BOOK REVIEW Chuancheng Yu Gengxin: Liu Mei Sheng Yu

Front. Hist. China 2008, 3(1): 162–164 DOI 10.1007/s11462-008-0009-0 BOOK REVIEW Chuancheng yu gengxin: Liu Mei sheng yu Minguo shiqi de shixue 传承与更新：留美生与民国时期的史学. By Li Chunlei 李春雷. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2007. 284 pp. RMB 24.00. As it has long been acknowledged that historians do not simply write objective histories, but are themselves products of specific times and places, there is little question that histories of historiography can provide important insights. Professor Li Chunlei, of Tianjin Polytechnic University, contributes to our understanding of the origins of the modern discipline of history in China by focusing on the important role of returned students from the U.S. in fostering its development and shaping its direction. Returned students from the U.S. played key roles in many sectors of Chinese society in the Republican Era, and perhaps in the academy most of all. During the Republic, Chinese historians who had graduated from or at least studied for significant lengths of time in the U.S. were active at many levels and locales in China. While Fu Sinian spent time in Europe rather than in the U.S., his three highest subordinates in Academia Sinica’s Institute of History and Philology had been students in U.S. colleges (Chen Yinke, Li Ji and Zhao Yuanren). History departments at major Chinese universities, such as Beida, Qinghua, Yanjing, Fudan, and lesser-known schools like Nanjing’s Dongnan University, were filled with faculty with experience in the U.S., who in turn passed on their understanding of how to research, write and teach history to the next generation of Chinese historians. Then, of course, there were other scholars, like Columbia-educated polymath Hu Shi, who though not strictly trained as historians, nonetheless made great contributions to the theoretical foundations of the new history in China. Li deals with all these personalities and many more. In the English-language work on the subject, Li finds himself in the company of Tze-ki Hon, Axel Schneider and Q. Edward Wang, and interacts in his text to some extent with the last. He shares with Wang, though he does not state it quite as such, an interest in highlighting a third way for thinking about doing history in Republican China, between Marxist and traditional historiography, Wang’s “liberals.” These scholars sought to advance newer historical methodologies picked up in the West (or in the U.S. in particular in Li’s case), but to use these to establish a Chinese national history on what was thought to be a firmer, more scientific and professional soil. Though Li’s approach to and sympathy for his Book Review 163 subject matter is comparable to Wang’s in many ways, Li takes the topic of the formation of the discipline of history in Republican China in more varied directions than does Wang. Despite the narrowed focus only on returned students from the U.S., Li does not limit himself to intellectual debates, but also considers less theoretical factors in the formation of the discipline, including the sources of funding for study in the U.S., networks of relationships formed in America that had impact back in China, and the specific coursework in the U.S. which impacted teaching in China. On the intellectual side, Li departs from Wang by showing far greater interest in the role of the Irving Babbit-inspired New Humanists in the development of Chinese historiography, particularly the work of Wu Mi and his cohort at the periodical Xueheng. Two areas in which Li particularly excels are the study of the role of archaeology in the formation of Republican-era historiography and the role of the returned students in the expansion of academic history publications. Though it is almost cliché to note that archaeology shored up Chinese antiquity in the face of doubters, few have attempted to look at how this was done in actual practice (recent work by James Leibold being one exception). Since many of Republican China’s archaeologists were trained in the U.S., Li explores the ways in which their U.S. education in historical methods and scientific excavation techniques were combined with the indigenous practice of the study of inscriptions to create modern archaeology in China. Of course, Li discusses Li Ji in this regard, but he also brings to light lesser known archaeologists, such as Liang Qichao’s son, Liang Siyong. Liang was trained at Harvard and, like many of the China’s first modern archaeologists, cut his teeth digging up Native American burial sites across North America. (One wonders how this sort of training may have affected interpretation when back in China, Li does not pursue this unfortunately). When Liang returned to China, fellow Crimson Li Ji assigned him to lead the excavation at Anyang for several seasons. In the case of the expansion of history journals in Republican China, Li proves that U.S.-educated students were the prime movers in the late 1920s in inventing journals specializing in history, pulling history out of its previous place in the pages of national studies, linguistics, and geography journals. These new journals (like Shixue, and Shixue nianbao), which were either edited or otherwise highly influenced by returned students, provided space for Chinese historians to debate all aspects of world and Chinese history, as well as changing methodologies that they were learning abroad and trying out at home. Li considers this one part of a flourishing academic public sphere in Republican China. Li’s work provides an exceptionally wide-ranging and engaging look at the origins of modern historiography in China, though it is marred by a couple flaws, one methodological the other theoretical. Strangely, despite Li’s attention to changing norms in the practice of historiography in China, such as the invention .

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