"The Last 120 Days of the Qing Dynasty" Published By Liu Jianghua: The Purpose Lies in the "Reconstruction of Historical Facts"

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Cover news reporter Teng Han

If you look at an important history from the length of time of more than 100 days, what will be the result? Liu Jianghua, a scholar of literature and history, tried to give an answer.

From the Wuchang Uprising on October 10, 1911, the curtain of the Xinhai Revolution was unveiled, to the abdication of the Qing Emperor on February 12, 1912, the end of the feudal monarchy, there were more than 120 days. The historical period depicted by Liu Jianghua is this period. Recently, on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, his book "The Last 120 Days of the Qing Dynasty" was launched by life, reading and xinzhi sanlian bookstore.

On July 7, in an interview with a cover reporter, Liu Jianghua described this history as "thrilling", in his view, these 120 days condensed the last memories of the 3,000-year feudal dynasty and 300-year Qing Empire falling apart.

120 days to condense the last memories of the Qing Dynasty

Based on first-hand historical materials such as the Qing Palace archives, "The Last 120 Days of the Qing Dynasty" follows the time chain of the Qing government's knowledge of the Wuchang Uprising, outlines the historical situation before its collapse, shows the true details of the Qing court's response to major historical events such as the Wuchang Uprising, Yuan Shikai's departure from the mountains, the North-South Peace Talks, and the abdication of the Qing Emperor, introduces the social conditions such as the military deployment under the Qing government's rule, the chaos in the official field, and the difficulty of breaking the economic difficulties, and there are also new historical references that have not been reached by predecessors, such as the amount of silver distributed by Longyu to the Qing Palace. The truth of the eight conditions for Yuan Shikai's re-emergence from the mountain, as well as the writing and revision of the Qing Emperor's abdication edict.

Talking about the background of the book's creation, Liu Jianghua pulled back 10 years, when he wrote a series of articles for the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution for the Beijing Youth Daily, where he worked, "The Year of Xinhai in the Archives of the Qing Palace", "I spent half a year to check the historical materials of the Xinhai Revolution at the First Historical Archive in China. Also in 2011, China's First Historical Archives published an 80-volume Compilation of Archives of the Xinhai Revolution in the Qing Palace, which comprehensively and intensively collected the Archives of the Qing Dynasty related to the Xinhai Revolution.

This made Liu Jianghua feel "very lucky", and in the following years, he used his spare time to browse and make relevant excerpts of these 80 volumes of "archives", especially more than 4,000 archives after the Wuchang Uprising, and referred to first-hand historical materials such as "The Complete Works of Yuan Shikai" to examine, rewrite and expand the series of articles previously written by himself on the "Xinhai Year in the Archives of the Qing Palace", which finally constituted the content of the eight key sections of "The Last 120 Days of the Qing Dynasty".

For the first time, the conditions for Yuan Shikai's exit from the mountain were disclosed

It is worth mentioning that a major feature of "The Last 120 Days of the Qing Dynasty" is to intercept the 126 days from the outbreak of the Wuchang Uprising to the abdication of the Qing Emperor as the research period, focusing on the Response of the Qing Court. The author meticulously divides the gains and losses of the Qing government after the Wuchang Uprising in military, financial, diplomatic, and central operation from multiple dimensions, and reproduces the historical process of the Qing court from hasty disposal to helpless abdication.

Pan Zhenping, head of the biography team of the State Qing History Compilation Committee, said in the preface to the book, "Taking the Wuchang Uprising to the abdication of the Qing Emperor as the time period, he described the countermeasures and means of the Qing Dynasty, an angle that was rarely used in previous writings. ”

In this regard, Liu Jianghua told reporters that the reason for choosing this time period and perspective is that one reason is that previous research has rarely been used, and another reason is that he hopes to pay attention to "how the rulers at that time responded", "In fact, this has also played a very key role in the development of subsequent events." ”

"So, from this point of view, one is to describe the social politics (state) of the Qing Dynasty in the last 120 days or so, as well as some economic chaos, the real life situation of people at that time, and also want to learn some lessons from it." Liu Jianghua said.

What makes Liu Jianghua feel quite rewarded is that when he compiled and examined the materials, he had many new discoveries and new thoughts, and he also wrote these into the book. For example, the outbreak of the Wuchang Uprising forced the Qing court to appoint Yuan Shikai, who had been idle at home for three years, as the governor of Huguang. Yuan shi has proposed the conditions for his comeback for this reason- many previous treatises have summarized it as the "six conditions" jointly conspired by Yuan and Xu Shichang, which seems to have become a consensus. In recent years, some scholars have rejected the Chen theory of Yuan Xu's conspiracy based on Yuan's own "eight abridgements", but they have not found the original text, including the latest publication of the Complete Works of Yuan Shikai. Liu Jianghua selected an appendix from the Zhu Batch's compromise collected in the "Compilation of Archives of the Xinhai Revolution in the Qing Palace", and after comparing it with a variety of related documents, concluded that it was the original abridgement of the Yuan clan that had been "missing" for a long time, and for the first time unveiled the lushan face of "Yuan Shikai's eight conditions for leaving the mountain". In this examination, Pan Zhenping commented that "this examination is reasonable."

The purpose is to "reconstruct historical facts"

In Liu Jianghua's view, some of the contents of "The Last 120 Days of the Qing Dynasty" may not be read in other books, and in Liu Jianghua's view, such a purpose lies in the "reconstruction of historical facts" - through the Qing Palace archives and other first-hand historical materials, through confirmation, falsification and combing, to restore the truth of the history of the Xinhai Revolution to the greatest extent.

"Some ideas are grand or beautiful, but the facts on which they are based are unreliable." Liu Jianghua said that the reconstruction of historical facts means that it is necessary to make in-depth examination of the details of historical events, and its attitude can be summarized as "it is better to be coarse and more detailed," and its method can be summarized as "seeking common ground and examining differences."

"In line with the attitude of 'it is better to be rough and more detailed', it is the purpose of this book to adopt the method of 'seeking common ground and considering differences', using first-hand historical materials such as the Qing Palace archives to restore the truth of the historical events of the Xinhai Revolution, and doing a little work on the reconstruction of the historical facts of the Xinhai Revolution." Although this kind of historical reconstruction is inevitably trivial, it is related to the grand purpose. Liu Jianghua wrote.

In addition, "The Last 120 Days of the Qing Dynasty" also examines social phenomena such as the soaring grain prices in Beijing after the outbreak of the Wuchang Uprising, the flight of powerful magnates to Tianjin, and the frequent runouts of financial institutions through the diaries of the people of the times, newspapers and magazines, etc., and pays attention to the lives of ordinary people in the big situation. The details cover many aspects of military, financial, diplomatic, and central operation at that time, incorporating the reader into the complicated and undulating past and restoring the real state of the entire Chinese society when the Qing Dynasty was "on the verge of death".

"You will find out from the diaries of many people at that time that the price of rice rose at that time, and then the Qing Dynasty paper money depreciated, the magnates deposited in foreign banks, and some officials ran to Tianjin to live in the concession... There is a panicked scene of the end times. ”

Liu Jianghua graduated from Peking University and received training in archaeology and journalism, "One of the major features of the archaeology major studied as an undergraduate is the use of field excavation materials to examine history." Liu Jianghua said that this previously acquired skill, decades later, once again gave the book "The Last 120 Days of the Qing Dynasty" a corresponding academic norm. Mr. Ma Zhongwen, a researcher at the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, commented that the author put "cumbersome" research and discussion in the "background", and strived to reproduce a clear historical scene, becoming a family statement, showing ordinary readers a refreshing and reasonable "truth".

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