Despite Liang Qichao's influential and repeated lambasting of court-centered dynastic history over a century ago and despite the introduction of new historiographical methods during the twentieth century, dynasties still maintain their grip as the most common chronological framework in which to research and publish on Chinese history. In Japan, Taiwan, Europe, and the United States, Chinese history is pursued by members of dozens of academic societies specializing in the history of this or that dynasty. The history their members produce may not for the most part be court-centered, but the framework remains dynastic. Witness the arrangement by dynasty of the Cambridge History of China and Harvard's more recent six-volume history, the last volume of which is devoted to “the Great Qing.” And even within China itself, the form is about to be revived with the imminent appearance of a prodigious monument, the new, gargantuan dynastic history of the Qing (...
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