Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past is a book by Paul A. Cohen introducing the ideas behind American histories of China since 1840. It was published by Columbia University Press in 1984 and reprinted with a new preface in 2010.
Cohen presents a sympathetic critique of the dominant paradigms associated with John K. Fairbank and the historians he trained which shaped the field of Area Studies after World War II: "China's response to the West" (or "impact-response") and "Tradition and Modernity," which were popular in the 1950s, and Imperialism, which became fashionable in the 1960s in response to American involvement in Vietnam. Cohen, himself trained by Fairbank, sees these paradigms as placing China in a passive role and not being capable of change without a Western impact.
Cohen's critique
Cohen prefaces the book by explaining “People who are not historians sometimes think of history as the facts about the past. Historians are supposed to know otherwise.... As times change, concerns shift... each generation of historians must rewrite the history written by the preceding generation.”[1] Up through World War II, he continues, “American writing tended to stress those aspects which the West itself had been most immediately concerned," an intellectual bias which “equated modern with Western with important; for many Americans of this era, even educated ones, Westernized China and modern China were indistinguishable.”[2]
My real quibble in this book is not with the disciplined, descriptive, application of terms like imperialism, impact, response, or even modern to specific, precisely delimited processes or phenomena that have emerged in the past century or so of Chinese history; what I object to is the use of these concepts as broad, overarching intellectual constructs purporting to tell us what was important – and by implication not important – about an entire period of historical time.[3]
Chapter 1, "The Problem with 'China's Response to the West,'" focuses on the "impact and response" framework made popular by Teng Ssu-yu and Fairbank's 1954 volume of annotated translations, China's Response to the West. Chapter 2, "Moving Beyond 'Tradition and Modernity'" focuses on Joseph R. Levenson, Mary C. Wright, and Albert Feuerwerker, all trained by Fairbank. Cohen is particularly doubtful about the analysis of Joseph Levenson, in such early books as Liang Ch'i-chao and the Mind of Modern China (Harvard University Press, 1954), which assumed that Confucianism and modernity were incompatible and that the traditional order had to be torn down before a modern one could be built up. Likewise Mary Wright, in The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism concluded that for China after the Taiping Rebellion, “the obstacles to successful adaptation to the modern world were not imperialist aggression, Manchu rule, mandarin stupidity, or the accidents of history, but nothing less than the constituent elements of the Confucian system itself.”[4]
Chapter 3. "Imperialism: Reality or Myth?" does not see the concept "imperialism" as a useful tool.
Chapter 4. "Toward a China-Centered History of China" calls for "China-centered history of China" and praises scholarship of the 1970s which shows how to do it.[5]
Cohen returned to the problems of historical writing in his History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth. New York: Columbia University Press. 1997. ISBN978-0231106504.
Reception
Harriet Zurndorfer's history of western Sinology called the work a "revealing book" and an "insider's discussion" which traces how scholars can move beyond these "Western-centric paradigms" towards a "China-centered" history based on "how the Chinese themselves experienced and wrote about it."[6] Reviews in professional journals for the most part greeted the book. Albert Feuerwerker, writing in the Journal of Asian Studies praised Cohen but objected to "what I believe to be an undue defensiveness" in the analysis of what Cohen calls "the intellectual imperialism" of American historians, and an "excessive gravity" in treating "jejeune political tracts as 'paradigms'" in the chapter on imperialism."[7] Dennis Duncanson was skeptical: "there is regrettably little novelty to stimulate reflection in this less than comprehensive survey," and did not agree with "finding fault with other people's 'perceptions'."[8]
Sato Shin'ichi, tr., Chi no teikokushugi: Orientizumu to Chugoku zo (Intellectual Imperialism: Orientalism and the image of China) (Heibonsha, Tokyo, 1988).
Lin Tongqi, tr., Zhonghua, Beijing, 1989; expanded edition, Zhonghua, 2005
Gasster, Michael (1987). "Discovering China in the History: Some Comments on Paul Cohen's Discovering History in China". The American Asian Review.
Lu, Hanchao (2007). "A Double-Sided Mirror: On Paul Cohen's Discovering History in China". The Chinese Historical Review. 14 (2): 189–191. doi:10.1179/tcr.2007.14.2.189. S2CID143605546.
Xia, Mingfang (2007). "Modern Chinese History without "Modernity": Paul A. Cohen's Three Dogmas and the Logical Contradictions of the "China-Centred Approach"". Journal of Modern Chinese History. 1 (1): 53–68. doi:10.1080/17535650701521114. S2CID143834418.
Harriet Zurndorfer, (1988) (Review) T'oung Pao Second Series, Vol. 74, Livr. 1/3 (1988), pp.150–154 .
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Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians have studied that topic using particular sources, techniques, and theoretical approaches. Scholars discuss historiography by topic—such as the historiography of the United Kingdom, that of WWII, the British Empire, early Islam, and China—and different approaches and genres, such as political history and social history. Beginning in the nineteenth century, with the development of academic history, there developed a body of historiographic literature. The extent to which historians are influenced by their own groups and loyalties—such as to their nation state—remains a debated question.
Sinology or Chinese studies, is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of China primarily through Chinese philosophy, language, literature, culture and history and often refers to Western scholarship. Its origin "may be traced to the examination which Chinese scholars made of their own civilization."
The New Culture Movement was a movement in China in the 1910s and 1920s that criticized classical Chinese ideas and promoted a new Chinese culture based upon progressive, modern and western ideals like democracy and science. Arising out of disillusionment with traditional Chinese culture following the failure of the Republic of China to address China's problems, it featured scholars such as Chen Duxiu, Cai Yuanpei, Chen Hengzhe, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, He Dong, Qian Xuantong, Liu Bannong, Bing Xin, and Hu Shih, many classically educated, who led a revolt against Confucianism. The movement was launched by the writers of New Youth magazine, where these intellectuals promoted a new society based on unconstrained individuals rather than the traditional Confucian system. The movement promoted:
John King Fairbank was an American historian of China and United States–China relations. He taught at Harvard University from 1936 until his retirement in 1977. He is credited with building the field of China studies in the United States after World War II with his organizational ability, his mentorship of students, support of fellow scholars, and formulation of basic concepts to be tested.
Arif Dirlik was a Turkish-American historian who published on historiography and political ideology in modern China, as well as issues in modernity, globalization, and post-colonial criticism. Dirlik received a BSc in Electrical Engineering at Robert College, Istanbul in 1964 and a PhD in History at the University of Rochester in 1973.
Joseph Richmond Levenson was a scholar of Chinese history and Jane K. Sather Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Cambridge History of China is a series of books published by the Cambridge University Press (CUP) covering the history of China from the founding of the Qin dynasty in 221 BC to 1982 AD. The series was conceived by British historian Denis C. Twitchett and American historian John K. Fairbank in the late 1960s, and publication began in 1978. The complete History will contain 15 volumes made up of 17 books with volumes 5 and 9 consisting of two books each.
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Paul A. Cohen is Edith Stix Wasserman Professor of Asian Studies and History Emeritus at Wellesley College and Associate of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University. His research interests include 19th-20th century China; historical thought; American historiography on China.
Hosea Ballou Morse was a Canadian-born American British customs official and historian of China. He served in the Chinese Imperial Maritime Custom Service from 1874 to 1908, but is best known for his scholarly publications after his retirement, most prominently The International Relations of the Chinese Empire, a three volume chronicle of the relations of the Qing dynasty with Western countries, and The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834.
Mary Clabaugh Wright was an American historian and sinologist who specialized in the study of late Qing dynasty and early twentieth century China. She was the first woman to gain tenure in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale University, and subsequently the first woman to be appointed a full professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale.
Albert Feuerwerker was a historian of modern China specializing in economic history and long time member of the University of Michigan faculty. He was the president of the Association for Asian Studies in 1991.
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Evelyn Sakakida Rawski is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History of the University of Pittsburgh and a scholar in Chinese and Inner Asian history. She was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, United States of Japanese-American ancestry. She served as president of the Association for Asian Studies in 1995–1996.
Merle Goldman is an American historian and sinologist of modern China. She is Professor Emerita of History, Boston University, especially known for a series of studies on the role of intellectuals under the rule of Mao Zedong and on the possibilities for democracy and political rights in present-day China.
China's Response To The West: A Documentary Survey, 1839-1923 is a volume of historical documents translated from the Chinese, edited and with an introduction by Teng Ssu-yu and John King Fairbank, with E-tu Zen Sun, Chaoying Fang, and others. It was published in 1954 by Harvard University Press and reprinted several times in paperback. The documents are primarily essays and official writings on policy issues, starting with a memorial to the throne by Lin Zexu, a Qing dynasty official at the time of the Opium Wars, and finishing with selections from the writings of Liang Qichao and Sun Yat-sen in 1923, just after the New Culture Movement and the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.
Susan Louise Mann is an American historian of China best known for her work on the Qing dynasty and the role of women and gender in Chinese history. She was professor of History at University of California, Davis from 1989 until her retirement in 2010.
Liu Kwang-ching, who sometimes published under the name K.C. Liu, was a China-born American historian of China. He taught at University of California-Davis from 1963 until his retirement in 1993. He is best known for his scholarship in late-Qing history, astute bibliographical work, and edited volumes, including co-editing Cambridge History of China volumes.
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