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This chapter focuses on the career and works of Li Xinchuan (1167–1244), compiler of the Chronological Record of Major Events since 1127, a year-by-year history of China from 1127 through 1162, and Li Tao’s successor in the practice of a distinctive school of Sichuan historiography. The chapter analyzes the historiographical methodology of the Chronological Record into three interrelated processes: verification of facts, narrative construction, and political messaging. It posits this methodology as an advance on that pioneered by Li Tao. The chapter also examines Li Xinchuan’s other surviving works, most importantly the Diverse Notes on Court and Province since 1127, which is best understood as a thematically organized companion volume to the Chronological Record, and among the most important surviving accounts of Song government institutions and practices. The chapter concludes with a synopsis of Hartman’s earlier detailed study of the Record of the Way and Its Fate (Daoming lu), demonstrating that the present text was rewritten in the Yuan, and that Li Xinchuan’s original version presented a rather pessimistic assessment of the historical role of the daoxue teachings and their ability to affect positive political reform.
In this ambitious work of political and intellectual history, Charles Hartman surveys the major sources that survive as vestiges of the official dynastic historiography of the Chinese Song dynasty (960–1279). Analyzing the narratives that emerge from these sources as products of Song political discourse, Hartman offers a thorough introduction to the texts and the political circumstances surrounding their compilation. Distilling from these sources a 'grand allegory of Song history', he argues that the narratives embedded within reflect tension between a Confucian model of political institutionalism and the Song court's preference for a non-sectarian, technocratic model. Fundamentally rethinking the corpus of texts that have formed the basis of our understanding of the Song and of imperial China more broadly, this far-reaching account of historiographical process and knowledge production illuminates the relationship between official history writing and political struggle in China.
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