Study On Sun Chengze’s Historiography

As one of the important politicians, historians, calligraphers, and collectors in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, Sun Chengze had experienced three regimes, which were the Ming, Dashun regime founded by Li Zicheng and Qing regimes. However, he has suffered too many setbacks on the officialdom in the Qing dynasty. Then he retired to write lots of historic books about the later Ming dynasty and to collect stone calligraphy and painting.Sun Chengze had many works, more than 40 kinds, involving lots of areas such as history, confucian classics, calligraphy appreciation. Such as historical works, Shan Shu, Chun Ming Meng Yu Lu,Tian Fu Guang Ji, Ji Fu Ren Wu Zhi, Yi Zhi Lu, Xue Dian,Si Chao Ren Wu Lve, Yuan Chao Dian Gu Bian Nian Kao, and so on, more than 10 kinds, which belong to the official class, biographical, political regulation, geography class. In his later years, he was addicted to researching on classics and speaking highly of Zhu Xi. He contacted with Wei Xiangshu and Xiong Cinv frequently. His political choices and complex political experiences, which made him become a controversial historical figure in the political ethical criticism of the troubled.Sun Chengze lived in the Ming-Qing, he was affected by the impact and motivation of the special times and political changes. Particularly, he emphasized the history of the time about the late Ming dynasty. The outing features of his history study are three points. First, he focused on the history of late Ming dynasty on historical accounts. He collected a lot of precious historical materials in a special way to preserve the history of the late Ming dynasty which through gathered imperial edicts, memorials to the throne, the capital gazettes and so on. Second, he paid attention to learn and found out the lessons from the history of the demise of the Ming dynasty. Sun Chengze was familiar with anecdotes, and wrote a lot of works about institutional system. Third, he studied on the characters of biographical history, and discussed the relationship of the talent with the national rise and fall.At the same time his history writings exposed the problem, such as packing historical data, poor planning, undemanding style. As his integrity has a little defect, he got the critical of the political ethics by the Qing dynasty. It made later scholars give an irrational evaluation on his historical writings. But the scholars thought highly of his historical writings in his times. And the writings afford the later people lesson, the value of historical records was not affected.