1 - The Confucian Legacy

Summary

Prior to the late nineteenth century, Chinese scholar-officials studied ancient Chinese history to make sense of contemporary affairs. Thus, rather than situating themselves in global space when they traveled outside China, they attempted to situate the world within China’s historical time. This chapter contends that world-historical writing emerged in China in the early twentieth century after the rise of print capitalism as an attempt to address concerns about global space. Specifically, the question of how to make sense of China’s decline in the global order motivated scholarly interest. In this effort, the temporal dimension of ancient history remained relevant. In An Outline of Western History, Zhou Weihan juxtaposes the histories of foreign countries with Chinese chronologies. Zhou’s book is possibly the first Chinese-language work on ancient world history written by a Chinese scholar. In it, he stresses the value of ancient history and dismisses notions of fundamental differences among cultures in modern identities. As he repeatedly asserts, “Peoples throughout China and the West are alike – their intellects are the same.” Zhou’s absence of a cultural nationalist view is especially striking compared to the views expressed in later nationalist works published in China by the end of the twentieth century.