According to editor John Makeham, the series in which this conference volume appears addresses such questions as: “To what extent were new knowledge systems viewed as tools in the recovery of tradition rather than its abandonment?” (p. vii). Liang Qichao recognized the issue when he wrote in 1901 that “. . . China (Zhongguo) formerly never had any history,”2 and, in 1902, that “of all the disciplines that have recently come from the West, the only one already present in China is history” (p. 3). Twenty years later, Liang tried to resolve the contradiction with another oversimplification, writing: “In ancient China, all disciplines were but sub-branches of historiography” (p. 90).
In their introductory essay, “Making History Modern: The Transformation of Chinese Historiography, 1895–1937,” editors Moloughney and Zarrow try to square the circle by arguing that “it was not necessary to create a historical discipline; rather, through an engagement with...
