Wolfram Eberhard - A History of China

First published in 1950

Reprinted in 2005 by

Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

1960 and 1977 Wolfram Eberhard

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library

A History of China

ISBN 0-415-36148-6

China: History, Philosophy, Economics

CHINAS GESCHICHTE

first published in Switzerland 1948

Translated by E. W. Dickes

English edition first published 1950

by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd

Broadway House, Carter Lane

London, E.C.4

Reprinted 1952, 1955 and 1958

Second edition (revised by the author
and reset) 1960

Copyright Wolfram Eberhard 1960

No part of this book may be reproduced

in any form without permission from

the publisher, except for the quotation

of brief passages in criticism

Chapter V: MILITARY RULE (250200 B.C.)

(B) THE T'ANG DYNASTY (A.D. 613906)

(5) The empire of the Juchn in the north (11151234)

Histories of China have to be rewritten from time to time, and so I have attempted to rewrite some parts of my own History of China. There are several reasons for this. First, our knowledge of China's history has changed. Many new excavations have been made and many new studies have been produced which have corrected our former views. Perhaps we should admit that it is a bad moment to bring out a History of China, because many of the new excavations have not yet been described and analysed fully; many new texts have been found, but we do not have them yet in our hands and the necessary philological work on them is not yet done; many other documents will undoubtedly be found in the next years. Thus, in a couple of years, yet another revision will be necessary.

Second, we have changed. Changes in our own society have raised new questions and made us aware of new problems. A scholar, even a historian who studies Chinese history, is necessarily influenced by these new trends; he looks at his Chinese data in a way which differs from the way he studied the data formerly. To give a simple example only: when the position of women in our society is discussed daily and often passionately, the writer is naturally stimulated to look into the question: what was and what is the position of women in Chinese society? Or, when we discuss the problems of ecology in our society, we are stimulated to find out what attitudes Chinese had towards their environment.

Finally, the greater the role becomes which China plays in the world, the greater their pride in their achievements tends to become; the deeper roots Marxist-Maoist thinking develops, the more will publications from the People's Republic be permeated by nationalist and Maoist thoughts. And the more will our own public be influenced by publications which consciously or unconsciously incorporate such traits. I admit, nobody is completely without bias, but it may be important to attempt to show an interpretation of Chinese history which tries to avoid the official bias. Of course, both sides agree that the basic sources of Chinese history contain biases. It has been realized that the sources on which reliance has always been placed were not objective, but deliberately and emphatically represented a particular philosophy. The reports on the emperors and ministers of the earliest period are not historical at all, but served as examples of ideas of social policy or as glorifications of particular noble families. Myths such as we find to this day among China's neighbours were made into history; gods were made men and linked together by long family trees. We have been able to touch on all these things only briefly, and have had to dispense with any account of the complicated processes that have taken place here.