Historian Dai Yi passed away today, saying that Qing history was his "spiritual support and the safe home of life"
Interface News Reporter | Pan Wenjie
Interface News Editor | Jiang Yan
Dai Yi, a historian, professor at the Chinese National University, honorary director of the Qing History Research Institute, and director of the "Qing History" compilation committee, died in Beijing this morning at the age of 98 due to ineffective medical treatment.
"He has been working, and there are always manuscripts of the Qing History Project on the table, there are many and thick manuscripts, and he is constantly reading and revising. This is the impression that first comes to mind when talking about Dai Yi, Zhang Hongjie, a researcher at the School of History of Chinese University. In the circle of friends released this afternoon, Zhang Hongjie also posted the last photo of himself and Dai Yi, saying that "the teacher's grace will last forever, and the grief is unspeakable".
The last photo of Zhang Hongjie and Dai Yi was released with the authorization of Zhang Hongjie.
In August 1948, Dai Yi, then a student of the Department of History at Peking University, was arrested for participating in the progressive student movement. He changed his name to Dai Yi for fear of affecting his family. "I 'escaped', so let's call Dai Yi. ”
Dai Yi has loved history since childhood, and in the article "My Academic Career", Dai Yi wrote: "My study follows the path of 'reverse retrospection', that is, from near to far, from the present to the ancient. At first, I started with the study of the history of the Party and the history of the revolution, and later on the study of modern Chinese history, and went back step by step. Eventually, he devoted himself to the study of Qing history.
In 1955, Dai Yi opened a course on modern Chinese history at Renmin University, which opened a precedent for him to systematically teach modern Chinese history in universities. In 1958, the first volume was published, which was Dai Yi's first masterpiece, and was well received by Wu Han and others, a senior historian. Later, at the invitation of Wu Han, 32-year-old Dai Yi became the youngest member of the editorial board of the best-selling book "A Small Series of Chinese History".
In 1966, the Central Propaganda Department decided to establish the Qing History Research Institute at the Chinese People's University, with Dai Yi and six others serving as members of the Qing History Compilation Committee. However, during the ten years of catastrophe, the establishment of the Qing History Institute was shelved. It was not until the re-establishment of the Chinese Renmin University in 1978 that the Qing History Institute was officially established. Because there was no systematic, complete and moderately long Qing history work in society at that time, Dai Yi began to preside over the compilation of the Concise History of the Qing Dynasty, which is a concise and concise work on Qing history, which clears up the clues of the development of the Qing Dynasty in the three centuries and explores the important issues in it. Dai Yi once recalled that his work was "very powerful, reading a lot of historical materials, researching and pondering many issues, and the first draft of the book was written collectively." I almost rewrote chapter by chapter, section by section, word by word, sentence by sentence. ”
A Concise History of the Qing Dynasty
Dai Yi
Chinese Renmin University Press 2018-1
In an interview with Interface Culture today, Zhang Hongjie said that Dai Yi is "a leader and organizer of the academic community". His editor-in-chief China and the World in the 18th Century (thinking about Qing history in the context of the world) and Biographies of Qing Dynasty Figures have had a great influence on the academic community. In August 2002, the state officially launched the landmark project of the new century - the compilation and revision of Qing history. At the age of 76, Dai Yi was appointed director of the Qing History Compilation Committee. Although this project has not yet been completely completed, a large number of translations and presentations of historical materials and research results from abroad have been carried out. By the end of 2020, the Qing History Project had published a total of 3,677 volumes of 246 titles and 3,677 volumes, including "Archive Series", "Literature Series", "Research Series" and "Compilation Series".
When talking about his impression of Dai Yi, Zhang Hongjie said that Dai Yi was the leader and general person in charge of the Qing History Project, which involved hundreds of people, and he was the final checker and finalizer in the end, "so the last decades of his life should be spent on the project." ”
In addition to compilation, Dai Yi himself wrote works such as "Emperor Qianlong and His Times". In Zhang Hongjie's view, "Emperor Qianlong and His Times" is an academic work, and at the same time, it is also very readable, involving political history, economic history, military history, psychology and other disciplines.
In Zhang Hongjie's eyes, Dai Yi is different from the stereotypical academic authority, "he does not have any sense of distance, he is not pretending to be approachable, but he has a very clear side of his personality, and even has a rare naivety", "(Dai Yi) has experienced so many ups and downs, and he can still retain such clarity on his body, which is relatively rare in my interactions with other people".
One of the problems that Dai Yi and Zhang Hongjie often discuss is that although academic research is very delicate and very deep, it lacks the vision of general history. He also encouraged me to write more works for the general reader, because history has been too specialized in recent years, and the results of historical research need to be popularized to the general reader. ”
Zhang Hongjie said that every time he visited Dai Yi, the latter was reading the manuscript of the Qing History Project, "working for hours every day, and there seemed to be no other entertainment." Dai Yi himself once said: "Qing history is my major, and I have dedicated my life's energy to it." It can be said that it sleeps in Si, eats in Si, learns in Si, and acts in Si. Qing history is the destination of my philosophy, the support of my spirit, and the home of life. ”
Reference: "Dai Yi's Statement: My Academic Career" https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_2607053