Nazi leadership or developed without a clear plan inthe course of the war. Both approaches failed to dealconcretely with the Holocaust as it involved perpetra-tors and victims on the local level. More recent studiessuch as Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men: PoliceReser�e Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland(1993) have sought to study the killing through theconcrete participation of individual perpetrators.

7. Conclusion

The concerted attack on ideas of objectivity andhistorical method on the part of postmodernist criticshas by no means resulted in the abandonment ofserious historical study based on research into thesources. Although the borderline between scholarshipand literature has become more fluid, as for example inSimon Schama’s Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Spec-ulations (1991) which points at the tremendous prob-lems in telling a truthful history, few historians,whether in the areas of political, social, or culturalhistory, would abandon the commitment to honestlyreconstructing the past. At the same time, the confi-dence of nineteenth-century professional historians inthe possibility of telling definitely wie es eigentlichgewesen has yielded to the recognition that the samesources and the same set of events lend themselves toa variety of interpretations, but that these interpreta-tions do not necessarily disprove one another but castdifferent perspectives on a subject. The years 1970–2000 have seen the collapse of illusions dear to modernhistorical thought until then: the linear progression ofWestern history and the accumulation of historicalknowledge. The scope of historical study has beenexpanded immensely. The concentration on centers ofpolitical power and macroeconomic and macrosocialprocesses has been supplemented by a new interest inmany aspects of life and culture which previously hadnot entered the imagination of historians, or at least ofprofessional historians, and which require specialresearch strategies. These two scales, the macro andthe micro, by no means exclude each other, and in fact,as we have indicated, political and social historianshave become increasingly aware of the role of culture,and cultural historians have become aware of thesocial and political context in which collective humanexistence takes place.

See also: Gender History; Historicism; SubalternHistory

Bibliography

Ankersmit F 1995 History and Tropology. The Rise and Fall ofMetaphor. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA

Appleby J, Hunt L, Jacob M 1994 Telling the Truth aboutHistory. Norton, New York

Barraclough G 1978 Trends in History. Holmes & Meier, NewYork

Berman A 1988 From the New Criticism to Deconstruction. TheReception of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. Universityof Illinois Press, Urbana, IL

Geertz C 1973 The Interpretations of Cultures. Basic Books, NewYork

Green A, Troup K 1999 The Houses of History. A CriticalReader in Twentieth-century History and Theory. New YorkUniversity Press, New York

Hunt L 1984 Politics, Culture and Class in the French Re�olution.University of California Press, Berkeley, CA

Hunt L (ed.) 1989 New Cultural History. University of CaliforniaPress, Berkeley, CA

Iggers G G 1997 Historiography in the Twentieth Century. FromScientific Objecti�ity to the Postmodern Challenge. WesleyanUniversity Press, Hanover, NH

Jenkins K 1995 On ‘What is History?’ Routledge, LondonJenkins K (ed.) 1997 The Postmodern History Reader. Routledge,

LondonLyotard J F 1979 La Condition postmoderne: rapport sur le

sa�oir. Editions de Minuit, Paris. (English edn. 1984 ThePostmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. University ofMinnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN)

Megill A 1985 Prophets of Extremity. Nietzsche, Heidegger,Foucault, Derrida. University of California Press, Berkeley,CA

Novick P 1988 That Noble Dream. The ‘Objecti�ity Question’ andthe American Historical Profession. Harvard University Press,Cambridge, MA

Scott J 1988 Gender and the Politics of History. ColumbiaUniversity Press, New York

Spiegel G 1990 History, historicism, and the social logic of thetext in the Middle Ages. Speculum 65: 59–86

Stone L 1979 The revival of narrative: Reflections on a newold history. Past and Present 85: 3–24

Thompson E P 1963 The Making of the English Working Class.Vintage Books, New York

White H 1973 Metahistory. The Historical Imagination inNineteenth-century Europe. Johns Hopkins University Press,Baltimore, MD

White H 1978 Tropics of Discourse. Essays in Cultural Criticism.Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD

White H 1987 The Content of the Form, Narrati�e Discourse andHistorical Representation. Johns Hopkins University Press,Baltimore, MD

Windschuttle K 1997 The Killing of History: How a Disicipline isBeing Murdered by Literary Critics and Social Theorists. FreePress, New York

Wolfe P 1997 History and imperialism: A century of theoryfrom Marx to postcolonialism. American Historical Re�iew102: 388–420

G. G. Iggers

Historiography and Historical Thought:

East Asia

1. Features of East Asian Historiography

The art of recalling the past has developed verydifferently in Europe and East Asia. Whereas, sincethe time of Herodotus and Thucydides, Western

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historiography has been centered on histories writtenby individuals for individuals, since ancient times EastAsian historiography has developed a historical cul-ture pivoting on public historiography. The distinctivecharacteristic of East Asian historiography could bedescribed as publicly sponsored history, a traditionthat continues today as a basso continuo.

‘East Asia’ as a historic–cultural concept, comprisespresent-day China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, wherehistory developed around China, which overwhelmedthe peripheral countries with its physical size, andpolitical and cultural ascendancy. This historic EastAsia has been termed ‘the Chinese world order’ or asystem of international relations with China at thecenter. The system reached Korea and Vietnam in theearly Han period (202 BC–9 AD), and Japan in thefirst century AD.

This Sino-centric system also formed the commoncultural heritage of East Asia: the classical Chineselanguage, and Chinese writing system; the Confuciansocial and familial order; Buddhism through Chinesetranslations; the legal and administrative systems, andthe art of historiography. The peripheral states of theEast Asian world might also be called Sino-graphiccultures, in the sense that they used classical Chineseas a common language, which is, in a sense, com-parable with the use of Latin in mediaeval and earlymodern Europe.

2. Role and Purpose of Historiography

For the most part, the task of historiographicalcompilation in East Asia was traditionally a state-run project. The ‘official history’ produced by thatcompilation, along with materials collected for thepurpose, constituted the core of East Asian historio-graphy. It could be said that historiography was theprimary cultural undertaking in East Asia. This is incontrast to the cultures of Europe, India, and Islam,where the concentration of cultural power has notbeen fixed in history.

For 2,000 years, Chinese historiography centeredon the ‘official history’ compiled by each successivedynasty as a state enterprise. Later generations posi-tioned the Shiji (The Records of the Grand Historian)by Si-ma Qian (145 – ca. 86 BC) as the first officialhistory and since then, 24 official histories have beencompiled. A characteristic of these official histories isthat they have an encyclopedic tinge; that is, the bodyof the work originated by Si-ma Qian brought anentire culture, its politics, economics, society, culture,technology, etc., into one unified structure. Historywas written as a means of comprehensively describingsuch a world system.

Historiography in East Asia is perhaps equivalentto such ‘primary cultural undertakings’ as Biblicalcommentary and the Corpus Iuris Iustanianus in the

West, the Laws of Manu in India, and the Koran in theMuslim world.

The purpose of writing history in East Asia wasbased on the Chinese philosophical premise thathistorical facts were the only certain and immutablereality. Chinese metaphysics was not premised on arevealed religion based on the existence of a unique,almighty God, like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.Rather, it took the world as an ever-changing pheno-menon, as presented in the Yijing (The Book ofChanges). Therefore, it sought immutable reality inhistory, because human beings could not alter thatwhich had already happened. This belief took historyas its axis in Chinese civilization.

This culture of history later spread throughout EastAsia in tandem with Confucianism, creating a com-mon historical culture throughout East Asia. Theproclamation of this philosophy may be found inConfucius’ statement that, ‘All the empty words Iwant to write down are neither so clear nor so startlingas seeing their meaning in action’ (Shihji).

The Chinese had developed their own way ofcreating an immutable past. In China and Korea, itwas standard practice that, once the state’s historicalcompilation bureau had completed compiling theofficial history of the previous dynasty, the bureaudestroyed all the sources it had collected. This was toprevent the revision or rewriting of the official history,for once it was published by the government, thehistory itself took on the character of a sacred text.The most certain way to endow the official history withthe imprimatur of authority was to destroy the sourceson which it had been based. During the KoreanChoso� n dynasty (1392–1910), for example, the sourcematerials were burned after use. When that was done,the account embodied in the official histories becamethe facts of history.

In this fashion, East Asian cultures preserved theideal that history was the sole immutable basis forhuman judgment. The biographies that comprise overhalf the material in the official histories maintainedthis tradition of objective narration in their own way.In the biographies, as in other sections of the officialhistory, they first set forth what they believed to be‘fact,’ and following that, the historians added theirown evaluation. This vast corpus of biographies forcesus to consider why the historians believed the bi-ography to be a necessary part of a history. It isbecause in a culture that lacks a unitary supremebeing, the records of the lives of eminent individualsare the only true sacred texts.

3. Historical Objecti�ity

The tradition was maintained of seeking objectivity inhistorical narration in the lives of the historians whowrote it even more than the narration itself. We can

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find an episode that presents the historian as a loftyfigure in the life of a fifteenth-century Koreanhistorian.

It is recorded that in 1431, as the compilation ofthe T ’aejong sillok (the Veritable Records of KingT ’aejong) was nearing completion, his successor KingSejong (1418–1450) asked the compilers to show himtheir work in advance. ‘In the previous dynasty, everymonarch personally reviewed the veritable records ofhis predecessor; but King T’aejong did not review theVeritable Records of King T’aejo.’ Sejong’s seniorministers replied that, ‘If Your Majesty were to review[the work in progress], later monarchs would surelyrevise [the historians’ work]. Then, [future] historianswould suspect that the monarch might look at thedraft, and they would inevitably fail to record the factscompletely. Then, how would we transmit [facts]faithfully for the future?’

In traditional East Asia, the role of the past was toserve as a normative history. This forms an interestingcontrast to Western historical practices, where itevolved as a cognitive discipline. That is, in the West,the historian found his raison d’e� tre in rewriting thepast. The discipline of history developed as a com-petition among the interpretations and approaches ofdifferent historians.

‘History’ in modern East Asia is generally parsedwith the two-character compound Chinese word lishi(Japanese, rekishi; Korean, yoksa), but until themiddle of the nineteenth century it was expressed inthe single-character term shi (Japanese, shi; Korean,sa). This word shi itself originally denoted the historianhimself, and only later, by analogy, did it come to referto the product of the historian’s craft, the written workof history itself. This is particularly important whenwe note that in the languages of Europe, it wasprecisely the reverse: The word ‘historian’ was formedto refer to the maker of the written ‘history.’

It is a notable characteristic of historical conscious-ness in East Asia that it tends to focus far more on theattitude of the historian, than on actual works ofhistory themselves.

4. De�elopment of East Asian Historiography

4.1 China

In China, Sima Qian substantially established thetradition of Chinese historiography by inventing hisown format for compilation. He succeeded his fatheras the grand historian of the Han emperor, and withhis access to court archives, he completed the Shiji(The Record of the Grand Historian) in 130 volumes. Itcovers a history of three thousands years from the(legendary) Huang-di dynasty to his own period, andcovers China and Central and South Asia. The formatconsists of five sections: ‘Benji,’ or imperial annals(12 volumes); ‘Biao,’ a chronology of the successive

dynasties (10 volumes); ‘Shu,’ treatises on economy,technology, astronomy, etc., (eight volumes); ‘Shi-jia,’annals of feudal states and nobles (30 volumes); and‘Liezhuan,’ biographies of famous persons and foreignpeoples (70 volumes). Sima’s format is encyclopedic innature, systematizing the world in a single, unifiedstructure; his historiographical format dominatedEastAsian historiography until the mid-nineteenth cen-tury.

Ban Gu (32–92 BC) followed Sima Qian’s work,but limited himself to the history of a single dynasty,which he completed as the Hanshu (History of the[former] Han dynasty). His practice, that each Chinesedynasty compiled the history of its predecessor,became standard for all of the following officialhistories. It was in the Tang dynasty (618–906) thathistorical culture truly flourished, as history becamean independent subject in the Chinese classification oflearning. Historians were closely linked with govern-mental bureaucracy and their team method of com-pilation started in this period and continued until thetwentieth century.

A new format for compiling historiography wasproposed by Sima Guang (1019–1086) in his 294-volume Zizhi tongjian (The Comprehensi�e Mirror forAid in Go�ernment) in 1084. It was an extensivehistoriography that employed the method of chrono-logical order to help readers find certain historicalevents through dynasties. It covers sixteen dynasties of1,362 years and includes information from dynastichistories, chronicles, biographies, novels, etc. It isnecessary to refer here also to the Hanxueh (the HanSchool), the development of which established his-torical study based on textual criticism of historicaldocuments in the Qing dynasty. Qian Daxin (1728–1804) was one of the great figures among them, whoseNianershi kaoyi (Verification of the text of the 22histories) was an examination of characters andlanguage, dates and places, genealogies and institu-tions in the text of the 22 official histories.

4.2 Japan

The idea of official history spread from China to theother East Asian countries that compiled their ownofficial histories, modeled on the Chinese format andwritten in classical Chinese, not in their nativelanguages.

The first Japanese state historiography was theNihon shoki (The Chronicle of Japan, 720) compiled byPrince Toneri, and modeled after the Chinese format.It covers the period from the Age of Gods to the endof the reign of Empress Jito� (686–697), arranged inchronological order, in annalistic form. Toneri usedhistory as a forum to establish Japanese nationalidentity and consciousness. This is in marked contrastto the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, 712) by O� noYasumaro, which was also a historiography based ona transcription of oral tradition.

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This tradition continued until the late nineteenthcentury. The Honcho� tsugan (Comprehensi�e Mirror ofJapan, 1644–1670), compiled by Hayashi Razan andhis son Hayashi Gaho� , was also in the same line ofofficial history sponsored by theTokugawa shogunate,and the Dai Nihonshi (the History of Great Japan,compiled 1657–1906) was compiled under the supportof the Mito clan.

Apart from the historiographical tradition, it isimportant to add such auxiliary sciences as bibli-ography, classics, textual criticism, and philology,which had developed in Japan to the same levels as inthe West by the nineteenth century. These originated,in Japanese tradition, from the Chronicle of Japan(720), of handing down variant texts or conflictingreadings and traditions intact to posterity. In thisimportant respect, China differed markedly fromJapan. In China, history was transmitted as anauthentic, authoritative text, which admitted no vari-ant. This difference is richly illustrated by the work ofHanawa Hokiichi (1746–1821). His Gunsho ruiju�(Classified collection of Japanese classics and docu-ments), begun in 1779 and still in progress, firstappeared in 1819, with 1,270 titles in 530 volumes;another 2,103 titles in 1,150 volumes appeared in 1822.The objective was not to establish the authoritativetext and obliterate the others, but to make availableall the variant texts, which later generations mightjudge. This collection compares favorably with suchEuropean endeavours as the Monumenta GermaniaeHistorica, the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, etc.

The Meiji government, established in 1868, whichwas responsible for the restoration of the emperor asthe focus of sovereignty, and led the subsequentmodernization of Japan, also continued the traditionof ‘official histories,’ founding the Office for theCompilation of National History. The aim here was tocreate an official history of Japan, but for variousreasons the objective was amended to that of com-piling historical documents, and the original idea ofcompiling a national history was abandoned. Thework of the Office continues today in its successor, theHistoriographical Institute, now part of Tokyo Uni-versity. Moreover, virtually every prefecture, district,and locality in Japan, even down to the level ofindividual villages, continues the tradition of officialhistory at the local level today, compiling localhistorical sources, and publishing local histories.Similarly, many individual government bureaus, aswell as corporations, universities, and other corporateentities, regularly commission their own histories,extending the model of ‘official history’ to the privaterealm.

4.3 Korea

It was around the fourth century that Korea foundedits historiographical tradition, though the epoch-making historiography did not appear until the twelfth

century. Kim Pu-sik (1075–1151) compiled theSamguk sagi (History of the Three Kingdoms) in 1145,the oldest extant history of Korea, covering fromantiquity to the decline of unified Silla in 935. Itfollows the format of Sima Quan’s official history as isshown by the name sagi (the Korean pronunciation ofShiji), and he intended to provide moral lessons forposterity. Iryo� n (1206–1289), a high-rank KoreanBuddhist monk, compiled the Samguk yusa (Mem-orabilia of the three Kingdoms) in 1281, which is theonly extant history of Korea before the Choso� ndynasty (1392–1910), together with the Samguk sagi.This work is unique in the sense that he wrote itprivately, including myths, tales, and social issues, andeven refers to the sources he used.

So Ko� -jo� ng (1420–1488), compiled the Tonggukt’onggam (Comprehensi�e Mirror of Korea) as aKorean official history in 1485, modeled on SimaGuang’s Zizhi tongjian. It covers the period fromancient times to the end of the Koryo� dynasty in 1392.This work was compiled under the influence of neo-Confucianism, and reflects the moralistic purpose ofpraising good and condemning evil. An Cho� ng-bok(1712-1791) likewise published his Tongsa kangmok(Outline of Korean History), 20 volumes, in 1778, achronological treatment of Korean history fromTan’gun, the legendary founder ofKorea to the declineof Koryo� in 1392.

4.4 Vietnam

In Vietnam, just as in Japan and Korea, some officialhistories were published including Dai Viet Su KyToan Thu (Complete Book of the Records of Vietnam)in 1479, which is based on the style of the Zizhitongjian of Sima Guang.

5. Historiology in East Asia

The study of historical theory in East Asia began withLiu Zhiji’s Shitong (Comprehensi�e Historiography),written in China in the eighth century (708). It was thefirst thorough treatise in Chinese—or any otherlanguage, for that matter—on historical criticism,which also constituted a history of Chinese historiansand a theory of historiography, and deals with suchquestions as selection and criticism of historicalmaterials, historical objectivity, judgment in history,historical causality, etc. The work was a constantreference for Chinese historians until the nineteenthcentury, and gave rise to the meta-historical traditionin Chinese historiography.

Liu’s theory of history was further developed byZheng Qiao (1104–?1162) in his Tongzhi (Compre-hensi�e Monographs, 200 volumes). In the introductionto the Tongzhi, he proposed his core idea of ‘synthesis’and ‘inter-relatedness and causality,’ through whichhe argued the importance of the continuity of his-

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torical development. Based on this theory he com-pleted the voluminous Tongzhi, including the ‘TwentySummaries,’ his noteworthy encyclopedic chapters.

Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801) wrote his Wenshitongyi (General Sur�ey of Literature and History), awork on the theory and history of historiography(only published in 1920, long after his death). The firstchapter starts with ‘The Six Classics are all history,’ inwhich he expressed his philosophy of history, that thevery idea of the Sacred (tao) can only be knownthrough men’s actions (shi), which are recorded in theSix Classics.

It is thought provoking to realize how few works ofhistorical criticism were written outside China, incomparisonwith the voluminous amounts of historicalworks. It signifies that traditional East Asian his-toriography was normative in nature, in the sense thatit required little discussion of the nature of history. Itis also necessary to refer to the fact that there wererelatively few works of metaphysical interpretation ofthe course of history—save perhaps Wang Fuzhi’s(1619–1692) discussion of historical logic and his-torical tendency in work published only after hisdeath. East Asians valued detailed precision in history,rather than the philosophical interpretations that weredeveloped in Europe. Some exceptions, informed byBuddhism, were found in medieval Japan. Jien(1155–1225), a prominent Japanese Buddhist cleric,wrote his self-deprecatingly titled Gukansho� (Notes ofthe Views of a Fool, 1220), in which he proposed hisphilosophy of history with the term do� ri, an idea ofhistorical inevitability, through which he explainedhistorical processes in terms of the state of devel-opment and proposed his own periodization. Simi-larly, a century later Kitabatake Chikafusa proposedin his Jinno� Shotoki (Chronicle of the True Descent ofthe Di�ine So�ereigns, 1339) that Japan is a landfounded by the gods and maintained by the bles-sings of an unbroken lineage of divinely descendedemperors.

6. The Rise of Modern Historiography in EastAsia

Western concepts of ‘civilization and enlightenment’were introduced systematically to East Asia beginningin the mid-nineteenth century had a transformativeeffect on notions of history and historiography as well.The movement toward ‘modern’ and ‘scientific’ hist-ory in East Asia began with a variety of intellectualexperiments among Japanese scholars in the 1870s and1880s. As Korean and Chinese intellectuals venturedto Japan toward the end of the nineteenth century,‘modern’ Western notions and methods of historicalinquiry and explanation gradually filtered across theentire East Asian region.

It is worth special mention that Western cul-tures and technologies including historiography were

introduced through translations of European andAmerican works into Japanese. Japanese intellectualscreated their own neologisms to translate Westernterms by combining two or three Chinese characterstogether. Those newly invented terms in Chinesecharacters were later exported to China and Korea,and in consequence, East Asian scholars nowshare most academic terms in the liberal arts andsciences.

The very fact that such translations were feasible,and successfully received, demonstrates the stage thatJapanese historiography had achieved. By introducingWestern historiography through translation, ratherthan keeping it as the preserve of a few languagespecialists, Western history and historiography weretransformed into common intellectual property for allEast Asian historians, and, in particular, made ac-cessible to those who worked on their nationalhistories.

As far as historiography is concerned, there alreadyexisted a traditional Japanese historiography, and theauxiliary sciences made possible the introduction andimportation of Western historiography. Native pio-neers in the introduction of Western historiography,historians like Shigeno Yasutsugu (1827–1910) andKume Kunitake (1839–1931), were initially trained inKo� sho� gaku tradition (Chinese, kaozhengxue: textualcriticism, which originated from the so-called ‘HanSchool’ in the Qing period), and were thus wellprepared to accept the empirical methods of Leopordvon Ranke. They were particularly receptive to hisnotions of a rigorously critical approach to sourcesand the avoidance of value judgments, when hisstudent Ludwig Riess, who was invited to TokyoImperial University as a professor of history in 1887,introduced Ranke’s ideas to Japan.

The acquisition and acceptance of European his-torical theory was started by Japanese translations ofleading contemporary European works on historicalmethod and theory, such as those by J. G. Droysen, E.Bernheim and C. V. Langlois and C. Seignobos. Underthe strong influence of Bernheim, Tsuboi Kumezo�published his Shigaku kenkyu� ho� (Methods of HistoricalResearch, 1903) in Japan, and Liang Qichao (1873–1929) published the Zhongguo lishi yanjiufa (Methodsof Chinese Historical Research, 1922) in China.

‘To study history’ in traditional East Asia hadmeant ‘to become conversant with the official Chinesehistories,’ and the introduction of Western ideas ofhistoriography opened new horizons for students ofhistory, who began to inquire, ‘what are the historicalfacts,’ in the sense of going beyond the historicalnarrative to examine the underlying facts themselves.It was an indication of the opening of modernhistorical scholarship in East Asia, in which theintroduction of Western learning played an importantrole.

A typical example of this consciousness is found inShigeno Yasutsugu, nicknamed ‘Doctor Obliteration.’

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Applying the European historical method to Japanesehistory, he re-examined the Taiheiki (Chronicle of theGreat Peace, 1370–1371), and proved that the four-teenth-century military commander Kojima Takanorinever existed.

In China, Gu Jiegang (1893–1980) was one of themost eminent figures, whose Gushibian (Critiques ofAncient History, seven volumes, 1926–1941) contri-buted greatly to the modernization of Chinese his-toriography by taking a finely honed critical scalpel tothe world of ancient Chinese legend, which had longbeen accepted as fact. His school was named ‘ancientdoubters.’ His method was rooted in the Qing dynasty(1644–1911) school of ancient doubters; however, itwas at the same time backed with the new Europeanhistorical method.

Yi Pyo� ng-do (1896–1989) was the first Koreanhistorian to have received training in the modernhistorical method. He stressed critical and objectivemethods of treating historical sources in his Han’guk-sa taegwan (Grand Sur�ey of Korean History, 1963).

With the introduction of Western culture to Japan,history became re-institutionalized from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, from the governmentalsection to the newly established Imperial University.However, it should not be forgotten that the in-troduction of Western historiography reduced EastAsian historiography from its former position as astate enterprise to merely a single academic field withinthe university. Individual historians started to havetheir own ‘specialty’ in order to survive in thisnew ‘university’ setting, and in order to distinguishthemselves from eminent amateur historians, theirresearches were published as monographs in the newlyestablished historical journals.

On the one hand, in the West, the ‘professionaliza-tion’ of historical research resulting in the estab-lishment of history as an independent universityacademic field was a great achievement for thisinstitutionally neglected discipline. In East Asia, onthe other hand, the introduction of modern Westernhistorical research heralded the end of the prestigioustraditional East Asian historiography, which hadaimed at a comprehensive description of the entireworld. Since then, the subsequent evolution of EastAsian historiography has developed largely along thelines of ‘modern’ historiography, in the same basicmethodological and theoretical terms as the rest of the‘advanced’ world.

7. De�elopment of Modern Historiography

Since modern historiography was introduced to EastAsia, its development varied according to the situationin each country.

In China, along with Gu Jiegang’s ancient doubters,newly discovered archaeological results urged a new

perspective of ancient history on Chinese historians.In particular, the discovery of oracle-bone inscriptionslaid the foundations for the new Chinese ancienthistory led by such historians as Luo Zhenyu(1866–1940) and Wang Guowei (1877–1927). Thesenew works were later synthesized with Marxist ma-terialism by Guo Moruo (1892–1978). His Zongguogudai shehui yanjiu (Study of Ancient Chinese Society,1930) is the first Marxist work on ancient Chinesesociety. Thereafter, especially with the establishmentof the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Marxismbecame dominant among Chinese historians. Tra-ditional historiographical achievements were mostlyreplaced by reverse interpretations, a trend which washighlighted in the period of the Cultural Revolution(1966–1976). After the 1990s, the worldwide infor-mation revolution and the introduction of the latesthistorical methods of social history are changingChinese historiography, opening it to the rest of theworld.

In Japan, soon after the introduction of modernEuropean historiography, the emperor-centered statepromulgated a new political orthodoxy, and began torestrict intellectual freedom, especially in the study ofancient Japanese history. Since the 1930s, social andeconomic history began to apply the Marxist frame-work to Japanese history, mostly to the study ofJapanese capitalism. After World War II, Marxismemerged as the dominant historiographical school,and it was only in the 1970s that Japanese historiansbegan to accept the idea of social history as their latesthistorical method from France, Germany, andEngland. Since the late 1980s, many Marxist historiansquietly shifted from socioeconomic history to socialhistory.

8. Metamorphoses of Public History

Currently, in East Asia, the aura of official history stillfloats on the surface of peoples’ collective historio-graphical consciousness. The past is still seen as thetrustworthiest ‘mirror on mankind.’ What is beingsought from official historiography is not ‘a’history, but ‘the’ history, the reliability of which,people undoubtedly believe, is guaranteed by publiceditorship.

In China, 24 official dynastic histories have beenpublished and the tradition of public history continuesto the present day. The Qingshigao (Draft of theHistory of the Qing Dynasty) was completed in 1927,and was finally published in Beijing in 1977. Thisapplies to local history too; the publication of prefec-tural histories sponsored by local governments beganin the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), and continues evenin contemporary China.

In Japan, this idea is seen in school history textbooksand local histories. The Japanese Ministry of Edu-

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cation vets all school textbooks, the idea of whichseems a reincarnation of official history as far ashistory textbooks are concerned. Japanese schoolsteach students ‘what’ rather than ‘why.’ They cramstudents’ heads with a fixed course of history –Japanese history, world history, whatever – withoutmuch attempt to have students recognize that there arediffering viewpoints. Forty-two Japanese prefecturesout of 47 have compiled their own prefectural histories– some of which have been compiled two or three timesover the last 120 years – and there is hardly a city,town, or village anywhere in Japan that has not donelikewise. These local histories are premised on thetraditional historiographical notion that there is ahistorical truth that is embodied in authoritativenarratives.

Korea also continued to chronicle an official historyand this tradition is alive in present-day South Korea.The 25-volume History of the Republic of Korea,whose publication was completed in 1979 by theNational History Compilation Committee (estab-lished in 1948), is a state-produced history of thehomeland.

Since the late nineteenth century, the practice ofhistory has undergone professionalization and special-ization on a worldwide scale, and East Asia too hasbeen drawn into this whirlpool. Since then the style ofhistoriographical practice in East Asia has, in mostrespects, been the same as that in Western countries.The work of the historian, as an individual, is to writemany research papers and books. However, manyhistorians, as far as historians working on theirnational history are concerned, are also at the sametime involved in publicly sponsored historiography;countless university-based Japanese historians, forexample, serve on the editorial boards of local andprefectural history projects. We can thus observe thecontinuing ‘coexistence’ rather than ‘conflict’ of thetwo differing traditions of historical study.

To put it another way, East Asian historianssimultaneously inhabit two worlds of historiography,one a world of Rankean (or traditional East Asian)factual objectivity and another world of post-Rankeaninterpretations ‘varied and opposing voices.’

See also: Area and International Studies: Develop-ment in Southeast Asia; China: Sociocultural Aspects;East Asia, Religions of; East Asian Studies: Politics;East Asian Studies: Society; Japan: SocioculturalAspects; Korea: Sociocultural Aspects; South Asia:Sociocultural Aspects

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Watson B 1958 Ssu-ma Ch’ien: Grand Historian of China.Columbia University Press, New York

M. Sato

Historiography and Historical Thought:

Indigenous Cultures in the Americas

1. Terminology

History is information handed down from generationto generation. Since information can be inherited inthe form of natural objects as well as by culture itself,a basic distinction needs to be drawn between naturalhistory and the history of civilization. The way peopledevelop consciousness of their history is by takinginformation from their natural environment, theircultural artifacts, and their memory, which is thencollectively conceptualized by means of interpreting,reconsidering, and agreeing on its meaning. Historicalconcepts resulting from this always reflect the people’sexperience of their natural environment as well as theirspecific cultural achievements. In exceptional cases ahistorical concept can be limited to the individual.However, historical research is more concerned withcollective concepts, since it is characteristic of humansocieties that mainly those dominant concepts arehanded down. Thus each society cultivates a particularhistorical concept, which again needs to be handeddown in order to become and remain effective. Allcultures are alike in inheriting their historical conceptsin the form of oral (stories and myths) and figuraltraditions (monuments). In addition to this, civiliza-tions often use writing (books and inscriptions) as thepreferred means for handing down historical conceptsto future generations.

2. America

The only people of pre-colonial America to develop afully functioning writing system were the LowlandMaya. They used the written records to maintainknowledge of a wide thematic range and thus storedand conserved an enormous amount of cultural

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Historiography and Historical Thought: East Asia

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International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences ISBN: 0-08-043076-7