Europe and the People without Historiography; or, Reflections on a Self-Inflicted Wound

Abstract

36Historically Speaking · March 2004 commonplaces about early China tell us, the "Confucians" ofthe pre-imperial era (thatis, before the beginning ofthe Han dynasty in 206 B.CE.) exerted negligible influence over theprinces oftheir day, whose pleasures ranto grandhunts, harems, spectacularbronze arrays of bells, enormous palaces and gardens, and military campaigns involving hundreds of thousands ofmen. Such power as the scholars and lovers oftradition enjoyed seemingly derived from their roles as ritual advisors for certain limited occasions, preservers oftraditions of knowledge about old practices and myths, and perhaps as transmitters and interpreters ofold texts. Their advice on statecraft did not necessarily carry much weight. Yet it would seem that in these impotent centuries theywere also developingthe accounts ofthe Spring and Autumn history thatwould, with the earlyimperial elevation ofConfucius and the body oftexts and thought associatedwith him, turn the pastinto a series oftestcases for the effectiveness ofritual diligence. It is difficult to predict where a serious engagementwith literaryand rhetorical analysisinthe studyofearlyChinese textswilllead. Atpresent, the attentionofscholarsinmyfield is focused on die numerous early texts that archaeological digs have recently brought to light, and the first response ofmanyhas been to attempt to fit these new finds into existing models of early Chinese intellectual history. To be sure, efforts to date these texts and to identifytheirlikelyauthors are indispensable. But one worries that with archaeologically recovered texts, as with the texts handed down tousinlongmanuscripttransmissions, a devotion to old models will obscure the classification -breakingcommonalities and truth-makingprocedures thatliteraryanalysis can bring to lightin the case ofhistoriography. Abetter procedure, in my view, would start from the recognition thatthe earlyChinese, as speakers and writers, knew full well that such matters as verbal beauty and generic excellence were notsuperfluousornaments, butthereal stuffof powerful representation, the artfulness that could carry the day. Ifit is a shame to lose die mirage ofhistorical accuracy that early Chinese historiographyhas seemed to project, the compensation is ample: in place ofslavish documentarians , we getstrategists, savvyrhetoricians , and bold thinkers—not the Chinese Other, any longer, but the Chinese sembhble. DavidSchaberg isassociateprofessor in the Department ofEastAsian Languagesand Cultures at UCLA. His A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography (Harvard University Press, 2002) won theAssociationforAsian Studiesi 2003 Levenson Prize. 1 These are only the two most influential historiographical texts to survive from the 1st millennium B.C.E. Others that deserve mention here include the Book ofDocuments (Shangsbu), which includes certain speeches thatmaydate to the 11th century, and the Bamboo Annals (Zhushujinian), which in manyrespects resembles the SpringsandAutumns. 2 Thestandard Chinese textoftheZuozhuanis Yang Bojun, Chunqiu Zuozhuan zbu (An Annotation ofthe Springs andAutumns and Zuo Tradition), 4 vols. (Rev. ed., Zhonghua shuju, 1990); see 677-78. The translation is myown. The onlycomplete English translation ofthe Zuozhuanis thatofJames Legge, The Ch'un Ts'ew with the Tso Chuen, first published in 1872 as part ofLegge's multi-volume The Chinese Classics. A monumental achievement in its own time, it is now dated. A new version, by Stephen Durrant, LiWaiyee, and myself, is nearingcompletion and will appear within two or three years. 3 Yang, Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu, 857-58. 4 The poem cited here and below is "Tu ju" or "Rabbit Snares," the seventh ofthe 305 included in the present text ofthe Odes. Europe and the People without Historiography; or, Reflections on a Self-Inflicted Wound Sanjay Subrahmanyam In this essay I want to call into question four widely held assumptions in that illdefined field of postcolonial studies. I certainly share some preoccupations and even assumptions with those with whom I wish to debate. Like them, I am concerned with the tenacious hold that a linear vision ofWestern history from ancient Greece to the United States ofClinton and Bush (with obligatory pit stops at Rome, the Carolingians , the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution) has on school and college curricula. I abhor the insidious assumption that to know Europe is effectively to know the world. Also, I am concerned that a recentwave ofimperial nostalgia , together with a market-friendly millenarianism, has given new life to the myth that the European colonial empires of the 19di and 20th centuries were really quite benign structures. We are now told insistentlythatthe British Empire noblybrought modernity to the heathens, and that we should all...