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AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY
IN
MODERN CHINA
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO
THE RESEARCH SCHOOL OF PACIFIC STUDIES
EAST ASIAN HISTORY
FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
BY
BRIAN MOLOUGHNEY
STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY
Unless otherw ise stated, this is m y original w ork
A b s t r a c t
This thesis is a study of history and biography in m odern China. It is historiographical in focus, exam ining one w ay in w hich the w riting of history has changed during the cou rse of the tw entieth centu ry. As a biographical persp ective w as cen tral to traditional C hinese historical w riting, such a study of the relationship of biography and history can help reveal w hat it is that distinguishes m odern historical w riting from the tradition out of which it has em erged.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
i v
A bstract iii
A cknow ledgem ents - v
Preface 3
Chapter One:
The Tradition of Biographical H istory 8
Chapter Two:
From Biographical H istory to H istorical Biography 34
C hapter Three:
Zhu Dongrun and the Craft of M odern Historical Biography 76
C hapter Four:
The Role of the Individual in H istory 123
Chapter Five:
W u Han and the Politics of M odern H istorical Biography 167
Epilogue:
H istory and Biography in the 1980s 211
C on clu sion 222
Bibliography 226
^\cfcnow[cffgements
M y greatest debt is to Bronw en, A ndrea and H ilary. They m oved willingly to different parts of the w orld so that I could continue the w ork for this thesis and provided plenty of am using distractions to lighten its progress.
W ith reg ard to the thesis itself, m y su p erv iso rs h ave been of enorm ou s help. Lo H ui-m in en cou raged m e from the very beginning and helped get the project under w ay. Igor de R achew iltz read d raft chapters w ith considerable care and gave m uch valuable advice. Finally, I learned a g reat deal from G erem ie Barm £'s exten siv e know ledge of C hinese h isto ry and lite ra tu re , and am g ratefu l for his continu al willingness to respond quickly to questions and calls for help. All three supervisors have helped m ake this thesis m uch better than it otherw ise w ould have been.
O thers at the A. N. U . w ho assisted in various w ays include Rafe de C respigny, M ark Elvin, W u C hi-hua, M arion W eeks and the staff of the M enzies library. To them , and to the m any others w ho helped m ake m y time in C anberra a pleasure, I am very grateful.
I wish also to thank those people in China w ho gave up their tim e to talk to m e, especially Deng G uangm ing, Deng Xiaonan, Peng H ong, Shi Ding and Su Shuangbi. Library staff in China, Taiw an and H ong Kong w ere generally helpful and with their assistance I w as able to find m ost of the m aterial which w as unavailable to m e in Canberra.
n
n
m
m
qJRc drawing
of characters is one of the
most spfencfid, ancf, at the same time, one
of tFie most difficult ornaments of
historical composition,
Hugh Blair Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles
3
(preface
<J)o you know that since the creation of heaven ancf earth
there have alw ays 6een ghosts who rem am deathless*?
oJfie sage, the virtuous, the Jaithjuf ancf the Jifiaf have their cfeecfs w ritten in books...
ancf they five on eternally.1
^■i ne of the principal w ays to establish a perm anent presence in Chinese culture, to live on beyond death in the minds of others, w as to find fav ou r with the official historians. Inclusion in an official history carried such status that the record of an individual life might then attract the attention of storytellers and dram atists, and in this w ay filter out beyond the w orld of the literate elite and enter the collective m em ory of the society at large. This m yth-m aking process, the creation of "ghosts w ho rem ain deathless," grew up largely around the records of individual lives, lives enshrined in the official histories. In China, historians w ere biographers. The w riting of biography w as an integral part of traditional historical w riting. But how did this change in the tw entieth centu ry? H ow did the creation of a new sense of the past and the search for new m yths affect this traditional relationship between history and biography? These are the questions that provide the focus for this study.
l Zhong Sicheng Lu gui bu [Register of ghosts] (ShanghaiiGudian wenxue reprint,
The changes that have o ccu rre d in Chinese h istorical w ritin g during the twentieth century have perhaps received less attention than they deserve. W hen com pared w ith the interest that has been show n in literature, this lack of attention seem s even m ore pronounced. Each year studies appear in English uncovering and exam ining aspects of twentieth century C hinese literature, especially the poetry and fiction of the M ay Fourth period. M uch less attention is given to the historical w ritin g of this period. The reason for this cann ot be that the changes w ere less significant; they w ere not. And it seem s all that m uch m ore puzzling consid erin g the au th oritative statu s w hich historical w ritin g alw ays enjoyed in the C hinese trad ition . W ith the collapse of institu tion al C onfucianism w ent the collapse of traditional h istoriograph y, and the subsequent attem pt to refashion the w orld, to m ake it new, w as just as prom inent in historical writing during the tw entieth century as it w as in poetry and fiction.
5
The particluar focus of the thesis, its concern with the relationship between history and biography in the m odern period, is a reflection of the nature of the tradition of historical w riting in China. It w as biography th at d o m in ated in trad ition al h istorical com p ilation s; but did this co n tin u e to be the case w ith m o d ern h isto rical w ritin g ? If the biographical perspective w as central to traditional historical w riting, how did this change in the tw entieth century? H ow did perceptions of both b io g ra p h y and h isto ry a lte r? In w h at w ay did ch a n g e s in the understanding of w hat history was affect biographical w riting, and how did changes in the understanding of w hat biography w as affect historical w riting? Did biography continue to be seen prim arily as the w ork of the historian, or did m odern biographers perceive of their craft as distinct from history? These are the sorts of questions that lie at the heart of this study. In reflecting on these questions it is hoped that som ething of the diversity of m odern Chinese perceptions of the past will be revealed, and that this will add to our understanding of w hat w as 'new' in the practice of both m odern historical writing and the craft of m odern biography.
6
focuses on the work of one scholar who saw these changes as beneficial to biograp h ical w ritin g. H e w ished to see b io g rap h y freed from the constraints which the requirem ents of historiography had im posed. The transform ation from traditional biographical history to m odern historical biography, which w as discussed in general in Chapter Two, is looked at in m ore specific detail in this third chapter.
The thesis is a study in historiography, a study of the history of h isto rical w ritin g. But the focus is on the developing relation ship betw een history and biography, and on the extent to which biography is seen to exist in d ep en d en tly of history. W hen specific exam p les of biographical w riting are introduced, the discussion is centred less on the subject of the biography and m ore on the w ay the w ork reflects changing d ev elo p m en ts in the relationship betw een history and b iography in m o d e rn C h in a. W ith such a fo cu s, the aim s of the h isto rian or b io g rap h er, they w ay they perceive biograp h y and its place in the historian's w ork, are m ore of interest than w hat they have to contribute to an understanding of the particular person or period about which they w rite.
Similarly, this is a study of the changing nature of m odern Chinese perceptions of them selves and their tradition. It is not concerned with how they have seen the history of other places and peoples. For this reason, the historical and biographical w riting discussed relates solely to the C hinese trad itio n , to C hinese people and C hinese events only. C hinese biographical and historical w riting about foreign peoples and p la ce s is n o t co n sid e re d . N e v e rth e le ss, the v o lu m e of m aterial encom passed by such a study is large. N ot all of it could be covered. The focus is th erefore on that w ritin g w hich is either rep resen tativ e of general trends or is of considerable significance in itself.
