13. Three Moments of Definition in Chinese Historiography
| Dublin Core | PKP Metadata Items | Metadata for this Document | |
| 1. | Title | Title of document | 13. Three Moments of Definition in Chinese Historiography - Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World |
| 2. | Creator | Author's name, affiliation, country | Glen Dudbridge†; University of Oxford; |
| 3. | Subject | Discipline(s) | Ancient History |
| 4. | Subject | Keyword(s) | ancient history; ancient civilization; historiography; cultural memory; historical consciousness; collective memory; cultural heritage; myth; ritual; Chinese historiography |
| 5. | Subject | Subject classification | Ancient Near Eastern Studies; Sinology; Biblical Studies; Classics; Maya Studies |
| 6. | Description | Abstract | The pre-imperial Chinese inhabited a universal space, but for centuries their feudal states did not feel bound to a universal chronology. Each maintained its own. The Qin empire imposed a single, central chronology to match its sole legitimate title to power, an example followed by its successor, the Han. Late in the first century BC, the relationship of official historians to centres of power, whether feudal or imperial, received a firm definition in the first imperial bibliography, which viewed and classified their work as canonical. The tradition of standard dynastic histories that developed later took a bureaucratic form in which all institutions, including chronology, reflected the legitimacy of the dynasty in question. Those simple values were disturbed at times when central power collapsed and dispersed among regional polities. Bibliographers, striving to maintain order and structure in written culture, moved imperial historiography outside the standard canonical class. Historians had to decide where among rival regional powers legitimacy was presumed to lie. When they chose to present a chronological narrative, that meant choosing which chronology to sanction. This chapter looks at particular examples to study what choices they made and what circumstances drove those choices. It also pinpoints three documents that illustrate the growing ironical distance between historians and their subject-matter. It concludes by observing that the universal model remained the historians’ default position in spite of the persisting chaos of regionalism and collapsing borders. |
| 7. | Publisher | Organizing agency, location | Equinox Publishing Ltd |
| 8. | Contributor | Sponsor(s) | |
| 9. | Date | (YYYY-MM-DD) | 10-Jun-2019 |
| 10. | Type | Status & genre | Peer-reviewed Article |
| 11. | Type | Type | |
| 12. | Format | File format | |
| 13. | Identifier | Uniform Resource Identifier | https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/books/article/view/33729 |
| 14. | Identifier | Digital Object Identifier | 10.1558/equinox.33729 |
| 15. | Source | Journal/conference title; vol., no. (year) | Equinox eBooks Publishing; Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World |
| 16. | Language | English=en | en |
| 18. | Coverage | Geo-spatial location, chronological period, research sample (gender, age, etc.) |
world, ancient world |
| 19. | Rights | Copyright and permissions | Copyright 2014 Equinox Publishing Ltd |