Abstract
This article aims to reveal the politicization of Marxist history in the founding period of modern China(PRC), by following Fan Wenlan’s academic trajectory. Fan’s academic career began with studying the Chinese traditional classics at the Peking university. He partook, however, in progressive movements in 1920s, with a close relation to the Communist party, and engaged in the anti-Japan resistance in 1930s. When political circumstances made the resistance impossible, he joined the Communist party in 1939 and moved into Yenan: It may be inferred that he agreed to shape a new model of the Chinese national identity, reexamining the anti-Japan resistance and the Chinese tradition. At that time, the Chinese communists needed their own historical narrative as an ideology to establish a new regime founded upon Mao’s authority. Fan’s Brief history of China served that purpose.BR Fan’s Brief History imitated the Soviet History, written upon the Stalinist line, which determined the Chinese official line. Accordingly, Fan based on the Five Species Social Form theory, denies the Asian production mode theory. He also accepted the doctrine of class conflicts in history and replaced the idea of stagnation of the past with the developmental point of view. Unlike the Stalinist line, however, he confined the history of China to Han Chinese, which originated from the Qin and Han empires. Fan’s approach left behind two tasks; How to forge an idea of people, including minorities in China, and how to overcome the prejudices against Asia presupposed in the doctrine of the Asiatic mode of production.
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