Revolution and History (The Origins of Chinese Marxist Historiography 1919-1937)

Author: (American) Derek, translated by Weng Haokai
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-01-01
Features: This book centers on the [Historical Society Debate] of China in the 1920s-1930s, analyzing in-depth the origins of Marxist historiography in China within the context of modern Chinese intellectual development. It elucidates the problems and difficulties faced by Marxist historians at the time when they applied Marxist theory to analyze Chinese history, as well as how their focus on the revolutionary transformation of China at the time shaped their approach to theoretical and historical issues. The author argues that despite the academically questionable flaws in their work and their often crude application of Marxist concepts, these historians made lasting contributions to Chinese historiography. Nevertheless, the rise of Marxist historiography was shaped and determined by the intellectual and political context of China at the time. Therefore, the appeal of Marxism to Chinese intellectuals primarily lay not, as Levenson pointed out, in its resolution of the contradiction between [history] and [values], but in its provision of answers to the question of Chinese revolution.