 Jiang Jieshi 1937. 11 The Second Defense Advisory Meeting (Guofang canyi hui) was organized by the GMD to hear suggestions from different segments of society in order to deal with the crisis after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. For details, see Chen Lifu 1973: 9. Also see Hu 1998: 44.
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on studies in order to contribute to the development of science and technology which was needed for a long war. Fu Sinian 傅斯年, a history professor at Beijing University, also suggested that there be no change in the educational system and curriculum.12 At a Lushan meet- ing on July 2, 1937, the celebrated academic Hu Shi 胡適 maintained that the focus of education during wartime was not special education, but ordinary education.13 In March 1938, the Nationalist government nally laid down its new educational policy at the Extraordinary Congress. According to the policy, the goals for education during the war were to build up the strength of national defense to defeat the Japanese and to foster human resources for the development of the nation. The defeat of the Japanese and the expansion of the nation, the policy stated, should go hand in hand.14 The GMD government asserted that the nation’s strength rested on education both in peacetime and wartime, and therefore “there is no difference between peacetime education and wartime education.”15 Chen Lifu 陳立夫, the Minister of Education, believed that it mattered little what human resources were needed in wartime; all depended on conventional school education, and therefore ordinary education should not be stopped.16 He went on to argue that, just as “farmers could not stop farming because of the war, education could not be terminated either.”17 Echoing Chiang Kai-shek’s belief in the centrality of education in strengthening the nation, Chen held that the purpose of wartime education was “to develop the economy so as to increase strength by education.”18 A year later, at the Third Education Conference in March 1939, Chiang Kai-shek declared that one should “consider peacetime as wartime and wartime as peacetime” ( pingshi yaodang zhanshi kan, zhanshi yaodang pingshi kan 平時要當戰時看, 戰時要當平時看).19
12 Chen 1973: 9; Hu 1998: 44. 13 Dagongbao, 21 July 1937, 4. 14 Jiang Jieshi 1984: 1148–1149; Chen 1973: 9; Jiaoyu Bu 1953: 124–5. 15 Becker et al., 1932: passim. 16 Chen 1973: 10. 17 Chen 1938. 18 Chen 1976: 182–4. 19 Chen 1938.
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More important, the Extraordinary Congress of 1938 identi ed the major problems of the educational system as its lack of correct guidance and discipline, which resulted in the “abuse of freedom” in writing and editing school textbooks, as well as “irrational worship” of western cultures and rejection of Chinese tradition.20 In the spring of 1939, Chiang Kai-shek argued that the most serious defect in China’s conventional education was the lack of a “common belief ” (gongtong xinyang 共同信仰) in education. He explained that the pressing problem facing the country was to make people believe in “one ideology” and one “national policy.”21 Thus, at the Extraordinary Congress of 1938, a motion was passed that all history, civic, and geography textbooks should be standardized to promote nationalism.22 In the same year, Chiang Kai-shek, while giving a speech at the graduation ceremony of the Central Training Corps (Zhongyang xunlian tuan 中央訓練團), stressed the importance of history and geography education and asserted that both subjects should be essential to wartime education.23 Following the speech, the Minister of Education formed a committee to reform history and geography education.24 Obviously, the Nationalist government, while facing a grave national crisis, attempted to control history, civic, and geography education. In 1940, the government spelled out the new goals of history teaching: 1. To underline the importance of national unity by narrating the evolution of the Chinese nation (minzu 民族) as well as the assimila- tion and interdependence among different ethnic groups (zu 族) in history. Both past glories and modern national humiliation brought about by foreign imperialism should be emphasized to strengthen students’ determination to revive the nation. 2. To narrate signi cant historical events and cultural developments, and their contribution to world civilization, to enable students to appreciate the grandeur of their ancestors.
20 Hu 1987: 47. 21 Jiang Jieshi 1984: vol. 2, 1058. 22 Jiaoyu bu 1981: 8. For a detailed analysis of the motions passed in the Extra- ordinary Congress of 1938, see Hu 1987, especially chapter 3. 23 Zeng Changhe 1941. 24 Zeng Changhe 1941.
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3. To broaden and enrich students’ global knowledge by describing the evolution of different races in the world and their cultural charac- teristics and interaction. The evolution of international politics and the role of their country in world affairs should be emphasized, so as to raise students’ awareness of their responsibility for defeating Japan and building up the nation. 4. To underline the historical origins and inevitability of the Three Principles of the People to ensure that students shared a single ideology.25 Apparently, these four goals of history education were formulated in response to Chiang Kai-shek’s complaint about the lack of a “common belief ” and the Extraordinary Congress’s accusation of worshipping Western culture in education. Thus, glorifying traditional Chinese his- tory and culture and championing the cause of the Three Principles of the People became the most important tasks of history education in the GMD-controlled areas during the wartime period.
The Qingmuguan Conference
Acutely aware of the signi cance of history education in forging national identity, the Ministry of Education organized a conference on “history and geography education in high schools” at Qingmuguan 青木關 in 1941.26 Large numbers of historians, educators, and schoolteachers attended the conference. Their speeches were later published in the journal Educational Review (Jiaoyu zazhi 教育雜誌), providing us with rst-hand information on the mood of the time. Minister of Education Chen Lifu’s keynote speech, “Teaching and Writing History for the Sake of Making History,” was, naturally, the focal point of the conference.27 He argued that teaching and writing history should not be idle academic and educational exercises; rather, they should aid in the service of building the nation.28 Whether or not historical facts were accurately presented in school textbooks was not important to him. What was important was how effectively his-
25 Jiaoyu bu 1940a: 75–76. See also, Jiaoyu bu 1940b: 121–2. 26 Qian 1983: 212. 27 Chen 1941: 1. 28 Chen 1941: 3.
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tory education was used to counter Japanese propaganda and instill the government’s view of the nation in young people.29 In particular, Chen disapproved of the prevalent skepticism toward the myths of the Three Emperors and Five Kings.30 For him, like Dai Jitao, the Three Emperors and Five Kings were the founding fathers of China, who started an unbroken genealogy of the Chinese race that included the Han, Mongols, Manchus, Tibetans, and Muslims. They were symbols of China’s existence as an ethically and culturally homogeneous nation for thousands of years. In retrospect, Chen’s speech marks a turning point in the develop- ment of history education in Republican China. For the rst time in the Nationalist period (1927–1949), the Minister of Education explic- itly pointed out that history, unlike mathematics or science, was not a pure academic subject, but a tool for inculcating moral and national values to school children. Thus, history teaching was no longer to be regarded as a subject of liberal arts education, training students to be critical and independent thinkers. Rather, it was part of civil educa- tion, molding students to be loyal and submissive subjects to the state.31 The authenticity of the narrative in history textbooks was accordingly relegated to the background. Demystifying traditional national heroes (e.g., the Three Emperor and Five Kings) in history textbooks was also forbidden, because they symbolized the moral and national values the GMD could appropriate to neutralize Japanese propaganda. Narrow as it might be, the Nationalist government’s view was shared by historians and educators who attended the Qingmuguan conference. For example, Li Dongfang 黎東方, a French-trained historian, main- tained that it was ridiculous to teach history for the sake of transmission of accurate historical knowledge.32 To him, this attitude toward teaching history, because contradictory to patriotism, would make students feel disoriented during national crisis.33 To unify the nation, he urged that all statements denying the existence of the Three Emperors and Five Kings, such as “Chinese history should start with the Shang dynasty,” “The Yin and Zhou are two different races,” and “Yu is only a mythical
29 Chen 1941: 3. 30 Chen 1941: 3. 31 Chen 1941: 3–4. 32 Li Dongfang 1941: 6. 33 Li Dongfang 1941: 6.
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