Since the Tang Dynasty, the official establishment of special agencies to compile and revise the history of the former dynasty in the genre of jichuan has become the practice of each dynasty to declare the orthodoxy of the dynasty. The Qianlong Emperor of the Qing Dynasty published together the twenty-four chronicles from the "History of History" to the "History of Ming" and named it "Twenty-Four Histories of King Ding", which shows that the Wenzhi martial arts of this dynasty are unparalleled. After the end of China's last dynasty, the Qing Dynasty, there is also a "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", which concludes the history of the Chinese Chronicle.
The "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" took fourteen years to complete, opened the Qing History Museum in 1914, began to be printed in 1927, and was once again listed as a banned book after its publication, until 1977, when the Zhonghua Bookstore published the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", so that this unfinished history has the best version of the contemporary era.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > Yuan Shikai, Yuan Shikai, and Zhang Zuolin supported Zhao Erxun and other Qing Dynasty remnants in revising the history of the dynasty</h1>
The Xinhai Revolution, which broke out in 1911, overthrew the rule of the Qing Dynasty and established the Republic of China. On February 12, 1912, Emperor Xuantong Abdicated, and yuan shikai, who had made a contribution to the abdication of the Qing Emperor, was inaugurated as the provisional president of the Republic of China in Beijing. Yuan Shikai was originally a major minister at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and at this time he held military power and did not sincerely support the republican system, in 1913 he became the first president of the Republic of China, and then changed the responsibility cabinet system to a presidential system, and the president could be re-elected for ten years. In Yuan Shikai's mind, his Beiyang government was equivalent to a new dynasty that arose on behalf of the Qing Dynasty, so he also had to inherit the tradition of the new dynasty yi dynasty revision history.
In 1914, Yuan Shikai issued a great presidential decree to set up a Qing History Museum to edit the history of the Qing Dynasty. The Qing History Museum was set up on the basis of the Former National History Museum in the Donghua Gate of the Forbidden City, with zhao Erxun, a famous former dynasty widow, as the curator, and hired more than 100 people such as general editor, editor, and assistant repair to form a history revision team. Zhao Erxun (1844-1927) was a Han army member of the Zhenglan Banner, a jinshi in the late years of the Tongzhi Dynasty, an official to the Governor of Hunan, the Governor of Sichuan, etc. During the Xinhai Revolution in 1911, Zhao Erxun, who was then the Governor of the Three Eastern Provinces, established a security association in Fengtian in an attempt to save the Qing Dynasty, which was about to collapse. After the founding of the Republic of China, Zhao Erxun lived in seclusion in Qingdao and declared that he was "not a courtier", until Yuan Shikai organized the revision of the Qing history and personally wrote a letter inviting him to come out of the mountains, and he went to Beijing to serve as the director of the Qing History Museum. Other important members of the Qing History Museum, such as Miao Quansun, Ke Shaochen, wu Tingxie, etc., were also relics of the Qing Dynasty. Yuan Shikai's revision of the history of the Qing Dynasty included the purpose of enlisting the remnants of the former dynasty to support the rule of the dynasty, so the Qing History Museum at this time, with the strong support of Yuan Shikai, was complete in scale, sufficient in funding, and complete in personnel.
In 1916, Yuan Shikai declared himself emperor, but soon after being opposed by all sides, the imperial system was abolished, and then he died of illness, so the Beiyang warlords fell apart, and the two major factions of the Anhui and direct families successively controlled the central government. At this time, on the one hand, the Beiyang government was in financial difficulties, and on the other hand, the successive warlords were not as enthusiastic as Yuan Shikai in compiling the history of the Qing Dynasty, so the Qing History Museum was insufficiently funded and fell into difficulties, and many editors also resigned and left the museum. Until 1926, the Qing History Museum had been established for more than ten years, and the manuscript of the "History of the Qing Dynasty" had begun to take shape, but due to the exhaustion of funds, it was unable to complete the editing, revision, approval, and printing.
The financial problem of the Qing History Museum was solved by Zhang Zuolin. In 1926, Zhang Zuolin, a warlord of the Feng clan and the "King of the Northeast", took control of the Jingjin region, and he was an old subordinate of Zhao Erxun. In his early years, Zhang Zuolin served as deputy director of the Military and Political Department of the Fengtian National Security Association, and was promoted by Zhao Erxun, so he always claimed to be a subordinate and subordinate in front of Zhao Erxun. Zhao Erxun wanted to apply for a grant from Zhang Zuolin and entrusted an intermediary to lobby, this intermediary was Yuan Jinjiao, who had served in the Qing History Museum and later defected to Zhang Zuolin. Zhang Zuolin was quite fond of his old boss Zhao Erxun and allocated money for the Qing History Museum, and Yuan Jinjiao also returned to the Qing History Museum because of the merit of begging for money and became the actual host. Yuan Jinjiao himself did not have time to manage specific affairs, and invited a relatively young and powerful Jin Liang (1878-1962) with experience in politics and history to enter the Qing History Museum and assist him in presiding over the final affairs of Qing history.
In 1927, the elderly and ill Zhao Erxun was worried that he would not see the "History of the Qing" published, and despite the opposition of some qing history museum fans, he adopted Yuan Jinjiao's suggestion and decided to publish it in the name of "Qing History Draft" without waiting for the completion of the examination and approval of the "History of Qing", and presided over the typesetting matters with Yuan Jinjiao. Zhao Erxun also knew that there were many problems in the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, so he said in the "Publication of The Epigraph" that "this draft is the precursor of the Great Vertebral Chakra, and is not regarded as a book".
The Draft History of the Qing Dynasty took 14 years to finally be completed, with a total of 536 volumes, starting from 1616 when the Qing Taizu Nurhaci was founded as Khan in Hetuala, and until the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912. The Draft History of the Qing Dynasty continues the 24th Historical Genre of the Chronicle, divided into four parts: The Chronicle, the Chronicle, the Table, and the Column Biography, including important historical figures, major historical events, and the canonical system during the 296 years of Qing rule, but there are also some changes in the style, reflecting the "great changes that have not occurred in thousands of years" experienced by the Qing Dynasty. For example, in the benji part, the last benji is named "Xuantong Emperor Benji", which does not conform to the convention of naming the emperor's temple number, because the last emperor Puyi is still alive after his abdication, and there is no temple number, so the era name "Xuantong" is named Benji. The chronicles include chapters on railways, ships, telegraphs, and postal posts, and diplomatic affairs with Russia, Britain, France, the United States, Germany, and Japan, all of which are unprecedented and pivotal themes in late Qing politics. In the column biography part, the newly created "Domain People Biography", "Fanbu Biography", "Subordinate National Biography", "Domain Ren Biography" is mainly a biography of scholars in the natural sciences of the Qing Dynasty, which shows the changes in the atmosphere of the times, and "Fanbu Biography" and "Subordinate State Biography" are related records about the surrounding ethnic areas under the control of the Qing Dynasty and the countries in East Asia that are radiated by Han culture.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > second, the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" printed by Jinliang Magazine was banned by the Nationalist Government in Nanjing</h1>
In September 1927, Zhao Erxun died, and Zhang Zuolin, grand marshal of the Army and Navy of the Beiyang government, issued the "Grand Marshal Instruction", with Ke Shaochen as the director of the Qing History Museum, but in fact, the work in the museum was controlled by Yuan Jinjiao, and the specific work such as proofreading and printing the manuscript of the Qing History Manuscript was taken care of by Jin Liang. Jin Liang was a thirty-year scholar of Guangxu, and after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, although he served in the government of the Republic of China, he was quite attached to the Qing Dynasty royal family, and he was very devoted to the compilation and revision of Qing history.
At the beginning of 1928, the Northern Expedition of the National Revolutionary Army, Zhang Zuolin planned to abandon Beijing and Tianjin and retreat to Guanwai, and naturally had no time to take care of the Qing History Museum. When the situation was turbulent, the Qing History Museum staff was scattered, and the manuscript was in danger of being destroyed by soldiers, and Jin Liang moved the boxes of "Qing History Manuscripts" back to his private residence and continued to engage in finishing work. During Jin Liang's home history revision, without the consent of others in the Qing History Museum, he made many changes to the original manuscript, such as adding biographies of the royalist Zhang Xun and Kang Youwei; revising the list of editors and revising the list of editors and compiling themselves as "general readers" to elevate their status; and also writing the "School Inscription". Before the Northern Expeditionary Army arrived in Beijing, Jin Liang printed 1,100 copies of the revised Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, transporting 400 of them to the northeast for distribution, leaving the remaining 700 in Beijing. The "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" issued in the northeast is the so-called "Guanwai One-time Edition".
In June 1928, the Nationalist Government of Nanjing occupied Beijing and took over the Palace Museum, which was taken over by the Forbidden City to check the History Museum. In the process of checking, other editors who had served in the Qing History Museum found that the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" printed in the magazine had been altered by Jin Liang without authorization, and they did not agree with Jin Liang's additions and deletions, especially with the list of editors who had been changed, so they exchanged and revised the original copy of the "Qing History Draft" left in Beijing, forming the so-called "Guannei Ben".
The Palace Museum also noticed the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty," and because it was "the chief editor of the Qing Dynasty, Zhao Erxun, and other editors," it suspected that there were political problems, so it organized some scholars of literature and history to go to the Forbidden City to hold a review meeting of the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty." After a number of scholars divided labor and review, it was believed that the compilers of the book were all qing dynasty widows, and their position was to praise the Qing Dynasty and denigrate the revolution, and there were many stylistic and historical errors. At the end of 1929, Yi Peiji, then president of the Palace Museum, submitted a letter to the Executive Yuan of the Nationalist Government, saying that there were nineteen political violations and content errors in the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", holding that "as the historian of the Republic of China, there are crimes of counter-revolution, anti-Republic of China, and contempt for martyrs,...... It is advisable to seal the rebellious Draft History of the Qing Dynasty forever and prohibit its circulation." According to the petition, the Nationalist government ordered that the printing of the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty be prohibited.
The Nanjing Nationalist Government's ban on the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty was mainly from a political point of view, but from an academic point of view, the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty is still valuable. Although the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" was compiled by many people and hastily promoted the book, there are problems in style and historical facts, but it has examined and selected a large number of documents and archives, sorted out and collected, so that scholars can understand the whole picture of the Qing Dynasty. Moreover, the materials used in the compilation and revision of the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", in addition to the Qing Dynasty records, living notes, music notes, biographies, etc. stored in the warehouse of the former National History Museum, as well as local atlases and private biographical inscriptions selected from various places, have historical value. Therefore, at that time, many scholars did not approve of the ban on the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" and wrote an article calling for the lifting of the ban. For example, Mr. Meng Sen, a professor in the Department of History of Peking University, said: "The Draft History of the Qing Dynasty is a large amount of historical materials, so it is very important to those who ruled the Qing Dynasty,...... What the historians must preserve for the hundredth century. Mr. Rong Geng of the Department of Chinese of Yenching University said: "If you want to know the reason for the founding of the Republic of China, you cannot abolish the two hundred and sixty-eight years of history of the Qing Dynasty without telling it, that is, you cannot abolish this hundred volumes of the "Qing History Draft" and not use it." ”
In fact, the ban promulgated by the National Government in Nanjing at that time did not really restrict the circulation of the "Qing History Draft", but stimulated the private people to steal the "Qing History Draft" for profit. In 1934, Jin Liang revised and issued the Guanwai primary version of the Qing History Manuscript in the northeast region, and this time the change reduced the whole book from 536 volumes to 529 volumes, becoming the "Guanwai Secondary Edition". Later, other versions of the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" appeared on the market, such as the photocopy of the Shanghai United Bookstore mainly inside and outside the Guan, which refers to the Guanwai version, and the Japanese lead print formed by the Japanese reprint of the Guanwai once.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > third, Zhonghua Bookstore points out the "Qing History Draft"</h1>
After the publication of the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", although it was once banned by the National Government in Nanjing, it was quite influential in the academic circles, and the historian Mr. Jin Yudi's "Notes on Reading the History of the Qing Dynasty" believed that the book "accumulated more than ten years of time, through the intentions of dozens of scholars, and there is a national history that can be based on ... It is very rich, the historical facts are prepared, and the canon includes a generation of canons, and the letter is enough to follow the history of the previous generation and hang on to yi. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, in order to inherit the historical and cultural heritage of the "Twenty-Four Histories", the Zhonghua Book Company, under the personal deployment of Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Zhou Enlai and the direct leadership of the relevant state departments, began the famous "Twenty-Four Histories" point school work in 1958, and in 1971 added the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" to the point school task.
The work of proofreading the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty was undertaken by qigong, Wang Zhonghan, Sun Yutang, Luo Ergang and other scholars who had their own expertise in the history, system, and culture of the Qing Dynasty. Among them, Mr. Wang Zhonghan (1913-2007) was a well-known expert in Qing history, who studied under Deng Zhicheng, Hong Ye, Gu Jiegang and other famous scholars, and was then a professor of the History Department of the Central Institute for Nationalities, and had published many treatises representing the highest level of Qing history research at that time. Mr. Qi Gong (1912-2005), the ninth grandson of the Yongzheng Emperor, was familiar with the Manchu system and the palm of the family, and he recalled: "The biggest difficulty in sorting out this book is two: First, before the Manchu Qing Entered the Customs, that is, in the early days of the Manchu Qing Dynasty - the Nurhaci era, many canonical systems were not systematic and clear, and many records were relatively simple and messy, which was very difficult to sort out; second, many titles in the history of the Qing Dynasty, such as personal names, place names, and official titles, and many different places from previous dynasties, especially the names of people, were quite complicated. Coupled with the chaotic changes in Qianlong later, many people were inaccurate and constantly pointed out as soon as they encountered this situation. But the so-called 'difficult people will not, the meeting is not difficult' these things for me are like saying home, easy as a palm, because I am still very familiar with this set of customs and historical evolution of the Manchus. ”
Punctuation twenty-four historical qing history manuscripts with the same person
The Zhonghua Book Company's "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" is based on the Guanwai Secondary Edition, and the Guanwai Secondary Edition and the Guannei Benjing Survey, and where the three books are different in title and content, there are notes and different texts. In the process of collation, the original book was also corrected, such as detachment, error, derivation, inversion, and variant characters, ancient characters, etc., unified the transliteration of personal names, place names, official names, and tribal names, and punctuation and segmentation were also carried out to facilitate reading. The "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" was originally published in separate volumes, distributed internally, and published in 1977, and later published all 48 volumes for distribution to the public, and has been printed 15 times so far. The Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, a qing dynasty history book that was once banned by the Nationalist government in Nanjing, has the best version in contemporary times that is regarded by the academic community. The Zhonghua Bookstore's "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" is matched with the "Twenty-Four Histories" of the Point School in terms of layout and binding, and some people also refer to it as the "Twenty-Five Histories" of the Point School. For example, Li Yihao, head of the leading planning group for the collation and publication of ancient books of the State Council, once mentioned in an article in guangming daily and history weekly that the Zhonghua Bookstore had punctuated and published the "Twenty-Five Histories", that is, the "Twenty-Four Histories" and the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty".
The inner text layout of the "Twenty-Four Histories" and the "Qing History Manuscript" are both traditional vertical arrangements, which are conducive to presenting the original appearance of ancient books, but there is a threshold for ordinary readers. In order to better adapt to the reading habits of contemporary people, zhonghua bookstore published the simplified characters of the "Twenty-Four Histories" around 2000, which was welcomed by the majority of readers; in 2020, we simplified and rearranged the last historical manuscript after the "Twenty-Four Histories", the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", and published a total of 12 volumes of simplified characters. As a result, the world's unparalleled written records of the Chinese nation, the "Twenty-Four Histories" and the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", which are uninterrupted for nearly four thousand years, have the most popular versions that are closest to the people.