Historicizing Subjective Reality; Rewriting History in Early Republican China  

Oleh:

Lin, Xiaoqing

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Modern China vol. 25 no. 1 (Jan. 1999), page 3-43.
Topik: History Early Republican China
Fulltext: 3MC251.pdf (130.82KB)

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Early twentieth-century Chinese historians often interpreted Chinese history by combining Qing textual exegesis, which emphasized critical examination and thorough mastery of sources, with Western historicism, which focused on individual inner experience. They were especially influenced by German historicism of the preceding two hundred years, which stressed the unique characteristics of the Germanic peoples. One might expect that Chen Yingque and Fu Sinian, who studied in Germany; Liu Shipei, who absorbed German philosophy (albeit secondhand, via Japan); and Tang Yongtong, who read Herder, Ranke, andWindelband while a student at Harvard, would all come under the sway of German historicism. But a wider audience, which had not been much exposed to German philosophy, also fell under its influence. This sprang from what might be described as the intellectual similarity between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany and twentieth-century China. Both struggled against foreign occupation and powerful foreign cultural influences. To proclaim a unique German culture and resist French cultural influence, especially the French Enlightenment theories of universal rules governing the world, German historiography of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries became increasingly value laden and historicist. This tendency became especially notable after the French occupation of the Rhineland during the French Revolution and Napoleon’s rule. All values, many German historians argued, arose within the concrete setting of particular historical situations. There was inherent value in every historical event, and every event should be judged only in terms of its inherent values. Thus, there were no rational standards of value applicable to a diversity of human institutions (Iggers, 1968: 8). In twentieth-century China, a similar approach to history that emphasized individual events and persons and resisted generalization became a means of asserting a Chinese uniqueness in the face ofWestern hegemony.

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