Abraham Lincoln and the Shanghai Connection or Thoughts on Teaching the History of the Republican Period

-10as phil.osophy and literaturP, they ~ach have their stronp. points as well. ThP. _Shina k~~kvU index r.r8v1des coverag~ for several yea1s before !he m~re comprehensive~ k an so-vin ( The current Chinese magazines essays index ) came into existence, and ~l~is ~uch more consistent and easier to use than chat of the latter publication. The Shina~un zasshi index offers the advantage of a very good organization by topic and geography, making it easy to zero in on areas of potential interest, and with the summaries of the contents of each article provides more info~ation ~ith which to evaluate the importance of any ~iven article than any other index in co~on use. Both indexes can be used by scholars with no knowledge of Japanese, although some of the descriptions of the contents of articles in the Shinabun ~ index do require soce knowledge of Japanese to be fully useful. Shina kenkyu is available in Japan at the Toyobunka kenkyujo of Tokyo University, and at the Toyo Bunko (the latter with the exception of numbers 18-20). In the U.S., the Hoover Institute contains a microfilm set which may well be complete (I have not examined it); Harvard possesses all of the relevant issues except number 35, while Cornell and Col=bia each have somewhat over half of the necessary volumes. Volume one of the Shinabun zasshi index can be found in at least the following places: Toyo Bunko, Hoover, Cornell University, and the University of Chicago. Cornell has a copy of volume two; it is marked "Surplus Duplicate" from the Library of Congress Orientalia Division, so presumably it exists there as well. I would welcome any comments from other researchers on the.usefulness of these two items. 1 can be reached c/o History Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. 14850. .. • Stephen Averill Cornell University * A.SP.AHA.'! LI~COL!i J..'.'U THE SflANGHAI CO~l!ECTION ------- ------- --- --or THOUGHTS 0~ TEACHING THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PERIOD At the outset, I feel obliged to note that Lincoln probably had very little to do with S!lang!lai, particula'rly during the period 1911-1949. The intriguing question of whaL ~ight have resultcC had there been a connection is reserved for monographic conside,ation at a later date. And any further attempt to reconcile the first part of the title of this article with its actual contents is herewith abandoned. The observations which follo~ concern problems of teaching Republican history, although the pe,iod is far from unique in many of the problems it poses. Rather, ~any of the funda:cntal issues of teaching this period are germane to problems of aiding and abetting t!le education of students of modern Chinese history and, for that ~atter, the history of o~ter traditions. I'll first co~ent briefly about the general probleQ of tca.::f.ers' attitudes and assuc.ptior.s and then offer suggestions regarding 11 1nnovative" teaching tech~iquea. Historians of China are prone to a host of seductive assumptions. Most enticing, perhaps, is that in teaching a beginning course for undergraduates it is imprudent to avoid the tried and safe nien-p'u model of presentation, that stolid, enervating traQp + I -11uf chronological feet which leaves glazed eyes and dccicated enrollments in its wake. According to this approach, to choose a somewhat flippant example, the an=ament of Morris Cohen becomes as important as the image and implication of Chiang l:ai-shck crooching, toothless and shivering on a barren hillside in Sian that fateful Dace~ber night in 1936. This is not to suggest that chronology should be discarded, b~t rather that there is more that ought to be taught. By itself, chronology fails to answer the significant questions which organize and inform the art of doing history. And students haven't really learned history until they can ask significant questions of their material. If this is even partly true, then courses should focus on major theces and questions, and teachers should explicitly address the thorny problec of hew to formulate important questions. (Pedagogical osmosis--"they'll get it sol:leho11"--is invariably successful only \Hc-th self...