The Politics of Historical Production in Late Qing and Republican China

These ten essays closely examine the transmission of historical facts and perceptions from the academic elite to the masses, primarily in the form of general reading and classroom texts. The Qing dynasty controlled content through screening and authorization, processes echoed by the Revolutionary polity. These papers address issues peculiar to each government as well as concerns they shared and therefore address how reform affected national identity, reform's impact on ethnic politics, the influence of manipulated content, a resulting synthesis of "general history" in twentieth-century China, and the effects of war and European attitudes on Chinese intellectuals and their perception of global modernity. The final papers describe how national history was officially presented in Republican China, in the last days of the Qing, and during national formation. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Tze-ki Hon, Ph.D. (1992) in History, University of Chicago, is Associate Professor of History at State University of New York-Geneseo. His research interests cover both pre-modern and modern China. His book, Yijing and the Chinese Politics (SUNY Press, 2005) examines the Yijing commentaries of the Northern Song period. He is an editor of a volume on the May-Fourth New Culture paradigm. Currently, he is completing a book on the Guocui xuebao (1905-1912).Robert J. Culp, Ph.D. (1999) in History, Cornell University, is Assistant Professor of History and Asian Studies at Bard College. His first book is Articulating Citizenship: Civic Education and Student Politics in Southeastern China, 1912–1940 (Cambridge, MA, forthcoming 2007). His current work focuses on publishing and cultural production in early 20th-century China.