The Politics of the Past in Early China

History mattered to the political elite in ancient China. Leung explores why it was so important and to what end.

Vincent S. Leung (Author)

9781108443241, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 February 2020

214 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.1 cm, 0.35 kg

'The Politics of the Past in Early China is an elegantly written book, and Leung's pithy summations provide food for thought and allow readers to easily follow his claims … offering both sophisticated readings and highly approachable overviews, Leung has managed the difficult task of writing a bridge-spanning book that will interest specialists as well as students just starting to explore early historical rhetoric and, indeed, Warring States and early imperial thought more broadly. I look forward to Leung's further considerations of these and other topics.' Luke Habberstad, Journal of Chinese History

Why did the past matter so greatly in ancient China? How did it matter and to whom? This is an innovative study of how the past was implicated in the long transition of power in early China, as embodied by the decline of the late Bronze Age aristocracy and the rise of empires over the first millenium BCE. Engaging with a wide array of historical materials, including inscriptional records, excavated manuscripts, and transmitted texts, Vincent S. Leung moves beyond the historiographical canon and explores how the past was mobilized as powerful ideological capital in diverse political debate and ethical dialogue. Appeals to the past in early China were more than a matter of cultural attitude, Leung argues, but were rather deliberate ways of articulating political thought and challenging ethical debates during periods of crisis. Significant power lies in the retelling of the past.

Introduction
1. Time out of joint: uses of the past from the Western Zhou to the early warring states
2. A parenthetical past: deep history and anti-history in the late warring states
3. Specter of the past: bureaucratic amnesia under the Rise of the Qin Empire
4. The rehabilitation of antiquity in the early Han Empire
5. Sima Qian's critical past
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Asian history [HBJF], Historiography [HBAH]