Study On Selection Criteria Of Upright Officials In Formal History Books

As a special bureaucratic group in Chinese feudal society, the upright officials have outstanding achievements in local governance. They affect the development of the local economy, stabilize the social1security, and improve people’s living quality, as well as the establishment of moral standards. After Sima Qian first introduce the "collected biographies of upright official" component in Shi Ji, upright official has become the primary object of the ancient historian. Up to nineteen of twenty-four official history books had an individual chapter that documented upright officials of a certain period. However, due to the background of the period, the political status and historians’ different philosophy and belief of the history, the standard of selecting upright officials and how to evaluate their performance had slightly difference for different time period. By combining with research outcome of predecessors and the great scholars of the period, this thesis will present a thorough discussion about the upright officials selection criteria of different official history book based on the perspective of schools in historiography.This thesis is divided into five components.(1) a brief introduction of the upright official in the official history book, including the title change, interpretation change and the reason why there is no individual chapter for the upright official in the other five official history books. Additionally, this thesis will analysis and summarize the current monographs and articles status on upright official in order to form an overall understanding of the previous studies. Moreover, this thesis will present the brief description about scope and significance of the studies. Lastly, the research aims and the research techniques of this thesis.(2) Detailed literature review about the the selection criteria of "collected biographies of upright official" in nineteen official history book. Thid part will start with era of the selected historic figure and the author’s reasons for selection, literature can be categoried into eight catergories. Afterwards, thesis will preform preuse analysis on nineteen official history books, interpretation of the upright officials’good deeds at different standards and the proportion of the number of the people under different standard, which will provide an overview of the general information about the selected upright officials.(3) The third part summarized the changing in selection standards of upright officials’ characteristics in the vertical angle. It is notable that the most common standard include integrity, criticism, humanity and justice, beneficial, teaching, litigation, and almost all historians adopted up mention standards. In this part, the thesis will focus on the six primary criteria to analyze, it can be concluded that the upright official under the same category show different characteristics in different historical period.(4) The fourth part is to reflect on the selection standard of the "collected biographies of upright official". The detailed analysi will be based on the analysis of the second and third parts:(a) From a background of traditional Chinese culture,(b) the principle of being a official is patriotic and cherish you people,(c) Integrity, just, diligent and caution as the official ethics code,(d) Official and individual history book,(e) Different background of different time period and (f) philosophy of how to become a good official.(5) The fifth part is the comclusion.