Research On "The Revolution Of History" In 1958

"The revolution of history" took place in the field of history with the Great Leap Forward Movement of 1958. The revolution produced significant influences on the history of China in the post-1949 era and played a leading role in the field for several decades. By examining the rise and fall of the revolution of history in the post-1949 period, this dissertation aims to demonstrate the main clue and basic characteristics of Marxist historiography and to reveal the delicate relationship between history and politics."The revolution of history" served as one of communist reforms of China's new regime in the post-1949 era. With the foundation of new political, cultural, and economic systems after 1949, the field of history also experienced a great transformation of methodology from plural paradigms to exclusive Marxism—that was, the Marxist historiography, in order to meet the social, political, and cultural requirements of the new regime and state. When the Great Leap Forward rose in 1958, "The revolution of history" also started in the field of history in China. This dissertation defines "The revolution of history" in a general sense. It consists of a series of movements, including the debate on "exalting the present and depreciating the past," the movements of criticizing the bourgeois historiography, "producing history of working people," "breaking the dynasty-centered historiography," "constructing class struggle-based history of people," the Great Leap Forward in history field, and so on. It began with a fierce debate on Chinese history that was known as "exalting the present and depreciating the past," reached its zenith but soon declined with the movement of "removing the while flag and raising the red flag." Some leading historians, including Guo Moruo, Fan Wenlan, and Jian Bozan, criticized some negative ways showed up in "the revolution of history," but in no way were they able to stop the movement. Rather, they were eventually criticized by the movement and some historians even died of the political criticism."The revolution of history" in 1958 was not an academic revolution as it literally suggested. It failed to highlight the positive characters of the improvement of academic research. Rather, it utilized a set of highly-programmed Marxist concepts to trim down the previous historiography. The most typical embodiment of this class struggle-centric approach was to write "history of people" which could not reflect the true face of Chinese history. The revolution was actually a result of the changes and mutual reactions of the Chinese society and historians'thought. Thus, it was no more than a general mirror of various political movements in the field of historical research. It came into being when historians had strong attention of putting their new revolutionary ideas into practice. In this sense, "the revolution of history" served as the best case for one to observe the pragmatic convention of Chinese historiography, although it showed out in Marxist way.The most critical point of "the revolution of history" proved the permeation of the class struggle-centric approach in the field of historical research, which took the political rules as the academic criterion for differentiating bourgeois historiography and Marxist historiography. The "left-wing" approach dominated everything in the field with the rise of class struggle ideology and was put on an equal footing with the Marxist historical materialism. Eventually, the revolution resulted in the serious politicalization of the Chinese historiography at that time. The "allusive history" was a case in point."The revolution of history" posed a very critical question about dealing with historiography. The revolution emphasized criticism on previous historiography and neglected to inherit some excellent methods of historical research. In the republican era, China's history had developed two paradigms for historical research. The first paradigm was to conduct research by extensively utilizing historical materials and the second one was to learn methodologies from western scholarship. However, in the post-1949 period the two paradigms were considerably abandoned and replaced by class struggle paradigm and historical materialism. The revolution wrongly criticized so-called "bourgeois" historians, which significantly weakened the research team in history and prevented young scholars from conducting historical research. By the same token, the revolution arguably put forward some new questions like "breaking the dynasty-centric history" through which the Chinese conventional historiography might have achieved some new ideas. Although these issues were late distorted by political movements, they still reminded us of the dynamic relationship between historical research and social transformation.Although "revolution of history" was more destructive than constructive for the Chinese historical research, it would be inappropriate to completely deny it as people. To some extent, it produced some positive effects on academic research. For example, modern Chinese research received unprecedentedly close attention during the period, which laid the foundation for better research in the following years."The revolution of history" exerted quite strong but negative influences on China's historical research. Rather, it served as a typical case for historians to examine the rise of Marxist historical materialism and historical methodology in post-1949 China. It reminded historians that it would be essential for a historian to handle the relationship between politics and historical research, and the one between "pursuing the truth" and "taking practice" in Chinese context. In the meanwhile, through this case one could well observe dynamic relations between China's politics and academy in Mao's China, a new state jubilantly growing up with political, social, and cultural movements. After 1979, the Chinese Marxist historiography made a critical examination of its own history in China in order to modify the directions in the new academic setting. By examining "the revolution of history" in 1958, this dissertation argues that the Marxist historiography should efficiently combine the Chinese conventional paradigm and cosmopolitan practice in order to meet the great intellectual challenge from within and outside China's border in the unprecedented globalization period.