Jonathan Spence’s Historical Narrative

Jonathan D.Spence is one of the most eminent sinologists in the USA.A prolific historian and writer at Yale,Spence writes more than a dozen books about Chinese history that reach a wide range of readers from scholars and students to the general public.His focus is mainly on the Ch’ing Dynasty.The themes of Spence’s works range from important figures,obscure people,significant events,cross-cultural encounters to general depictions of Chinese society and politics.His works reach a large audience both in China and overseas with The Chan’s Great Continent being the official textbook on modern China for many American undergraduate courses.It is necessary,therefore,to examine the historical narrative of a historian of such significance but the current literature on the topic is scarce.This paper attempts to fill the gap by examining Spence’s historical narrative through a close reading of God’s Chinese Son.Specifically,this research aims to answer to two questions:first,what are the features of Spence’s historical narrative as is demonstrated in God’s Chinese Sonl and second,what is his historical philosophy demonstrated through his narrative?Employing Hayden White’s theory on historiography,this research maintains that Spence’s historical narrative falls into three modes.He uses a Contextualist mode and a Satirical mode to narrate historical events and an Anarchist mode to illustrate his historical vision,which is most evident in his portrayal of historical figures.This thesis mainly consists of two parts.In the first part,it attempts to outline Spence’s narrative features by using White’s historiographical modes.Through a close reading of the text of God’s Chinese Son with focus on Spence’s narrative strategies including his choice of words,his arrangements of the events,the comparative length of words he devotes to different parts as well as the interrelationships he establishes,this thesis argues that Spence tends to turn to a three-layered Contextualist cause-effect relationship to explain why certain historical events happened.In an attempt to answer how events happened exactly as they did,Spence also uses a Satirical mode to reveal the fortuitous links among historical agents and their actions and explore how the fortuitous connection among actions could lead to unexpected outcomes.In addition,this thesis argues that Spence’s historical philosophy falls into the category of Anarchist,which is best represented by his narrative of historical figures.In the second part,based on the three features of Spence’s narrative,this thesis attempts to establish the relationship among the three modes by arguing that the Contextualist mode serves as the cause for the Satire mode,and that together the Contextualist and Satire lead to the Anarchist vision.