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4 - The Forced Analogy

Control, Resistance, and World History in the 1950s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2021

Xin Fan
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Fredonia
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Summary

In the 1950s, the increasing pressure of state control had a subtle effect on the position of world history within the general discipline of history in China. World historians remained a vulnerable minority among the community of historians. This chapter examines why many historians chose to dismiss the universalism espoused by China’s world historians as a “forced analogy.” For many historians, this universalism was an unwelcome ideological Marxist intrusion into historical studies; moreover, world historians who were working closely with the state were not considered serious scholars. Owing to such attitudes, many historians neglected the significant developments that took place in world-historical studies at the time. Among these, as the chapter contends, were various attempts by world historians to place China within a world-historical narrative that is based on a non-Eurocentric schema. The debates between Lin Zhichun and Tong Shuye on the Asiatic mode of production are indicative of this alternative perspective. These developments planted the seeds for the future development of the field.

Type
Chapter
Information
World History and National Identity in China
The Twentieth Century
, pp. 128 - 152
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • The Forced Analogy
  • Xin Fan
  • Book: World History and National Identity in China
  • Online publication: 19 February 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108903653.005
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  • The Forced Analogy
  • Xin Fan
  • Book: World History and National Identity in China
  • Online publication: 19 February 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108903653.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Forced Analogy
  • Xin Fan
  • Book: World History and National Identity in China
  • Online publication: 19 February 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108903653.005
Available formats
×