Organizer: Mary G. Mazur, University of Puget Sound
Chair: Tze-ki Hon, SUNY, Geneseo
Discussant: Prasenjit Duara, University of Chicago
The writing of history in China changed after the turn of the twentieth century as the historians experienced epochal shifts involving China internally and externally. This panel of three papers explores the emergence of new thinking in China about the historical narrative of the civilization. Discursive issues will include the nature of Chinese culture and nation, positioning of ethnic and cultural boundaries, the nature and inter-relationship of Chinese spirit (ti) and external application (yong), and the dialogue of east and west in historiography. The panel will contribute to understanding the development of historical writing within modern China, its variety, and its inter-relationship with changing conceptions of culture and ethnicity as well as nation.
Questions of why the new histories were written, what the historical narratives were designed to accomplish, and how the historians attempted to accomplish their aims are addressed. Hon discusses Chen Yinke's ideas of the dynamic spirit of the Chinese ti (substance) shaped by diverse contextual cultural factors. Mazur discusses the emergence of modern general history as a new genre aiming to set forth the nature of the culture and transmit the sense of culture and nation to the broad readership of people. In his paper, Atwood explores the paradoxes inherent in the modern Inner Mongolian re-creation of Chinggis Khan as an icon of militant national struggle.
General History for the New Century: Heritage for the Chinese Nation
Mary G. Mazur, University of Puget Sound
The emergence of modern general history as a new genre of historical writing in China early in the twentieth century was seminal for the writing of history in China's modern era. This paper argues that Chinese historians consciously departed from traditional historical genres to write new narratives of the past to create cultural identity and national consciousness when the dynastic political form was no longer viable as the distinguishing determinant of the polity. An essential premise is that this reordering and re-creation of Chinese history as "general history" paralleled and was a part of the tide of change in historical studies worldwide begun in the late nineteenth century and continued into this century.
The need to define the content and establish the nature of the heritage of China's "culture" for the modern situation, once the foundational unity of the examination-based socio-political system had been destroyed, was a deep concern of the new intellectuals stepping into the place of the old-order scholar class. Theorizing by Liang Qichao and Zhang Taiyan on the general history form historical writing should take to create national consciousness in the situation of unfolding threats to China's sovereign existence preceded the writing of general histories for the new era. Among the first of these narratives were those of Xia Zengyou and Gu Jiegang, shaped especially for pedagogical use in the education of students and commoners in the nation in formation.
Chinggis Khan and the Aporias of Inner Mongolia's Modern History
Christopher Atwood, Indiana University
The creation of a modern historical literature out of traditional materials has itself been a process fraught with historical repercussions in twentieth century Asian history. Histories written from a sacral viewpoint had to be somehow recast in the idiom of secularism and progress essential to a self-consciously modern historiography. At the same time, the creators of modern history envisioned the national movements of the twentieth century as the "natural" conclusion to pre-modern history.
In Inner Mongolia's twentieth-century historiography, this process of subsumption and repression has marked the recreation of Chinggis Khan as a hero of modern nationalism. The incorporation of Inner Mongolia into the Republic of China privileged a secular reading of the Mongolian past and delegitimized the claims of the secular and religious elite to be the concrete incarnation of the heroic founder.
In place of this incarnational reading of Chinggis Khan, the young Mongols sought a reading that pushed militant resistance to the fore, thus making the anti-Chinese revolutionary struggle into the culmination of Mongolian historical progress. This reading of Mongolian history, however, depended intimately not only on the replacement of Mongolian sources by Chinese ones, but an internalization of the Chinese view of the Mongols as a peripheral nationality. The continuing legacy of Inner Mongolia's modern historiography has thus ironically prevented a comprehensive rejection of the claims of the Chinese state in Inner Mongolia.
Matching the Foreign yong with the Chinese ti: Chen Yinke's Studies
of the Tang Dynasty
Tze-ki Hon, SUNY, Geneseo
In his 1933 review of Feng Yulan's (1895-1990) History of Chinese Philosophy Volume Two, Chen Yinke (1890-1969) announced that he had adopted the ti-yong (substance-function) formula in visioning modern China. Chen's self-revelation is significant on two grounds. First, Chen resurrected a late nineteenth century reform formula in post-May Fourth China. By emphasizing the dialogical relationship between Chinese indigenous needs and foreign influences, Chen reintroduced a spirit of moderation when many of his contemporaries were awash in radicalism and cultural iconoclasm.
Second, although Chen claimed that he adopted the ti-yong formula from the late Qing reformer Zhang Zhidong (l837-1909), his understanding of the Chinese ti was much broader and dynamic. Unlike Zhang, Chen did not fix it in the Confucian classics. Instead, he historicized the ti by seeing it as a changing entity shaped by such factors as geographical boundaries, socio-political structure and linguistic heritage. Despite its conservative overtone, the ti-yong formula did not mean for Chen a resistance to change, but an invitation to locate the specificity of China amid widespread cultural exchanges.
This paper examines Chen's view of ti-yong in his two monographs on the Tang Dynasty (617-907). It argues that Chen saw the Tang as a perfect example of foreign influences taking root in China after matching indigenous needs. Chen proved his case by showing how foreign elements from India and Central Asia were integrated in the homegrown socio-political structure.