Reinventing modern China
Subtitle: imagination and authenticity in Chinese historical writing
By: Huaiyin Li
Publisher: University of Hawaiʻi Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Honolulu
Language: eng
Number of pages: 338
ISBN-13: 9780824836085
Subjects: Historiography..; History
Description: "This work offers the first systematic analysis of writings on modern Chinese history by historians in China from the early twentieth century to the present. It traces the construction of major interpretive schemes, the evolution of dominant historical narratives, and the unfolding of debates on the most controversial issues in different periods. Placing history-writing in the context of political rivalry and ideological contestation, Huaiyin Li explicates how the historians' dedication to faithfully reconstructing the past was compromised by their commitment to an imagined trajectory of history that fit their present-day agenda and served their needs of political legitimation."--Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Origins of the modernization narrative : nationalist historiography before 1949; title: Origins of the revolutionary narrative : Marxist historiography before 1949; title: The making of a new orthodoxy : Marxist historiography in the 1950s; title: Between the past and the present : the radicalization of historiography under Mao; title: Challenging the revolutionary orthodoxy : "new enlightenment" historiography in the 1980s; title: From revolution to modernization : the paradigmatic transition in Reform Era historiography; title: Master narratives in crisis.