Pastimes: Scholars, art dealers, and the making of modern Chinese historiography, 1870--1928

This dissertation analyzes the legacy of traditional Chinese antiquarianism in the twentieth century. Describing this branch of classical studies on the level of daily practice, Pastimes shows how modern scholars preserved customary research methodologies despite dramatic economic and social change in the early twentieth century. Antiquarians are described from the perspective of their analytical values, particularly empiricism and visual culture, as well as their techniques of collecting, depicting, and studying ancient artifacts. These techniques were redeployed in response to twentieth-century transformations, contributing to the rise of modern professions, including those of art dealer and university professor.; The heart of this story is a three-generation lineage of scholars, beginning with Wu Dacheng (1835–1902) and Luo Zhenyu (1866–1940), and culminating in Wang Guowei (1877–1927). Wu Dacheng's socially-based collecting practices, traditional paleographic methodologies, and pictorial albums of epigraphical rubbings contributed to an amateur research culture with its own vernacular concepts of empiricist judgment and objectivity. Then in 1899, a new class of materials was discovered: the 3,000-year-old oracle bone inscriptions, which enabled scholars to amend traditional histories based on primary sources. Wang Guowei and Luo Zhenyu began to concentrate on the developing discipline, which drew upon the customary research practices of scholars like Wu Dacheng.; The Republican Revolution of 1911, however, deprived Wang Guowei and Luo Zhenyu of their bureaucratic posts, professional identities, and incomes. In response, they transformed the hobby of antiquarianism into a career. They replaced traditional representations of artifacts in pictorial albums with photographs, and transformed the analysis of ancient inscriptions by referencing Western philosophy. In addition, they turned network-based collection into commercial art dealing, signaling an abrupt departure from Qing amateurism.; This intellectual entrepreneurship represented neither the complete preservation of a scholarly tradition, nor its wholesale demise. Wang Guowei and Luo Zhenyu took advantage of new professional opportunities in ways that enabled them to maintain indigenous analytical standards, while at the same time positioning their research as modern historical studies. Pastimes thus demonstrates how local systems of knowledge were preserved through conservative accommodations of modern social and economic structures.