Chinese History: A New Manual

In an interview with Carla Nappi, an historian of China at the University of British Columbia, Wilkinson discussed his experience in the field and the book's background. He became interested in China as an undergraduate at Cambridge University in the early 1960s, then spent two years teaching English in Beijing up to the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. He earned a PhD from Princeton University with a dissertation on late Qing dynasty markets and prices, but when he began teaching he still felt unprepared. He did not know, he recalled, what to tell his graduate students about the Zhou or Shang dynasties, about which he felt his knowledge would hardly "fill an eye bath." On a research fellowship at Harvard University, Wilkinson mentioned to John Fairbank, a senior Harvard scholar, that he was gathering notes on Chinese history. Fairbank offered to publish them, and the 1973 Research Guide appeared in due course.[2]

Wilkinson served in Beijing as the European Union Ambassador to China from 1994 to 2001, and in his spare moments turned the 1973 Research Guide into the first and second editions of the manual. After he retired from the EU in 2001, Harvard invited him to teach Chinese history, including a graduate seminar on sinological methods. From then on he worked on the New Manual, commuting between Harvard and Peking University (where he was a visiting professor). In this way he was able to make full use of the Harvard-Yenching Library as well as all the scholarly resources that Beijing has to offer.[2]

The preliminary version of the manual (1973) was published by Harvard's East Asia Research Center. From 1998 until 2015 all editions were published by the Harvard University Asia Center for the Harvard-Yenching Institute and distributed by Harvard University Press. The fourth edition was also published in Chinese and sold 11,500 copies in the first year (2016-2017). Starting with the Fifth edition (2018), Wilkinson decided as an experiment in lowering the sales price of the English edition to publish it himself and distribute it exclusively on Amazon. The fifth edition was also published digitally (on the Pleco platform, in November 2017).

2018

The author explains in the Preface the principal aims of the Fifth edition as being to introduce:

1. The different types of transmitted, excavated, archival, artifactual, and ecofactual primary sources from prehistory to 1949 (and in some cases to the present). Accordingly, it examines the context in which these sources were produced, preserved, and received, as well as the problems of research and interpretation associated with them;

2. The ancillary disciplines required for the study of Chinese history from prehistory to 1949 (and in many cases up to the present), including archeology, astronomy, bibliography, chronology and calendrics, codicology, diplomatics, epigraphy, genealogy, historical geography, historical linguistics, numismatics, onomastics, paleography, prosopography, sigillography, statistics, textual criticism, topography, transcription, translation strategies, and special branches of study such as oracle-bone script, bamboo and silk books, Dunhuang, Qingshuijiang, and Huizhou documents or the Ming-Qing archives;

3. The key secondary sources on questions of current focus and controversy in Chinese historical studies;

4. The latest electronic resources to disseminate, sort, and analyze Chinese historical data.

In addition to the four principal aims, the Fifth edition also has five subsidiary objectives (5–9), the ninth of which has not featured in previously editions:

5. To provide a sense of change over time and therefore to avoid anachronistic, ahistorical interpretations of China's past. This is easily done because the scope of the New Manual is the whole sweep of Chinese recorded history, in the course of which long-term changes are readily apparent.

6. To supply readers who are familiar with one period a springboard into others with which they are less familiar.

7. To profile the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese historiographical traditions because (i) of the central role that the writing of history played (and continues to play) in Chinese politics and culture and (ii) to a greater extent than is commonly realized, historians rely on works produced in the old historiographical traditions, even though they may ask different questions and use different conceptual frameworks.

8. To provide English translations of key Chinese terms.

9. To illustrate the instinct of Chinese publishers to censor anything they think might contradict the official Party line on Chinese history. This is achieved by underlining in green some 30 or so examples of censorship in the Chinese translation of the manual published in 2016.[3] Most of the censored passages (and no attempt was made to show them all) are in one of four categories: (i) anything that might indicate that top CCP leaders are less than infallibly correct at all times. For example, in a discussion of political slogans Wilkinson mentions that during a meeting with Li Xiannian in 1979, the Vice Premier underlined the importance of the Four Modernizations but was unable to recall more than the first three (page 302). The paragraphs recounting this episode have been erased. Equally unacceptable to the censor were comparisons of CCP-era practices with rituals and procedures characteristic of imperial China. For example, in a discussion of flattering imperial honorific titles (zunhao 尊號) bestowed upon China's emperors during their lifetimes, the author remarked that “zunhao” (in scare quotes) reappeared with the personality cult of Mao Zedong at the start of the Cultural Revolution (his was 20 characters long: 伟大的导师, 伟大的领袖, 伟大的统帅, 伟大的舵手 (Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Commander, Great Helmsman). The paragraph was scrubbed (page 288); (2) anything touching border issues even if this meant deleting a passage from a historical source that contradicts the current CCP line while retaining a passage from the same source that supports it (page 203). Even the author's correct observation that the History of the Ming (1745), the official history of the dynasty, places Taiwan in the section reserved for foreign countries was deleted (page 953); (3) anything showing Chinese people making fun of propaganda slogans (page 302); (4) any statistical estimate that differs from official statistics on sensitive issues was simply suppressed. For example, the number of people who died of starvation during the Great Chinese Famine (page 542).[4]

• Mirsky, Jonathan (2013). "Chinese History a New Manual". NYR Blog. Also at China File December 10, 2013 link
• Davis, Chris, (2013) History manual takes scholarship to new level China Daily.com December 13, 2013.
• Sivin, Nathan (1975). "Book Review: The History of Imperial China: A Research Guide". Journal of Asian Studies. 34 (3): 821–824. doi:10.2307/2052561. JSTOR 2052561.
• Wilkinson, Endymion (2018). Chinese History: A New Manual, 5th edition. Cambridge, MA. ISBN 9780998888309. The fifth edition is also available as an e-book on the Pleco platform.
• —— (2015). Chinese History: A New Manual, 4th edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center distributed by Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674088467.
• —— (2012). Chinese History: A New Manual. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center distributed by Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674067158. 2nd printing (revised), March 2013; 3rd printing (revised), September 2013.
• —— (2000). Chinese History: A Manual (Revised and Enlarged). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center distributed by Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674002490.
• —— (1998). Chinese History: A New Manual. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center distributed by Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674123786.
• —— (1973). The History of Imperial China; a Research Guide. Cambridge, MA: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University; distributed by Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674396804. Reprinted with corrections, 1974; reprinted 1975, 1990, 1992.

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