THE MAKING OF A SINO-MARXIST WORLD VIEW: WRITING WORLD HISTORY IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Serious study of world history is a twentieth century phenomenon that began to grow more rapidly in the post-World War II period. World history, as with other types of history, has a political bias, purpose, or potential political impact whether it is written in Little Rock, Kazan, or Chengdu. The importance of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the global community makes knowing their world view and how that view alters and evolves of great interest. This study investigates the origins and evolution of a Sino-Marxist world view by examining the impact of domestic and foreign policy changes on the writing, research, and interpretation of world history in the PRC since 1949.;The study is in two parts. Part one establishes the background of attempts to write world history mentioning briefly the problems faced in Western (mainly American) and Soviet historiography in adequately conceptualizing and writing world history. Chapter two looks at the impact of Soviet sources on Chinese world history, how political campaigns affected the careers of historians in the world history field, and exposes some of the major interpretative themes and problem areas in Chinese modern world history including the importance of revolution and the role of the masses in revolution, the threat of class restoration, the issue of Eurocentric focus and the problem of properly incorporating Chinese history into world history.;In light of the themes brought out in Chapter Two, the second part is devoted to an analysis of changing treatment and interpretations as reflected in three case studies: the 17;The main conclusion is that the revolutionist conceptualization that sees modern world history as a progression of revolutionary movements may prove unsuitable to legitimize the rule of the current Chinese leadership who stress the development of the productive forces as the motive force of history.;The sources for this study are world history textbooks from secondary and post-secondary school levels and Chinese educational and history journals. These were augmented by interviews with several Chinese scholars in the world history field.