Recently, some readers have sent private letters asking why the Imperial History Manuscript is not called the "History of the Qing Dynasty", and it is also ranked outside the Twenty-Four Histories. This problem is more complicated, and if you talk about it in detail, I am afraid that I will not be able to finish it in a day. Due to the limited space, the imperial history can only give a rough idea.
The reason why the "Qing History Draft" has a "draft" character is mainly that there is a great controversy among scholars about this historical material, and the Republic of China government has not officially named it "Qing History", and the official has not carried out large-scale printing, which is in an undecided state, but usually the "Qing History Draft" is defined as the Twenty-five History.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" > the historical background of the revision of the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty</h1>
There is a basic principle in the revision of the history of all chinese dynasties, that is, the revision of the history of the previous generations by future generations can only be more objective and practical. The main practitioners of the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" are all the relics of the Qing Dynasty, in other words, this is the revision of the history of the Dynasty by the people of this dynasty, so it is inevitable that there is a suspicion of singing merit and praise.
In the third year of the Republic of China, the Beiyang government proposed to set up a Qing History Museum and start compiling the history of the Qing Dynasty. This period was rather special, Yuan Shikai was preparing to restore the imperial system, and he wanted to take the opportunity of repairing the history of the Qing Dynasty to recruit the former Qing elders and gain their support. Most of the history revision personnel hired by the Beiyang government were also former Qing dynasty elders, with Zhao Erxun as the curator and Yu Shimei and Liu Tingchen as deputy curators.
Readers who know anything about the history of the Qing Dynasty should know that one of these three people was the governor of the late Qing Dynasty, one was a waiter, and the other was Jingqing, and after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, they all worked as Yugong in Qingdao. However, Yu Shimei and Liu Tingshen knew that Yuan Shikai's purpose in revising the history of the Qing Dynasty was not simple, so they refused to obey their orders. Soon the Beiyang government opened the Qing History Museum inside the Donghua Gate, and Zhao Erxun presided over the work of the Qing History Museum for more than ten years.
At the beginning of the opening of the museum, the first thing was to agree on the style of Qing history. At that time, many scholars expressed their views in the journal, which can be roughly divided into two groups of ideas, a few people believe that the new historical genre should be quoted, and the majority advocate still using the old historical style.
After the final discussion, the genre of Qing history generally followed the "History of Ming", and the arrangement of the table of contents was: Benji XII, Zhi XIVI, Table 10, and Liechuan XV, of which a few contents were slightly changed.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="36" > the process of compiling the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty</h1>
The process of compiling the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty was full of twists and turns, mainly divided into three periods. In general, the first period is more chaotic, the second period is slightly clueless, and the third period is more neat.
1. Three to six years of the Republic of China
Zhao Erxun was a pure feudal bureaucrat, successively serving as the general of Shengjing, the governor of Sichuan, and the governor of the three eastern provinces, and he was still in power but did not have much achievement in historiography, and his academic works were not his strengths, especially he was not good at organization. Therefore, although there were many people hired at the beginning of the opening of the museum, as the director of the museum, he was always confused and never had the right direction.
In addition, he was not properly distributed according to the strengths of each person, and he did not know the method of classification and organization, and lacked a thorough organization and planning, so he fought separately, and there were no charters and regulations to speak of, like a scattered sand.
The work of the Qing History Museum in this period was not on the right track, and the personnel involved in the compilation were lazy to turn over the books and examine the evidence, and only added and deleted according to the biography of the national history. Although it took three years, the manuscripts were almost scrapped.
2. The republic of China from 6 to 15 years
After the disorganization of the previous stage, Zhao Erxun also learned a certain lesson. He proceeded to rectify the situation from two aspects: on the one hand, he dismissed some people without pay; on the other hand, more importantly, from summing up the chaos of the previous period, he rectified the organization and set up a charter, and the discipline, zhi, table, and biography respectively established special personnel to be responsible.
After some rectification, the Qing History Museum was soon on the right track, but the problem came again, and there were problems with the funds during this period. When Zhang Xun was restored, the Qing History Museum was closed for several months, and although it was restored, the salaries of the staff fell sharply, and even the salary arrears were not paid.
This period coincided with warlord melee, and the Donghua Gate was opened and closed. The so-called prosperous revision of history, obviously the political turmoil in this period is not suitable for the revision of history, the work of the Qing History Museum was forced to stop, the funds were not settled, and many librarians scattered, resulting in a pause in the overall situation.
3. The 15th to 16th years of the Republic of China
As the Northern Expedition occupied the provinces of the Yangtze River, advancing all the way, Beijing was in jeopardy. Zhao Erxun originally planned to spend three to five years to finalize the history of the Qing Dynasty. However, only half a year later, Zhao Erxun had to be forced by the situation, and on the grounds that "the teeth of the year are late, no matter how cautious, I am afraid that I will not be able to wait", he hastily decided to officially publish the history of the Qing Dynasty.
As soon as this news came out, it caused a fierce debate in the academic circles, and many scholars believed that there were many problems in the Qing history manuscript, mainly: the original manuscript was complicated and quite troublesome; there were too many citation notes on wild history, which were different from the official records, and many of the original manuscripts still needed to be further revised and rewritten; the calligraphy style examples had not yet been unified, and others such as the "Chronicle of Food Goods" also needed to be further corrected. Moreover, because no one read the whole manuscript, there is no way to know the repetitions, omissions, and contradictions.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="39" > the advent and controversy of the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty</h1>
It should be said that the revision of the history of the Qing Dynasty is still relatively hasty, there are still many problems, and it should not be printed and published in a short period of time. However, Zhao Erxun insisted on printing it, and he also said: "I can't publish the history, and I can't publish the history manuscript alone!" ”
Soon, Zhao Erxun became ill and became ill, and the intention of printing the Qing history manuscript became more and more serious. When Zhao Erxun died of illness in the same year, ke Shaochen acted as curator, premier Yuan Jinjiao issued the publication, and Jin Liang served as proofreader. However, Ke Shaochen was at odds with Yuan and Jin, and jin liang had personal goals, and he was impatient to publish the "Qing History Draft", and did not check it in detail at all, and secretly changed the historical draft, and sent it with prints.
In December 1927, the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" began to be released one after another, and after its publication, it was criticized many times. In 1929, the Palace Museum's "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" review committee proposed that the Nanjing Nationalist Government strictly prohibit its distribution, on the grounds that it opposed the Xinhai Revolution, despised the martyrs who sacrificed the Xinhai Revolution, opposed the Han nationality, and so on.
However, many scholars have also put forward opinions, believing that although the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty is not perfect, it also has certain reference value, and they advocate the revision of some obstacles, or advocate the issuance of a part of the chapter. In 1935, Wang Jingwei, president of the Executive Yuan of the Kuomintang government, made the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" very academically influential, and it would be published after it was officially surveyed. It was originally scheduled to be completed in eight years, but it was not resolved in the end.
In 1942, the Shanghai United Bookstore published the Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, making trade-offs between the main differences between the Guannei and Guanwai texts. In 1977, the Zhonghua Book Company took the Guanwai ben and the guan nei ben secondary edition as the working book, referred to the previous edition, punctuated and typeseted in sections, and corrected the obvious errors in them.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="41" > the overall evaluation of the Draft History of the Qing</h1> Dynasty
The editors of the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" originally hoped to revise this book into a huge work that "gathers the beauty of a generation of humanities and is a sign of the history of the thousand autumns" and "is the same as the previous twenty-four histories in view of infinity". However, contrary to expectations, it was actually an uncorrected "unfinished book", and had to imitate the example of the "Ming History Draft" and call its book "Qing History Draft".
Because the cultivators of the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" did not inherit the purpose of revising the history of the previous dynasties, but out of the plan to report the previous dynasty, they pretended to repair the history of the current dynasty, and contrary to the precedent of the revision of the history of the previous dynasties, they respected the Qing Room and suppressed the Republic of China, creating a precedent that was unique in the revision of history for the previous dynasty.
At the beginning of the opening of the museum, Zhao Erxun, Yu Shimei, etc., the opening of the Emperor Mingyi set the basic criteria for the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", that is, "I have been in the Qing Dynasty for more than two hundred years, Thick Ze Is deeply benevolent, recuperating, there is no prince who has lost morality, and there is no disobedient minister below, which is what the previous generations wanted." And the martial arts Heyi, the opening up of the territory, the culture and education of Changming, YiTang Shaohan. It is urgent to record it in a timely manner, which is enough to believe in the future. ”
In the process of compiling the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty," these former Qing dynasty elders all had the intention of repaying the "old king," and it was inevitable that in the process of revising history, there would be a situation of imprecision and objectivity, and the feelings of familying for the old king would be revealed in the words.