One Hundred Years of Modern Chinese Historiography: Reading Wang Xuedian’s Chronology of Twentieth-Century Chinese Historiography

To read Wang Xuedian’s Chronology of Twentieth-Century Chinese Historiography is to embark on a voyage through 100 years of China’s intellectual history. Every major debate undertaken by Chinese intellectuals since 1900 is represented in the events, protagonists, and key publications described in the work’s 1,953 pages. These debates sometimes anticipated political turmoil, often accompanied political change, and in times of crisis reflected fierce political struggle. A close reading of the four volumes tells the reader a lot about continuity and change in the development of an elite culture of modernity in China that, much in continuation of the past, defines itself by its history and historiography.