Transforming History: The Making of a Modern Academic Discipline in Twentieth-Century China ed. by Brian Moloughney and Peter Zarrow (review)

A product of a series of workshops by a group of Chinese and Western scholars from 2007 to 2009, this collection of 12 essays explores the modern transformation of China’s historical discipline. Different from previous studies that have tended to focus on historians associated with the May Fourth Movement, most essays in this collection adopt a broader perspective. Tracing mainly the intellectual aspects of the changes that gave rise to the new historiography from the late Qing through the 1930s and even beyond, they cover various topics ranging from intellectual and scholarly trends to reform of the civil examinations, influence on Chinese scholars by Meiji Japanese and modern Western historians, debates among Chinese historians about Qing history, myth and national identities, and the rise of historical geography, archaeology, and Marxist historiography.

In their introductory chapter, Brian Moloughney and Peter Zarrow, the two editors of the book, provide an overview of this transformation. They identify, like the conventional wisdom, the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) as the turning point in Chinese scholars’ views of the world and concepts of historiography. Those studying or sojourning in Japan were directly influenced by Meiji historians, who had absorbed Western learning and historiography. Liang Qichao’s 梁啓超 proposal in 1902 for the “New Historical Studies” (新史學 Xin shixue) was a landmark for such a change. Returnees from Japan and Europe translated an increasing number of Japanese and Western scholarship, and began to write nationalist textbooks based on Japanese and Western models. New concepts of evolution, progress, and nationalism filled their discourses and debates.

The establishment of new schools in the late Qing and the expansion of higher education in the Republican era formed an institutional base for China’s modern academic disciplines including history. From the New Cultural Movement 新文化運動 (1915–1919) onward, the professionalization was accelerated, as an increasing number of returnees joined the expanding academy. Hu Shi 胡適 contributed more than any other in introducing the most up-to-date Western theories and methodologies and advocated their integration with traditional Chinese scholarship. Although academies had never been free from politics, Chinese scholars could enjoy enough professional autonomy. In addition, professional societies and academic journals flourished, which further enhanced the quality in teaching and research. By the 1930s, history as a modern academic discipline grew increasingly mature. Despite regained domination of nationalism in the field, pluralism was subsumed rather than disappeared. After the suppression of diversity under Mao, the old pattern of pluralism and vitality revived in the post-Mao era.

This overview of intellectual and institutional development serves a useful context for the 11 essays that follow. Luo Zhitian examines the changes in intellectual and scholarly trends from the late Qing through the 1930s, focusing on how the orthodox classical studies declined and were replaced by a rise of nationalist history in the late Qing. Yet, this politicized historical study soon yielded to the Western learning in the May Fourth Movement, which helped it to evolve into a more professionalized academic discipline. Liu Long-hsin studies the impact of the reform on the civil service examinations in 1902, in which practical knowledge of “policy and discourses” (celun 策論 ) was prioritized over the traditional classics. This brought about changes in the late Qing scholars’ views of history and knowledge structure with reference to Western learning and contemporary issues.

Q. Edward Wang explores how Meiji historians—both the enlightenment school and the official academic school—shaped Chinese scholars’ and students’ views of history and of history writing at the turn of the twentieth century. Wang Fan-sen discusses how the Western concept of evolution and linear model of history affected Chinese scholars’ views of history, giving rise to debates among scholars and a simplistic, narrow understanding of history and politics among the mainstream.

In his study of Chinese history textbooks in the late Qing and the Republican...