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History of Western historiography: The views from China—Introduction

This issue presents a group of articles written by Chinese scholars on the tradition and transformation of Western historiography. Perhaps somewhat surprising to some of our readers, the subject is an important subfield in the garden of history in China. The course of “History of Western Historiography” or “History of Foreign Historiography,” for instance, is regularly taught to history majors on many college campuses. There are also specialists on the history faculty at several key universities who research and publish around the area and supervise students at both M.A. and Ph.D. levels. In fact, the majority of important historical texts constituting the tradition of European historiography from the ancient to modern periods have already had Chinese translations, readily available to Chinese readers and students. In more recent years, notable studies of the European/Western tradition of historical writing, its modern transformation and contemporary developments by scholars in the Western academe have also been rendered into Chinese. As a result, Chinese history students are familiar with major scholars in the field, such as Lynn Hunt, Peter Burke, Georg Iggers (1926–2017), Donald Kelley, Hayden White (1928–2018) and Frank Ankersmit. Indeed, in China’s historical circles, these scholars’ reputation rivals that of well-known China scholars in the West, such as Philip Kuhn (1933–2016), Frederic Wakeman (1937–2006), Jonathan Spence, Susan Mann, Timothy Brook and Benjamin Elman. And this trend of interest, in my opinion, would probably continue into the future. In January 2019, the Chinese government established the Chinese Academy of History (中國歷史研究院 Zhongguo lish yanjiuyuan) under the auspices of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (中國社會科學院 Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan). Of its six departments, there is an Institute of Historical Theory (歷史理論研究所 lishi lilun yanjiusuo). Its task, needless to say, is to continue exalting the importance of Marxism as the theory in guiding historical research in China. Yet in order to promote the study of Marxism, which originated from the West, it is necessary for Chinese scholars to enhance their knowledge of Western historiography as well as to compare Marxist theory with other theoretical constellations advanced by Western scholars in both Marx’s times and more recent decades. Looking around the world, it is not a uniquely Chinese phenomenon that the country’s history students and teachers accord substantial attention to Western academic cultures and historiographies. In his influential work, Provincializing Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty, a prominent postcolonial theorist, has made the following observation: