The Rise of ‘Asian History’ in Mainland China in the 1950s: A Global Perspective

ABSTRACT

With the decolonization of Asia since the late 1940s, ‘Asian History’ quickly rose to a prominent position in some countries. Although the People's Republic of China reformed its higher education system by following the USSR model in the 1950s, ‘Asian History’ was an exception. A Harvard-trained historian Zhou Yiliang played the leading role in developing Asian History programmes and curriculum. He re-oriented ‘Asian History’ by combining both the late imperial Chinese historiographical and educational tradition and the revolutionary historiography embedded in contemporary ideology. He introduced this new designation in Leiden in 1955 when the PRC historians were confronted with the Western Sinologists for the first time since the beginning of the Cold War. The newly designed ‘Asian History’ programme in the PRC not only served the new regime for its state building project as a rising Asian power, but also demonstrated its de-Orientalizing intellectual vigour, which undermined the USSR's Orientalist approach. Due to the Sino-Soviet split in 1960, the PRC replaced ‘Asian History’ with Asian-African History since it posited itself as a leader of African and Asian countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Asian History
• global history
• Zhou Yiliang
• the USSR
• Cold War
• orientalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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2 Zhou, Bijing shi shusheng; Fogel trans., Just a Scholar.

3 Zhou, Zhong Chao renmin de youyi guanxi yu wenhua jiaoliu.

4 Zhou, “Huiyi Zhou Yiliang shi,” 116–25.

5 Mote, China and the Vocation of History in the Twentieth Century, 185–9.

6 Zhou, Bijing shi shushing.

7 Proceedings of the 8th Conference of the Junior Sinologues Held at Leiden.

8 Mueller, “Teaching ‘the Others’ History’ in Chinese Schools,” 34.

9 Zhu ed., Zhongguo jindai xuezhi shiliao, 877–80.

10 Liang, “Qingji minchu yige yuedong difang dushuren de licheng,” 62–70.

11 Tanaka, Japan's Orient.

12 Zhu, Yazhou geguo shi, 78.

13 Li, Reinventing modern China, esp. ch. 2 and 3.

14 Lin, “Zhou Yiliang xiansheng shi xin Zhongguo yazhoushi xueke de kaichuangzhe zhiyi,” 109–19.

15 Zhu, “Yazhou geguoshi jiaoxue dagang zhi shanggu zhonggu bufen jiaoxue dagang,” in Zhu Jieqin wenji, 46.

16 Zuoxin, “Zonghe daxue wenshi jiaoxue dagang shendinghui jiankuang,” 102–3.

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18 Reisner and Rubtsov, Novaia istoriia stran zarubezhnogo Vostoka.

19 Miyazaki, Ajiashi kenkyū, preface.

20 Miyazaki, Jibatsushū, 347.

21 Kerner developed a Northeastern Asia Seminar in the 1930s at Berkeley and eventually produced a bibliography on this topic in 1939; see Kotkin, “Robert Kerner and the Northeast Asia Seminar,” 93–113. In his book The Founding of the T’ang Dynasty (Baltimore: Waverly Press, 1941), Bingham discussed the fall of the Sui Dynasty in the context of foreign relations in Asia, which shows a broad perspective of Asian history. He analyzed the foreign relations between the Sui regime and political powers in South Asia, East Asia, the Western Regions, and North Asia (Turks).

22 Bingham, “An Integrated Approach in an All-Asia Survey Course,” 408–15; reprinted in Boardman ed., Asian Studies in Liberal Education, 11–18.

23 Fairbank, “East Asia in General Education: Philosophy and Practice,” 23.

24 Singer, “The Asian Civilizations Program at the University of Chicago,” 25.

25 de Bary, “Asian Studies for Undergraduates: The Oriental Studies Program at Columbia College,” 35–6.

26 Gosling, “The General Course in Asian Civilizations at the University of Michigan,” 42–50.

27 Zhu, “Yazhou geguoshi jiaoxue dagang zhi shanggu zhonggu bufen jiaoxue dagang,” 48.

28 MacFarquhar, “The 25th International Congress of Orientalists,” 115–16.

29 Astafyev, “Sulian guanyu dongfangxue de yanjiu,” 62–7.

30 Clubb, “Soviet Oriental Studies and the Asian Revolution,” 380–9.

31 Spector, “The Organization of Soviet Institute of Chinese Studies and Its Tasks,” 677–8.

32 Bodde, “Sovetskoye Kitayevedenie,” 428–31.

33 It succeeded the journal Soviet Oriental Studies (Sovetskoe vostokovedenie, 1940–1958).

34 In 1990, it was replaced by Vostok: afro-aziatskie obshchestva: istoriia i sovremennost.

35 Swearingen, “Asian Studies in the Soviet Union,” 522–5.

36 Gabrieli, “Apology for Orientalism,” 85.

37 The papers in these conferences were published as a series titled Historical Writing on the Peoples of Asia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961–1962.

38 Anderson and Arzyutov, “The Construction of Soviet Ethnography and ‘The Peoples of Siberia’,” 183–209.

39 Yu, “Suweiai dongfang shijia de poqie renwu,” 232–5. This is a Chinese translation of the excerpts from the Voprosy Istorii (no. 4) published by the Soviet Academy in 1949.

40 Jukes, The Soviet Union in Asia, esp. chs 1 and 2.

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42 Sinor, Proceedings of the Twenty-Third International Congress of Orientalists, 42–3.

43 For a recent study of the sophisticated history of the Sino-Indian relationship, see Ghosh, “Before 1962,” 697–727.

44 Yokoi, “The Colombo Plan and Industrialization in India,” 59.

45 Hägerdal, “The Orientalism Debate and the Chinese Wall,” 19–40; Dirlik points out there was a self-orientalization among some Asian intellectuals, see his article “Chinese History and the Question of Orientalism,” 96–118. In this paragraph, I define a bourgeois scholar to be any scholar working in a non-Communist country that is not a member or sympathizer of the communist party or who has not adopted Marxist approaches.

46 Fang Hao, “Chuxi di shiyijie guoji qingnian hanxuejia huiyi baogao 出席第11屆國際青年漢學家回憶報告 (An Report on Attending the eleventh meeting of Young Sinologues),” in Fang Hao liushi zidinggao bubian, 2624.

47 Wu, “Minguo yilai guonei shixuejie dui ouzhou zhongxinlun de piping,” 116–26.

48 Liu, “Zenme pingjia Yazhou shi,” 1–10.

49 For an analysis of the Chinese Marxist conception of the West in the PRC, see Wang, “Encountering the World: China and Its Other(s) in Historical Narratives, 1949–1989,” 327–58.

50 Zhu, Yazhou geguo shi, 78–9.

51 In the United States, the area studies and international studies tremendously benefited from the support of the federal government. See Cumings, “Boundary Displacement,” 6–26.

52 Zhu, Yazhou geguo shi, 80–2.

53 Wang, “Wuduo jinhua: Yishi xingtai yujing zhong de xueshu lunzhan 五朵金花：意識形態語境中的學術論戰 (Five Golden Flowers: The Scholarly Debates in the Ideological Context),” in Wang, Liangshi de mingyun, 267–8.