Methodological Concepts

Histoire Croisée (鏈接的歷史)

1. Etymology

Histoire croisée is a historiographical method first proposed at the turn of the 21^st century by Bénédicte Zimmermann and Michael Werner.[1]  It is closely related to other historiographical concepts such as entangled history, transnational history, connected history, world history, transfer history, and shared history. In general, histoire croisée, ‘connected,’ ‘shared,’ and ‘entangled’ histories are juxtaposed as alternatives to ‘comparative’ and ‘transfer’  histories[2] Designed to overcome methodological nationalisms and one-sided historical narratives, histoire croisée and its related approaches stress the interconnectedness of societies, as well as the historicity not only of the objects of study, but also of the categories of analysis as such.

2. Conceptual transfers

There is not yet a standard translation for histoire croisée into Chinese. The term has been translated with various approximations of the literal meaning, including hengkua de lishi 橫跨的歷史,[3] jiaochashi 交叉史,[4] jiaocha lishi 交叉歷史,[5] zongheng jiaocuo de lishi 縱橫交錯的歷史,[6] and jiuchanshi 糾纏史.[7] Related concepts receive received similar translations. For example, Sanjay Subrahmanyan’s ‘connected histories’ has been translated as lianjieshi 聯結史, and Wolf Lepenie’s ‘entangled histories’ has been translated as jiujie de lishi 糾結的歷史.[8] While some publications keep histoire croisée and entangled history apart, others treat them as a unity. In a recent essay advocating the application of histoire croisée to the history of education, Luo Wei and Wang Chen have argued in favour of the translation jiuchanshi (using the verb jiuchan, ‘to entangle’) and against constructions with the verb jiaocha (‘to intersect, to crisscross’), stating that the Chinese term jiaocha tends to only connotate different lines intersecting each other, while jiuchan rather stresses the mutual interdependencies of the entangles objects [9]

3. Conceptual history

Since the late 2000s, a number of European works discussing histoire croisée have been translated into Chinese, many of which have been published in the Global History Review (Quanqiushi pinglun 全球史評論) published by the Global History Centre of Capital Normal University. These include articles by Dominic Sachsenmaier,[10] Georg Iggers,[11] and Helge Jordheim and Margrit Pernau.[12]

Since 2010s, some Chinese historians have also applied this approach in their respective fields of historical research, both as a programmatic research agenda as well as in concrete case studies. For example, calls for entangled approaches can be found in the history of  education[13] and historical media studies.[14] In concrete case studies, Li Xuetao has described the case of the man-of-letters Han Yu 韓愈 (768–824) as an ‘entangled history’ between the various intellectual traditions of China (Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism).[15] Thereby, he transferred the concept from its usual international application to the study of intellectual traditions which have often been conceived to stand in isolation from each other, but in reality show dense entanglements.

As to the possible future of the concept in China, Luo Wei and Wang Chen have given the following perspective in their particular field of history of education:

„As (Eugenia Roldán Vera) has written, transnational history of education is still an emerging and immature field of research, and methods such as ‘transfer studies’ as well as ‘entangled history’ are still continuously being advanced and reflected upon.[16] On the one hand, transnational history as such has not yet the fundamental status of a historiographical ‘paradigm,’ but is rather an open research approach and controversial space for research. On the other hand, transnational history of education has not yet produced a subfield with specialised researchers; most researchers come from already established fields of national, international, and comparative educational history. But what we can foresee is that the research on education from the point of view of transnational history can usefully complement the existing directions of comparative, international, and global history of education. In this way, we can also produce new understandings and methods of analysis for the specific forms of education as a phenomenon of human culture in different time periods and the transformations of its exchange.“

诚如薇拉所言，教育跨国史依然是一个新兴的、尚不成熟的研究领域，“转移研究”和“纠缠史”等方法，也依旧处于不断推进和反思之中。 一方面，跨国史本身尚不具有史学“范式”的根本地位，而是一个开放性的研究视角、论争性的研究空间；另一方面，教育跨国史尚未形成一个具有专门研究者的分支领域，研究者大多来自已经建制化的国别教育史领域、国际教育史和比较教育史领域。但可以预见的是，以跨国史为视角的教育研究可以对现有的比较教育史、国际教育史和教育全球史等方向作出有益的补充。借此，我们也能够对教育这一人类文化现象在不同时空中的具体形式及其交流转化产生新的理解与分析方式。[17]

[1] Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung. Der Ansatz der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen” [Comparison, transfer, entanglement. The histoire croisée approach and the transnational challenge], Geschichte und Gesellschaft 28 (2002): 607–636; Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Penser l’histoire croisée : entre empirie et réflexivité” [Thinking through histoire croisée: between empiricism and reflexivity], Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 58, no. 1 (2003): 7-36; Michael Werner und Bénédicte Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity,” History and Theory 45 (2006): 30–50.

[2] Werner and Zimmermann, “Beyond Comparison. Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity,” 30.

[3] Dominic Sachsenmaier, “Quanqiushi yu xifang shixue shijiao pipan” 全球史与西方史学视角批判, trans. Sun Yue 孙岳, Quanqiushi pinglun 全球史评论 2 (2009): 34.

[4] Lai Guodong 赖国栋, “Jin ershi nianlai ‘nianjian’ de quxiang” 近二十年来《年鉴》的趋向 [The Tendency of Annales in the Last Two Decades], Shixueshi yanjiu史学史研究 03 (2010): 67-74.

[5] He Ping 何平, “Bijiao shixue, wenhua bijiao he kua wenhua yanjiu” 比較史學、文化比較和跨文化研究 [Comparative history, cultural comparison and transcultural studies], Guizhou shehui kexue 贵州社会科学 262, no. 10 (2011): 66.

[6] Richard Drayton, “Diguozhuyi lishi shang de fan-Ou hezuo: weizhuang de lingtu gongguan 1500 nian zhijin” 帝国主义历史上的泛欧合作:伪装的领土共管(1500年至今) [Masked Condominia: Pan-European Collaboration in the History of Imperialism, c. 1500 to the Present], trans. He Meilan 何美兰, Quanqiushi pinglun 全球史评论 (2012): 317.

[7]  Luo Wei 罗炜 and Wang Chen 王晨, “ Jiuchang zhong faxian lishi – jiaoyushi zhong de wenhua zhuanyi yu kuaguo hudong 纠缠中发现历史——教育史中的文化转移与跨国互动 [Discovering History in Entanglement: Cultural Transfer and Transnational Interaction in the History of Education],” Qinghua daxue jiaoyu yanjiu清华大学教育研究 42, no. 02 (2021): 130-138.

[8] Dominic Sachsenmaier, “Quanqiushi yu xifang shixue shijiao pipan,”  34.

[9]Luo and Wang, “Jiuchang zhong faxian lishi – jiaoyushi zhong de wenhua zhuanyi yu kuaguo hudong,” 130.

[10] Dominic Sachsenmaier, “Global History and Critiques of Western Perspectives,” Comparative Education 42, no. 3 (2006), 451–70. Chinese translation as “Quanqiushi yu xifang shixue shijiao pipan,” 33–55.

[11] Georg G. Iggers, ‘Wenhuaji quanqiu shijiao Zhong di xiandai shixue bianzuan’文化际全球视角中的现代史学编纂 [Ideas on Writing a History of Modern Historiography from an Intercultural Global Perspective], trans. Sun Yue 孙岳, Quanqiushi pinglun 全球史评论 1 (2008), 171–85.

[12] Helge Jordheim,and Margrit Pernau, “Quanqiu gainianshi: wenming, jiaohua yu qinggan” 全球概念史:文明、教化与情感 [A global history of concepts: Civilization,civilizing and emotions], Guoji shehui kexue zazhi (Zhongwenban) 国际社会科学杂志(中文版) 04 (2015): 129-138+8+13.

[13] Luo and Wang, “Jiuchang zhong faxian lishi – jiaoyushi zhong de wenhua zhuanyi yu kuaguo hudong,” 130-138.

[14]  Guo Yi 郭毅, “Kuaguo chuameishi: Xifang xinwenshi yanjiu de “kuaguo zhuanxiang”  跨国传媒史：西方新闻史研究的“跨国转向”[Transnational Media History: The “Transnational Turn” in the Study of Western Journalism History],” Shanxi daxue xuebao (zhexue shehui kexue ban) 山西大学学报(哲学社会科学版) 44, no. 4 (2021): 37-43. https://doi.org/10.13451/j.cnki.shanxi.univ(phil.soc.).2021.04.006.

[15]  Li Xuetao 李雪涛, “Han Yu pi Fo jiqi dui Zhongguo wenhua de shenceng yingxiang 韩愈辟佛及其对中国文化的深层影响 [Han Yu’s Refutation to Buddhism and the Deep Impact on Chinese Culture],” Zhonghua wenhua luntan 中华文化论坛 03 (2022): 55.

[16] Eugenia Roldán Vera and Eckhardt Fuchs, “Introduction: The Transnational in the History of Education,” in The Transnational in the History of Education: Concepts and Perspectives, ed. Eckhardt Fuchs and Eugenia Roldán Vera (Cham: Springer, 2019), 1–47.

[17] Luo Wei and Wang Chen, “Jiuchang zhong faxian lishi – jiaoyushi zhong de wenhua zhuanyi yu kuaguo hudong,“ 130-138.

4. Sources/Literature

Drayton, Richard. “Diguozhuyi lishi shang de fan-Ou hezuo: weizhuang de lingtu gongguan 1500 nian zhijin” 帝国主义历史上的泛欧合作:伪装的领土共管(1500年至今) [Masked Condominia: Pan-European Collaboration in the History of Imperialism, c. 1500 to the Present]. Translated by He Meilan 何美兰. Quanqiushi pinglun 全球史评论 (2012): 308–30.

Guo Yi 郭毅: “Kuaguo chuameishi: Xifang xinwenshi yanjiu de ‘kuaguo zhuanxiang’”  跨国传媒史：西方新闻史研究的“跨国转向”[Transnational Media History: The “Transnational Turn” in the Study of Western Journalism History]. Shanxi daxue xuebao (zhexue shehui kexue ban) 山西大学学报(哲学社会科学版) 44, no. 4 (2021): 37-43. https://doi.org/10.13451/j.cnki.shanxi.univ(phil.soc.).2021.04.006.

He Ping 何平. “Bijiao shixue, wenhua bijiao he kua wenhua yanjiu” 比较史学、文化比较和跨文化研究[Comparative history, cultural comparison and transcultural studies]. Guizhou shehui kexue 贵州社会科学 262, no. 10 (2011): 62–67.

Iggers, Georg G. “Wenhuaji quanqiu shijiao Zhong di xiandai shixue bianzuan” 文化际全球视角中的现代史学编纂 [Ideas on Writing a History of Modern Historiography from an Intercultural Global Perspective]. Translated by Sun Yue 孙岳. Quanqiushi pinglun 全球史评论 1 (2008): 171–85.

Jordheim, Helge and Margrit Pernau. “Quanqiu gainianshi: wenming, jiaohua yu qinggan” 全球概念史:文明、教化与情感 [A global history of concepts: Civilization,civilizing and emotions]. Guoji shehui kexue zazhi (Zhongwenban) 国际社会科学杂志(中文版) 04 (2015): 129-138+8+13.

Lai Guodong 赖国栋. “Jin ershi nian lai ‘nianjian’ de quxiang” 近二十年来《年鉴》的趋向 [The Tendency of Annales in the Last Two Decades]. Shixueshi yanjiu史学史研究 03 (2010): 67-74.

Li Xuetao 李雪涛. “Han Yu pi Fo jiqi dui Zhongguo wenhua de shenceng yingxiang” 韩愈辟佛及其对中国文化的深层影响 [Han Yu’s Refutation to Buddhism and the Deep Impact on Chinese Culture]. Zhonghua wenhua luntan 中华文化论坛 03 (2022): 44-56+156.

Luo Wei 罗炜 and Wang Chen 王晨. “Jiuchang zhong faxian lishi – jiaoyushi zhong de wenhua zhuanyi yu kuaguo hudong” 纠缠中发现历史——教育史中的文化转移与跨国互动 [Discovering History in Entanglement: Cultural Transfer and Transnational Interaction in the History of Education]. Qinghua daxue jiaoyu yanjiu清华大学教育研究 42, no. 02 (2021): 130-138. https://doi.org/10.14138/j.1001-4519.2021.02.013009.

Roldán Vera, Eugenia and Eckhardt Fuchs. “Introduction: The Transnational in the History of Education.” In The Transnational in the History of Education: Concepts and Perspectives, edited by Eckhardt Fuchs and Eugenia Roldán Vera, 1–47. Cham: Springer, 2019.

Sachsenmaier, Dominic. “Global History and Critiques of Western Perspectives.” Comparative Education 42, no. 3 (2006), 451–70. Chinese translation as “Quanqiushi yu xifang shixue shijiao pipan” 全球史与西方史学视角批判. Translated by Sun Yue 孙岳. Quanqiushi pinglun 全球史评论 2 (2009): 33–55.

Werner, Michael, and Bénédicte Zimmermann. “Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung. Der Ansatz der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen“ [Comparison, transfer, entanglement. The histoire croisée approach and the transnational challenge]. Geschichte und Gesellschaft 28 (2002): 607–636.

———. “Penser l’histoire croisée : entre empirie et réflexivité” [Thinking through histoire croisée: between empiricism and reflexivity]. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 58, no. 1 (2003): 7-36.

———. “Beyond Comparison. Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity.” History and Theory 45 (2006): 30–50.

Exchanges (交流) and interactions (互動)

1. Etymology

The term ‘exchange’ (jiaoliu 交流) consists of the two lexemes jiao 交 (‘to cross, to meet, to submit’) and liu 流 (‘to flow; to drift’). The literal meaning of the compound in classical Chinese, a ‘convergence of rivers,’ is attested since the Eastern Han period (23–220). Later usage has developed a range of figurative meanings, such as tisi/tilei jiaojiu 涕泗（涕淚）交流 (‘tears and mucus flowing together’) standing for intensive weeping and chema jiaoliu 車馬交流 (‘horses and carriages intercrossing’) said of heavy traffic. At the turn of the 20^th century, it was applied to electricity in the sense of ‘alternating (current).’ This specialized use in physical science, which first appeared in Japan, was adopted across the Sinosphere and is still common today. By the early 1920s, the term came to be used in an increasing number of contexts denoting exchange, e.g. when the Eastern Miscellany (Dongfang zazhi 東方雜志) magazine spoke of ‘student exchanges between East and West’ (Dong-xi xuesheng zhi jiaoliu 東西學生之交流).[1] By the late 1920s and early 1930s, there was already talk of ‘cultural diffusions’ (wenhua jiaoliu 文化交流),[2] ‘exchanges between literature and philosophy’ (zhexue yu wenxue de jiaoliu 哲学与文学的交流),[3] of Afghanistan as ‘the intersection of English and Russian power’ (Ying-E shili di jiaoliudian 英俄势力的交流点),[4] and of the ‘exchange of love’ (ai de jiaoliu 愛的交流),[5] among others. In other words, jiaoliu has come to denote all kinds of exchange, interchange, and communication in Modern Standard Mandarin. This has become the term’s overwhelmingly dominant meaning.

The term ‘interactions’ (hudong 互動) consists of the two lexemes hu 互(‘mutually, reciprocally; crisscrossing, intertwining’) and dong 動 (‘to move, to act’). Attested since the Western Han period (206 BC–AD 9), it is commonly used in Modern Standard Mandarin to denote societal interactions.

2. Conceptual transfers

The term jiaoliu is common in Japanese (kōryū) and Korean (kyoryu 교류) and has been adopted into Vietnamese (giao lưu), where it competes with the native word trao đổi.

Among the more general uses of the term jiaoliu that developed in the 1920s and 1930s, the combination with ‘culture’ wenhua 文化 stands out, a concept that had also been recently reconfigured in its modern usage.[6] ‘Cultural exchanges’ became one of the central elements under which the new discoveries made by archaeologists from Western Europe, Russia, Japan, and the USA along the so-called ‘Silk Road’ were interpreted. The results of Pyotr Kuz’mich Kozlov’s (1863–1932) expedition to Mongolia and Tibet between 1923 and 1926 found much attention in China as well. The first mention of the concept in the widely read Eastern Miscellany occurred in a translation of a report about the expedition published in the Burlington Magazine in 1926 by Walter Perceval Yetts (1878–1957). Yetts had spoken twice of ‘cultural diffusions.’ [7] The translator, the historian Xiang Da 向達 (1900–1966), decided not to use a literal translation for ‘diffusion’, but rather ‘cultural exchanges/confluences’ (wenhua jiaoliu 文化交流), and used the concept to introduce the whole article.[8] Around 1930, Japanese usage also began to speak about the Middle Ages as ‘the era of Asian cultural exchanges’ and about ‘East-West cultural exchange.’[9] In 1936, Ishida Mikinosuke 石田幹之助 (1891–1974) published a book on ‘Exchanges of Chinese culture with Western culture,’ which was translated into Chinese in wartime Shanghai.[10] On this basis, jiaoliu/kōryū was established as a common historiographical concept in East Asia.

3. Conceptual history

When the idea of ‘cultural exchanges’ came up in the late 1920s, it was Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868–1940), President of Peking University between 1917–1919 and President of the Academia Sinica between 1928–1940, who promoted it as one of the key elements of his historical thought. ‘A fundamentally cosmopolitan thinker’ with teleological views on history,[11] Cai held that ‘evolution of human societies proceeded, not through natural selection and survival of the fittest, but through cultural interchange.’[12] By way of this method, it was not only possible to examine China’s historical development, but also to provide an optimistic outlook on the future. While China was still suffering from its political and historical weakness, the West had also shown a great number of faults in and after World War I; thus, for Cai, China not only had a lot to learn from the West, but it could also teach its supposedly tolerant and pacifist ways to the West, thus becoming a ‘magnanimous contributor in the process of cultural interchange.’[13]

After the founding of the PRC, the study of ‘foreign exchanges’ became one of the main sub-disciplines of history. In contrast with the history of ‘ethnic relations’ (minzu guanxishi 民族關係史), which examines conflicts and integration between the Han people and other peoples living in what is now Chinese territory, the history of ‘foreign exchanges’ studies cultural, economic and intellectual relations of the various Chinese polities with the broader world. In this way, the study of ‘sino-foreign exchanges’ remains mostly disciplinarily separated from the study of ‘world history,’ i.e. the history of foreign countries. Although ‘exchanges’ have remained an important pillar of historical research in China, more recent historians have recognized the limitations of such approaches and called for a more integrated study of ‘global history.’[14]

Furthermore, much research on ‘exchanges’ (jiaoliu) has tended to focus on unilateral ‘transfers’[15] and to diminishing the agency of some of the parties involved in the processes. At times, historians have stressed more inclusive ‘bilateral exchanges’ (shuangxiang jiaoliu 雙向交流) or ‘interactive exchanges’ (hudong jiaoliu 互動交流) to counter these problems.[16] More generally and more broadly, they suggest to construct a ‘history of interactions’ (hudongshi 互動史). Xia Jiguo 夏继果, a professor at Capital Normal University, maintains that global historical research consists of three pillars: Comparison, interaction, and construction. [17] According to Xia’s widely-discussed suggestion,[18] the study of ‘interactions’ means the investigation of connections between different geographical objects of research, meaning mainly nations and civilizations, but that is only a part of ‘global history.’ Rather, it should be combined with comparative methods to provide a basis for the construction of a common history for mankind which respects and preserves differences between civilizations while at the same time fostering mutual understanding and cooperation.[19] Whether in the form of ‘exchanges’ or ‘interactions,’ the study of connections between nations and civilizations remains a fundamental element of Chinese historiography.

4. Sources/Literature

‘Ai de jiaoliu’ 愛的交流 [Exchange of Love], Sheying huabao 攝影畫報 11, no. 41 (1935): 19.

Ciaudo, Joseph. ‘Is “New Culture” a proper translation of Xin wenhua? Some critical remarks on a long-overlooked dilemma.’ Asian Studies 9, no 2 (2021): 13-47.

Dong Hui 董輝. ‘Soliloquies: Zhexue yu wenxue de jiaoliu’ 沉默獨白——哲學與文學的交流 [Soliloquies: Exchanges between philosophy and literature]. Qinghua zhoukan 清華週刊42, no. 8 (1934): 88–89.

‘Dong-xi xuesheng zhi jiaoliu’ 東西學生之交流 [Student exchanges between East and West]. Dongfang zazhi 東方雜志 18, no. 15 (1921): 62–63.

Duiker, William J. ‘Ts’ai Yuan-P’ei and the Confucian Heritage.’ Modern Asian Studies 5, no. 3 (1971): 207–26.

Ishida Mikinosuke 石田幹之助. Shina bunka to seiyō bunka to no kōryū 支那文化と西方文化との交流 [Exchanges of Chinese culture with Western culture]. Iwanami kōza tōyō shichō 岩波講座東洋思潮 [Iwanami lectures on Oriental thought], vol. 3. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1936. Chinese translation as Zhong-Xi wenhua zhi jiaoliu 中西文化之交流. Translated by Zhang Hongying 張宏英. Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1941.

Jiang Mei 江湄. ‘Chongxin jiang “Zhongguoshi” zhi yu “shijieshi” zhi zhong: Quanqiushi yu Zhongguoshi yanjiu de xin fangxiang’ 重新将“中国史”置于“世界史”之中——全球史与中国史研究的新方向 [Re-positioning ‘Chinese history’ within ‘world history’: New directions for the study of global and Chinese history]. Quanqiu shi pinglun 全球史评论 7 (2014): 193–219.

Liu Wenming 刘文明. Quanqiushi lilun yu wenming hudong yanjiu 全球史理論與文明互動研究 [Research on Global History Theory and Intercivilizational Interactions]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2015.

Matsui Hitoshi 松井等. Tōyōshi gaisetsu 東洋史概説 [Overview over Oriental History]. Tokyo: Kyōritsusha shoten, 1930.

Mo Qing 墨卿. ‘Ying’e shili de jiaoliudian: Afuhan’ 英俄勢力的交流點：阿富汗 [The intersection of British and Russian power: Afghanistan]. Shehui yu jiaoyu 社會與教育6, no. 25 (1933): 370–73.

Xia Jiguo 夏继果. ‘Lijie quanqiushi’ 理解全球史 [Understanding global history]. Shixue lilun yanjiu 史学理论研究, no. 01 (2010): 43–52.

Xia Jiguo 夏继果. ‘Quanqiushi yanjiu: Hudong, bijiao, jianzhu’ 全球史研究: 互动、比较、建构 [Research on Global History: Interaction, Comparison, Construction]. Shixue lilun yanjiu 史学理论研究, no. 03 (2016): 118–25.

Xiang Da 向達. ‘Eguo Kesiluofu tanxiandui Waimeng kaogu faxian jilüe’ 俄國科斯洛夫探險隊外蒙考古發見紀略 [Record of the discoveries of Koslov’s archaeological expeditionary team in Outer Mongolia]. Dongfang zazhi 24, no. 15 (1927): 51–62.

Yetts, Walter Perceval. ‘Discoveries of the Kozlóv Expedition.’ The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 48, no. 277 (1926): 168–85.

Zarrow, Peter. ‘An Anatomy of the Utopian Impulse in Modern Chinese Political Thought, 1890–1940.’ In Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949, edited by Thomas Fröhlich and Axel Schneider, 165–205. Leiden: Brill, 2020.

Zhang Bo 張博. ‘Kuawenhua hudong yu quanqiushi yanjiu’ 跨文化互动与全球史研究 [Intercultural interaction and the Study of Global History]. MA., Shandong University, 2011.

[1] ‘Dong-xi xuesheng zhi jiaoliu’ 東西學生之交流 [Student exchanges between East and West], Dongfang zazhi 東方雜志 18, no. 15 (1921): 62–63.

[2] Xiang Da 向達, ‘Eguo Kesiluofu tanxiandui Waimeng kaogu faxian jilüe’ 俄國科斯洛夫探險隊外蒙考古發見紀略 [Record of the discoveries of Koslov’s archaeological expeditionary team in Outer Mongolia], Dongfang zazhi 24, no. 15 (1927): 51, 56.

[3] Dong Hui 董輝, ‘Soliloquies: Zhexue yu wenxue de jiaoliu’ 沉默獨白——哲學與文學的交流 [Soliloquies: Exchanges between philosophy and literature], Qinghua zhoukan 清華週刊42, no. 8 (1934).

[4] Mo Qing 墨卿, ‘Ying’e shili de jiaoliudian: Afuhan’ 英俄勢力的交流點：阿富汗 [The intersection of British and Russian power: Afghanistan]. Shehui yu jiaoyu 社會與教育6, no. 25 (1933).

[5] ‘Ai de jiaoliu’ 愛的交流, Sheying huabao 攝影畫報 11, no. 41 (1935).

[6] For the conceptual history of wenhua (‘culture,’ ‘civilization’) in early 20^th century China see Joseph Ciaudo, ‘Is “New Culture” a proper translation of Xin wenhua? Some critical remarks on a long-overlooked dilemma,’ Asian Studies 9, no 2 (2021): 13-47.

[7] Walter Perceval Yetts, ‘Discoveries of the Kozlóv Expedition,’ The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 48, no. 277 (1926): 175, 185.

[8] Xiang, ‘Eguo Kesiluofu tanxiandui Waimeng kaogu faxian jilüe,’ 51, 56, 60.

[9] Hitoshi Matsui 松井等, Tōyōshi gaisetsu 東洋史概説 [Overview over Oriental History] (Tokyo: Kyōritsusha shoten, 1930), 4–6, 193.

[10] Ishida Mikinosuke 石田幹之助, Shina bunka to seiyō bunka to no kōryū 支那文化と西方文化との交流 [Exchanges of Chinese culture with Western culture], Iwanami kōza tōyō shichō 岩波講座東洋思潮 [Iwanami lectures on Oriental thought], vol. 3 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1936). Chinese translation as Zhong-Xi wenhua zhi jiaoliu 中西文化之交流, transl. Zhang Hongying 張宏英 (Shanghai: Shangwu Yinshuguan, 1941).

[11] Peter Uarrow, ‘An Anatomy of the Utopian Impulse in Modern Chinese Political Thought, 1890–1940,’ in Chinese Visions of Progress, 1895 to 1949, ed. Thomas Fröhlich and Axel Schneider (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 175.

[12] William J. Duiker, ‘Ts’ai Yuan-P’ei and the Confucian Heritage,’ Modern Asian Studies 5, no. 3 (1971): 215.

[13] Ibid., 224.

[14] Jiang Mei 江湄, ‘Chongxin jiang “Zhongguoshi” zhi yu “shijieshi” zhi Zhong: Quanqiushi yu Zhongguoshi yanjiu de xin fangxiang’ 重新将“中国史”置于“世界史”之中——全球史与中国史研究的新方向 [Re-positioning ‘Chinese history’ within ‘world history’: New directions for the study of global and Chinese history], Quanqiu shi pinglun 全球史评论 7 (2014): 193–219.

[15] See the entry on ‘transfers’ in this handbook.

[16] Zhang Bo 張博, ‘Kuawenhua hudong yu quanqiushi yanjiu’ 跨文化互动与全球史研究 [Intercultural interaction and the Study of Global History] (MA., Shandong University, 2011).

[17] Xia Jiguo 夏继果, ‘Quanqiushi yanjiu: Hudong, bijiao, jianzhu’ 全球史研究: 互动、比较、建构 [Research on Global History: Interaction, Comparison, Construction], Shixue lilun yanjiu 史学理论研究, no. 03 (2016).

[18] Liu Wenming 刘文明, Quanqiushi lilun yu wenming hudong yanjiu 全球史理論與文明互動研究 [Research on Global History Theory and Intercivilizational Interactions] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2015).

[19] See also Xia Jiguo 夏继果, ‘Lijie quanqiushi’ 理解全球史 [Understanding global history], Shixue lilun yanjiu 史学理论研究, no. 01 (2010).

Transfers (遷移) and transplants (移植)

1. Etymology

Chinese historiography uses the word qianyi 遷移 (to move, to relocate) for ‘transfer.’ The verb, a compound that consists of two synonymous lexemes for ‘to move,’ is attested since antiquity and is part of the modern colloquial language. It is often associated with the physical human migration from one abode to the other, both in classical and in contemporary usage, but figurative uses have also been common since antiquity, often in the sense of the moving of time. For example, Sima Qian’s司馬遷 (145–86 BC) Records of the Historian (Shiji 史記) reports about the eclectic practices of the Daoist school: ‘As for their methods, they follow the (idea of) ‘great adaption’ from the teachings of Yin and Yang, take the best from the Confucians and Mohists, pick the essentials from the School of Names and Legism, move with the times, change with things.’[1]

The lexeme yi 移 ‘to move,’ when combined with the lexeme for ‘plant, to plant’ (zhi 植) results in the term yizhi 移植, ‘transplant.’ Attested in its literal sense since the 10^th century, the term has also gained figurative uses, namely as ‘to graft’ (experiences, institutions, laws) from one place on another, as well as in the medical sense.

2. Conceptual transfers

Both terms—qianyi and yizhi—are used in both their literal and their figurative meanings in Korean (transfer: ch’ŏni 천이; transplant: isik 이식) as well as in Japanese (transfer: sen’i; transplant: ishoku). Vietnamese prefers a different Sino-Vietnamese compound chuyển giao 轉交 for ‘transfer’ and the native cấy ‎ghép for ‘transplant.’

In their historiographical uses, both concepts have been adapted from and developed in dialogue with the corresponding Western approaches. In particular, John King Fairbank’s (1907–1991) ‘Western impact-Chinese response’ model, which, while only using the terminology of ‘transfer’ in passing, presupposes a set of unidirectional transfers of knowledge from West to China, has long shaped the understanding of modernization processes in China, despite being Eurocentric.[2] In the discipline of legal history, Alan Watson’s (1933–2018) notion of ‘legal transplants,’ has found much attention; the liberal professor He Weifang 賀衛方 (1960–) was one of the first to introduce it to China in 1989.[3]

3. Conceptual history

Precursors to the ‘transfer’ model of historiography can ultimately be found in the Qing period, when Chinese intellectuals and officials came to know the wide-scale adoption and adaptation of Western knowledge in China, which they were themselves promoting, as ‘eastward diffusion of Western knowledge’ (xixue dongjian 西學東漸).[4] The stark epistemological ruptures that followed the increased contact with the Euro-American world in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries necessitated new narratives about their origins. While many, in late Qing China, sought to construct connections with Chinese history,[5] others saw what effectively amounted to unilateral West-East transfers. After the fall of the Empire in 1912 and the ensuing New Culture and May Fourth Movements in the 1910s and early 1920s, the desire for a rupture with the past strengthened the historiographical search for the origin of modern phenomena in the West. In some cases, historians went beyond the crucial period of the turn of the 20^th century and extended the period of ‘eastward dissemination’ up to the first direct seaborne contacts with European missionaries in the 16^th century. A case in point is a short book by Jiang Daoyuan 江道源published in 1942 under the title A study of the eastward dissemination Western Learning in the 16th and 17th centuries.[6]

Transfer models gained much traction in the wake of the Reform and Opening Up policy pursued since the late 1970s. Both internal and external factors facilitated this historiographical trend. The country’s ‘opening’ engendered a stronger emphasis on horizontal connections beyond China’s national borders. Transfers became an important way to conceptualize such connections without diminishing the existence and importance of nations as basic units of historical analysis. Globally, the Cold War was a time of extreme economic and political power disparities, which modernization theory sought to explain by endogenous factors hampering the development of certain regions of the world as compared to the ‘successful’ Western modernization. John K. Fairbank’s application of such theories to China under the ‘impact–response’ model found immense attention—and was later harshly criticized—among sinologists and historians not only in the USA, but worldwide.[7] In China, for example, much of Wu Yujin’s 吳于廑 (1913-1993) work, as epitomized by his six-volume World History (Shijieshi 世界史) co-authored with Qi Shirong 齊世榮 (1926-2015) in 1994, shows strong elements of the ‘impact—response’ model.

Both in broader terms of cultural transfer and in specific usages concerning the ‘transplant’ of certain institutions and laws, transfer models offered a convenient way of explaining why certain teleologies did not work out the way they were expected. According to such explanations, the introduction of markers of modernity in China—constitutions, parliaments, law codes, notions of human rights, and many others—was not and could not be successful because they were all mere ‘imported goods’ (bolaipin 舶來品) grafted on Chinese soil via unilateral transfers without consideration for Chinese specificities.[8] These findings have been accompanied by fierce debates not only about history, but also about China’s future path, i.e. whether such ‘transplants,’ especially in the area of law, were even possible and desirable.[9] While a number of scholars argue that they are not, and that China must instead develop its own, independent, legal thought,[10] others argue in favor of legal transplants.[11] Liang Zhiping, a scholar who has dedicated much of his career to the study of the relationship between law and Chinese culture in a historical perspective, including a study on the history of late criminal law reforms,[12] tries to find a middle ground avoiding arguments of incommensurability on the one hand and of the Western law being the center whence ‘true law’ emanates on the other.[13]

Many studies continue to speak of  ‘dissemination’ and ‘transmission’ in relation to different forms of transfer processes, such as ‘knowledge transfer’ (zhishi qianyi 知識遷移) [14] and ‘cultural transfer’ (wenhua qianyi 文化遷移).[15] However, since the 2000s historians have increasingly come to see the problems of thinking only in terms of ‘transfers.’ Some historians have cautioned against over-emphasizing external transfers as factors of historical processes, neglecting ‘the inner drive behind intracommunity development.’[16] Historians have been especially critical of the focus on monodirectional transfers, increasingly critiquing them as not being sufficient for understanding the complexity of interactions in historical interactions, and for diminishing the agency of historical actors on the receiving side of transfers, who are found to quite actively decide what and how they want to adapt as part of the ‘transfer.’ It is now not uncommon to see arguments on the lines of:

Late Qing legal revision was part of a new era of codification in the world; it was a two-way interaction between China and the world rather than a one-dimensional transplant and reception, and it should be observed from the high standpoint of global history.

晚清修律处于世界法典编纂的新时代，是中国与世界的双向互动而不是单维度的移植继受，对其观察应该站在全球史的高度视野。[17]

It is against this background that other concepts and approaches, such as ‘exchanges’ and histoire croisée[18] have been gaining popularity. While the concept is not discarded as a whole, transfers are increasingly no longer seen as unidirectional ‘transmissions,’ but as part of a broader mesh of entanglements within global history. One of the most far-reaching versions of this idea is that of Li Xuetao 李雪涛, director of the Institute of Global History at Beijing Foreign Studies University. In a paper published in 2021, Li proposes to apply the concept of ‘perfect interpenetration’ (yuanrong 圓融; also translated as ‘consummate interfusion’) to global history.[19] ‘Complete interpenetration’ hails from the Flower Garland Sūtra (Avataṃsaka-sūtra; Chinese: Huayan-jing 華嚴經) and became the basis for the eponymous school of Buddhism.[20] According to the idea of ‘complete interpenetration,’

‘all existences are of themselves perfectly interfused. The absolute in the relative and vice versa; the identity of apparent contraries; perfect harmony among all differences, as in water and waves, affliction and enlightenment, transmigration and nirvana, or life and death, etc.; all are of the same fundamental nature, all are thusness, and thusness is all; waves are one with waves, and water is one with water, and water and wave are one.’[21]

According to Li, going from ‘separation’ (geli 隔離) to yuanrong would help build not only a more integrated view of global history devoid of the usual centrisms, but to overcome clashes of civilizations altogether.[22] In this view, elements pertaining to various cultures and nations merge into a unified whole, though their identity remains perceptible:

The aim of ‘translation’ is the integration (ronghui guantong) of Chinese and Western cultures, and the aim of ‘integration’ is to create an excellent (chaosheng) new form of civilization that transcends individual civilizations and to achieve a dynamic ‘complete interpenetration’ between them.

「翻译」的目的是中西文化之间的融会贯通，而非生搬硬套，「会通」的目的是创新出一种属于超越个体文明（超胜）的新文明形态，实现相互之间动态转化的「圆融」。[23]

Li’s suggestion stands in conformity with the increased efforts of Chinese intellectuals to harness indigenous concepts for historiography, while it also echoes universalist arguments that have gained prominence in China in the 2010s. However, given the risk that they pose of eroding the significance of the nation-state as basic unit of historical analysis, however, it remains to be seen whether such efforts will be accepted by wider Chinese historiography.

4. Sources/Literature

Amelung, Ivo [Ameilong 阿梅龍]. ‘Wan Qing keju zhidu yu xixue dongjian’ 晚清科舉制度與西學東漸 [The Chinese examination system and the eastward dissemination of Western knowledge]. In: Jindai Zhongguo xin zhishi de jiangou 近代中國新知識的建構, edited by Peter Zarrow and Zhang Zhejia, 205–30. Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, 2013.

Chen Xinyu 陈新宇. ‘Li-Fa lunzheng zhong de Gangtian Chaotailang yu He Shanxin: Quanqiushi shiye xia de Wan-Qing xiulü’ 礼法论争中的冈田朝太郎与赫善心——全球史视野下的晚清修律 [Okada Asatarō and Harald Gutherz in the debates about Rituals vs. Law: Late Qing legal reforms in a global historical perspective]. Huadong Zhengfa Daxue xuebao 华东政法大学学报 19, no. 4 (2016): 66-76.

Cohen, Paul A. Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

Cui Xuesen 崔學森. Qingting zhixian yu Mingzhi Riben 清廷制宪与明治日本 [The Qing Court’s constitution-making and Japan]. Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2020.

Gao Fang高放. Qingmo lixian shi 清末立憲史 [Constitutional history of the late Qing]. Beijing: Huawen chubanshe, 2012.

Jiang Daoyuan 江道源. Shiliu-qi shiji xixue dongjian kaolüe 十六七世紀西學東漸考略 [A study of the eastward dissemination of Western Learning in the 16^th and 17^th centuries]. Yanzhou: Baolu yinshuguan, 1942.

Lackner, Michael. ‘Ex Oriente Scientia? Reconsidering the Ideology of a Chinese Origin of Western Knowledge.’ Asia Major 21 (2008): 183–200.

Li Xuetao 李雪涛. ‘Cong bijiao zhexue dao kuawenhua zhexue: Yasibeiersi “Zhexue de shijieshi” zhi yiyi’ 从比较哲学到跨文化哲学：雅斯贝尔斯哲学的世界史之意义 [From comparative philosophy to transcultural philosophy: The meaning of Karl Jaspers’ World History of Philosophy]. Bijiao zhexue yu bijiao wenhua luncong 比较哲学与比较文化论丛 16 (2021): 19–28.

Liang Zhiping梁治平. Lijiao yu falü: Falü yizhi shidai de wenhua chongtu 禮教與法律：法律移槇時代的文化衝突 [Rites and law: Clashes of culture in an age of legal transplants]. Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 2013.

Liang Zhiping. ‘“Law and Traditional Culture.” Interview: Liang Zhiping Talks about Law and Traditional Culture.’ Interview by Li Li李礼, introduction and translation by David Ownby. Reading the China Dream. Accessed February 9, 2023. https://www.readingthechinadream.com/liang-zhiping-law-and-traditional-culture.html.

Liu, Lydia. Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.

Liu Xincheng. ‘The Global View of History in China.’ Journal of World History 23, no. 3 (2012): 491–511.

Moniz Bandeira, Egas. ‘From dynastic cycle to eternal dynasty: The Japanese notion of unbroken lineage in Chinese and Korean constitutionalist debates, 1890–1911.’ Global Intellectual History 7, no. 3 (2022): 517–32.

Muller, Charles. ‘Yuanrong’ 圓融 [perfect interprenetration]. Digital Dictionary of Buddhism. Accessed February 14, 2023. http://www.buddhism-dict.net/cgi-bin/xpr-ddb.pl?57.xml+id(%27b5713-878d%27).

Qi Sheng 齐盛. ‘Jindai Zhongguo xianfa de fazhan guiji’ 近代中国宪法的发展轨迹 [The development track of constitutional law in modern China]. Henan keji daxue xuebao (Shehui kexue ban) 河南科技大学学报（社会科学版） 29, no. 5 (2011): 93–97.

Seppänen, Samuli. ‘After Difference: A Meta-Comparative Study of Chinese Encounters with Foreign Comparative Law.’ The American Journal of Comparative Law 68, no. 1 (2020): 186–221.

Sima Qian 司馬遷. Shiji 史記 [Records of the historian]. 2^nd ed. 10 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982.

Teng, Ssu-Yu, and John King Fairbank, eds. China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey 1839–1923. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 1979.

Wagner, Rudolf G. A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing: Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Laozi with Critical Text and Translation. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003.

Watson, Alan. Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law. 2nd ed. Athens (USA): University of Georgia Press, 1993.

Watson, Alan [Alan Wosen 阿兰·沃森]. ‘Falü yizhi lun’ 法律移植论 [On legal transplants]. Translated by He Weifang 贺卫方. Bijiaofa yanjiu 比较法研究, no. 1 (1989): 61-65.

Wen Xin 温馨. Wenming pengzhuang yu fanshi zhuanbian: 19 shiji lai-Hua Deguoren yu Zhongguo 文明碰撞与范式转变：19世纪来华德国人与中国 [Clash of civilizations and paradigm shifts: China and the Germans coming to China in the 19^th-century]. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2018.

Xiong Yuezhi 熊月之. Xixue dongjian yu Wanqing shehui 西学东渐与晚清社会 [The eastward diffusion of Western learning and late Qing society]. Revised edition. Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue chubanshe, 2001.

Xu Aiguo 徐爱国. ‘Dongfang ren de “fazhi” xinjie’ 东方人的“法治”心结 [The Oriental ‘Rule of Law’ Complex]. Ai sixiang 爱思想. June 5, 2015. www.aisixiang.com/data/88874.html.

Yan Jiahong 严加红. Zhong-Xi wenhua lijie yu Zhongguo zhutiguan de xingsheng: Yi Qingmo chuyang youxue youli wei shizheng ge’an 中西文化理解与中国主体观的兴盛 : 以清末出洋游学游历为实证个案 [Sino-Western cultural understanding and the emergence of Chinese subjectivity: A concrete case study of the late Qing students and travelers abroad]. 2 ed. Changchun: Jilin chuban jituan, 2019.

Zhu Suli 朱苏力. ‘Shehuizhuyi fazhi linian yu ziben zhuyi fazhi sixiang de bijiao’ 社会主义法治理念与资本主义法治思想的比较 [A comparison between the socialist notion of rule of law and capitalist thought about rule of law]. Ai sixiang 爱思想. August 5, 2008. www.aisixiang.com/data/20031.html.

[1] The Chinese original reads: Qi wei shu ye, yin Yin-Yang zhi dashun, cai Ru Mo zhi shan, cuo Ming Fa zhi yao, yu shi qianyi, ying wu bianhua, … “其為術也，因陰陽之大順，采儒墨之善，撮名法之要，與時遷移，應物變化，……” Sima Qian 司馬遷, Shiji 史記 [Records of the historian], 2nd ed, (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982), 3289 (jüan 130). The term dashun 大順, ‘great adaption,’ is translated according to Rudolf G. Wagner’s interpretation of section 65.6 of Laozi’s Daodejing. Rudolf G. Wagner, A Chinese Reading of the Daodejing: Wang Bi’s Commentary on the Laozi with Critical Text and Translation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 346.

[2] Ssu-Yu Teng and John King Fairbank, eds. China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey 1839–1923, 7th ed. (Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 1979).

[3] Alan Watson, Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law, 2nd ed. (Athens, USA: University of Georgia Press, 1993); Alan Watson [Alan Wosen 阿兰·沃森], ‘Falü yizhi lun’ 法律移植论 [On legal transplants], trans. He Weifang 贺卫方, Bijiaofa yanjiu 比较法研究, no. 1 (1989): 61-65.

[4] On xixue dongjian in the late Qing see Xiong Yuezhi 熊月之, Xixue dongjian yu Wanqing shehui 西学东渐与晚清社会 [The eastward diffusion of Western learning and late Qing society], rev. ed. (Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue chubanshe, 2001); Ivo Amelung [Ameilong 阿梅龍], ‘Wan Qing keju zhidu yu xixue dongjian’ 晚清科舉制度與西學東漸 [The Chinese examination system and the eastward dissemination of Western knowledge], in Jindai Zhongguo xin zhishi de jiangou 近代中國新知識的建構, ed. Peter Zarrow and Zhang Zhejia (Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan, 2013), 205–30.

[5] E.g. Michael Lackner, ‘Ex Oriente Scientia? Reconsidering the Ideology of a Chinese Origin of Western Knowledge,’ Asia Major 21 (2008): 183-200; Egas Moniz Bandeira, ‘From dynastic cycle to eternal dynasty: The Japanese notion of unbroken lineage in Chinese and Korean constitutionalist debates, 1890–1911,’ Global Intellectual History 7, no. 3 (2022): 517–32.

[6] Jiang Daoyuan 江道源, Shiliu-qi shiji xixue dongjian kaolüe 十六七世紀西學東漸考略 [A study of the eastward dissemination of Western Learning in the 16th and 17th centuries] (Yanzhou: Baolu yinshuguan, 1942).

[7] Paul A. Cohen, Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Lydia Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995).

[8] For examples of works using such approaches see, e.g., Qi Sheng 齐盛, ‘Jindai Zhongguo xianfa de fazhan guiji’ 近代中国宪法的发展轨迹 [The development track of constitutional law in modern China], Henan keji daxue xuebao (Shehui kexue ban) 河南科技大学学报（社会科学版） 29, no. 5 (2011): 93–97; Gao Fang高放, Qingmo lixian shi 清末立憲史 [Constitutional history of the late Qing] (Beijing: Huawen chubanshe, 2012); Cui Xuesen 崔学森, Qingting zhixian yu Mingzhi Riben 清廷制宪与明治日本 [The Qing Court’s constitution-making and Japan] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2020).

[9] Samuli Seppänen, ‘After Difference: A Meta-Comparative Study of Chinese Encounters with Foreign Comparative Law,’ The American Journal of Comparative Law 68, no. 1 (2020): 186–221.

[10] Zhu Suli 朱苏力, ‘Shehuizhuyi fazhi linian yu ziben zhuyi fazhi sixiang de bijiao’ 社会主义法治理念与资本主义法治思想的比较 [A comparison between the socialist notion of rule of law and capitalist thought about rule of law], Ai sixiang 爱思想,  August 5, 2008, www.aisixiang.com/data/20031.html.

[11] Xu Aiguo 徐爱国, ‘Dongfang ren de “fazhi” xinjie’ 东方人的“法治”心结 [The Oriental ‘Rule of Law’ Complex], Ai sixiang 爱思想,  June 5, 2015, www.aisixiang.com/data/88874.html.

[12] Liang Zhiping梁治平, Lijiao yu falü: Falü yizhi shidai de wenhua chongtu 禮教與法律：法律移槇時代的文化衝突 [Rites and law: Clashes of culture in an age of legal transplants] (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 2013).

[13] Liang Zhiping, ‘“Law and Traditional Culture.” Interview: Liang Zhiping Talks about Law and Traditional Culture,’ interview by Li Li李礼, intr. and trans. by David Ownby, Reading the China Dream, accessed February 9, 2023, https://www.readingthechinadream.com/liang-zhiping-law-and-traditional-culture.html.

[14] E.g. Wen Xin 温馨, Wenming pengzhuang yu fanshi zhuanbian: 19 shiji lai-Hua Deguoren yu Zhongguo 文明碰撞与范式转变：19世纪来华德国人与中国 [Clash of civilizations and paradigm shifts: China and the Germans coming to China in the 19th-century] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2018).

[15] Yan Jiahong 严加红, Zhong-Xi wenhua lijie yu Zhongguo zhutiguan de xingsheng: Yi Qingmo chuyang youxue youli wei shizheng ge’an 中西文化理解与中国主体观的兴盛 : 以清末出洋游学游历为实证个案 [Sino-Western cultural understanding and the emergence of Chinese subjectivity: A concrete case study of the late Qing students and travelers abroad], 2 ed. (Changchun: Jilin chuban jituan, 2019). The study combines ‘cultural transfers’ with ‘cultural interactions’ (wenhua jiaohu 文化交互).

[16] Liu Xincheng, ‘The Global View of History in China,’ Journal of World History 23, no. 3 (2012): 506.

[17] Chen Xinyu 陈新宇, ‘Li-Fa lunzheng zhong de Gangtian Chaotailang yu He Shanxin: Quanqiushi shiye xia de Wan-Qing xiulü’ 礼法论争中的冈田朝太郎与赫善心——全球史视野下的晚清修律 [Okada Asatarō and Harald Gutherz in the debates about Rituals vs. Law: Late Qing legal reforms in a global historical perspective], Huadong Zhengfa Daxue xuebao 华东政法大学学报 19, no. 4 (2016): 76.

[18] See the entry in this handbook, https://www.writing-history-with-china.phil.fau.de/project/keywords-in-global-history-writing/#collapse_1.

[19] Li Xuetao 李雪涛, ‘Cong bijiao zhexue dao kuawenhua zhexue: Yasibeiersi “Zhexue de shijieshi” zhi yiyi’ 从比较哲学到跨文化哲学：雅斯贝尔斯哲学的世界史之意义 [From comparative philosophy to transcultural philosophy: The meaning of Karl Jaspers’ World History of Philosophy], Bijiao zhexue yu bijiao wenhua luncong 比较哲学与比较文化论丛 16 (2021): 19–28.

[20] Charles Muller, ‘Yuanrong’ 圓融 [perfect interprenetration], Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, accessed  February 14, 2023, http://www.buddhism-dict.net/cgi-bin/xpr-ddb.pl?57.xml+id(%27b5713-878d%27).

[21] Ibid.

[22] Li, ‘Cong bijiao zhexue dao kuawenhua zhexue,’ 25–27.

[23] Ibid., 28.

Comparative history (bijiaoshi 比較史)

1. Etymology

‘Comparative history’ is rendered in Chinese by the term bijiao lishixue 比較歷史學or contractions of it (bijiao shixue 比較史學; bijiaoshi 比較史). Consisting of the words for ‘compare’ (bijiao 比較) and ‘history’ (歷史), the expression is etymologically analogous to its English counterpart. The term bijiao is attested since at least the 4^th century BC in the orthography比校, consisting of the two lexemes for ‘to compare, to approve, to fit’ and ‘to examine.’ The modern character usage is attested since the 6^th century.

2. Conceptual transfers

The term for ‘comparative history’ occurs in the same forms as in Chinese in Japanese (hikaku rekishigaku) and Korean (pigyo yŏksahak 비교 역사학), being part of the Sinitic-derived conceptual vocabulary shared between the three languages. It is not shared with Vietnamese, where a native word for ‘comparison’ is used in the equivalent expression (lịch sử so sánh).

3. Conceptual history

The idea of comparing histories goes back to the very emergence of a modern historiography in late imperial China. At the turn of the 20^th century, the rapid increase of knowledge about the wider world automatically led historians to seek parallels with Chinese equivalents. Comparative approaches were introduced in various disciplines, e.g. legal comparisons and comparative constitutional law.[1] In historiography, Japanese scholars led efforts to reconfigure Chinese history according to periodization schemes adapted from European histories since the mid-Meiji period, automatically leading to an at least implicit comparison on the world-historical scale. Such efforts also found large interest in China. Naka Michiyo’s 那珂通世 (1851–1908) multi-volume Comprehensive History of China (Shina tsūshi 支那通史), which applied the tripartite distinction ancient—medieval—modern to China, was published in Japan between 1888 and 1890, and translated into Chinese twice in 1899 and 1902.[2] Chinese scholars of the period, namely Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), also thought and wrote about such issues of matching periodization schemes between China, Japan and Europe, not  least with the aim to explain why China appeared to ‘lag behind’ in its modernization and offer solutions on how to catch up again. On a microscopic level, Chinese historians created detailed comparisons between specific historical actors and events. For example, in 1903, scholar Huang Shisu 黃式蘇 (1874–1947) published articles in the New World Academic Journal (Xin shijie xuebao 新世界學報) comparing the legendary Emperors Yao 堯 and Shun 舜 with George Washington (1732–1799) and General Xiang Yu 項羽 (232–202 BC) with Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821).[3]

Comparisons have been popular objects of research in China ever since. Republican historiography undertaken by historians of various political affiliations saw the intensification of such efforts in applying Western historiographical models to China, and an expansion of concrete comparisons between China and other regions of the world. For example, Li Dazhao 李大釗 (1889–1927) was the first historians to introduce Marxist historiography to China, among other texts, with a comparative study on the French and Russian Revolutions published in 1918.[4] His fellow Marxist historian Hou Wailu 侯外廬(1903–1987), who later was the lead editor of the monumental multi-volume General History of Chinese Thought (Zhongguo sixiang tongshi 中國思想通史, 5 vols., 1947–1963),[5] proposed a comparative approach by which a comparison with the West could illuminate the specificities of Chinese history.[6] Comparative methodology was also increasingly invoked for various specialized fields of inquiry, including historical sociology,[7] archeology,[8] and history of religions.[9] Referring to the study of material objects of ancient China, the journal Popular Science (Kexue huabao 科學畫報) argued that ancient Chinese history could not be fully understood within the borders of China itself and asserted that ‘the historical method and the comparative method are inseparable’ (lishifa yu bijiaofa shi fen bu kai de 歷時法與比較法師分不開的).[10]

The onset of the Reform and Opening Policy in the 1980s meant a weakening of the historical-materialist Marxist perspective on history that had absolutely been dominant since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, and accordingly a diversification of historiographical approached. Research approaches and questions developed in Western countries found their way into Chinese historiography and were widely discussed. This was particularly the case for the ‘Needham Question,’ which stood behind the seminal multi-volume work Science and Civilisation in China published since 1954: ‘What were the inhibiting factors in Chinese civilisation which prevented a rise in modern science in Asia analogous to that which took place in Europe from the 16^th century onwards, and which proved one of the basic factors in the moulding of modern world order?’[11] Combined with the modernization theories popular during the Cold War, the ‘Needham Question’ led to comparative research in a wide range of historical sub-disciplines and elicited a gamut of diverse answers.

Since ‘comparative history’ takes distinct nations as the basic object of analysis, trying to cope with concrete contacts between them, but without dissolving them altogether, it enabled—and still enables—Chinese historians to engage with the world in an era of ‘reform and opening’ without giving up the subjectivity of the Chinese nation. Historian Wu Huaiqi 吳懷祺 (1938–2020) explained in his seminal History of Chinese Historical Thought (Zhongguo shixue sixiang shi 中國史學思想史, 1996):

… the study in ideas of history shall be based on the national historiography. Scholars in this field shall aspire to explore the characteristics of national historiography and the national historical thinking in particular. In doing so, the basic characters of national history will be discovered. It is not a historical work in general. The comparative thinking and practice are indispensable to such an aspirational effort. In fact, it is in the comparative context that the Chinese characteristics are found.[12]

In this context, ‘comparative history’ became one of the main approaches in the new landscape of historical research, as attested by a considerable number of books published since the 1980s both on the theory of comparative history as well as on specific historical comparisons.[13] But not only that. According to Wu, the comparative method was also essential in a globalizing word. It would, thus, become an essential basis of the field of global history, which emerged in the late 2000s:

the comparative study is indispensable to the globalized history. It is in the comparative study that the characteristics of Chinese national history, the historic mission of Chinese historians and the situation wherein the Chinese historians are living are clearly perceived. Therein lies exactly the importance of a comparative study.[14]

Hence, the already high level of interest for ‘comparative history’ saw another sharp increase in the 2000s and 2010s. A search in the database of the National Index of Periodicals (Quanguo baokan suoyin 全國報刊索引) reveals 107 items containing bijiao shixue 比較史學 (comparative historiography) in the title in the decade from 1990 to 1999, and 1012 items between 2000 and 2009, while the number of items containing bijiao lishi 比較歷史 (comparative history) rose from 499 to 9852.

Nonetheless, in spite of the strong research activity in comparative history, the historiographical method has not been free of sometimes sharp controversies, as well as of attempts to go beyond mere comparisons to deeper studies of translocal, transnational, and transregional interactions, entanglements, and connectivities. The most vigorous debates on comparisons have been led around a reverberation of the ‘Needham Question’ in economic history. In 2001, Kenneth Pomeranz published his book The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, wherein he asked the question: ‘Why did sustained industrial growth begin in Northwest Europe, despite surprising similarities between advanced areas of Europe and East Asia?’[15] The book has provoked immense debates in China and abroad, and inspired a number of other books on the same ‘great divergence’ theme.[16] ‘Divergence’ (fenliu 分流) and its antonym, ‘convergence’ (heliu 合流), became the analytical lenses of innumerous studies comparing the history of economic development and industrialization in China and the West.[17] While some agreed on the basic assumption of an economic ‘divergence’ between East and West, others have argued that there was no ‘convergence’ to diverge from and that it was rather the process of industrialization which brought the two regions of the world closer together.[18]

Many of the studies comparing the West and China as whole entities or parts thereof suffer from some common problems of the historical method in general. There is often a lack of reflection on the proposed comparisons and on the units of comparison, and they often tend to lead to essentialized, rigid categories on both sides.[19] One of the sharpest critics of the comparative method has been Zhang Weiwei 張偉偉, professor emeritus at Nankai University in Tianjin. Zhang argues, in sharp opposition to modernization theory, that the comparative method does not make sense in a closed system where all regions of the world are interrelated and live from the interplay of balances and disbalances between them. Instead, he argues for an ‘acentric’ model of historiography that analyses regions like ‘China,’ ‘the West’ or others in view of their function in the totality of the world system.[20]

Various other approaches have been harnessed to go beyond mere comparisons, namely ‘entanglement’ (jiaocha 交叉), ‘transfer’ and ‘transplant’ (qianyi 遷移; yizhi 移植), ‘interaction’ (hudong 互動), ‘exchange’ (jiaowang 交往), as well as the Buddhist-expired concept of ‘fusion’ (yuanrong 圓融) of different constituent parts into a harmonious total.[21] Most of these approaches maintain the ‘nation’ as central object of analysis, and thus continue to share their most fundamental element with compared history. While amending, expanding or correcting the original comparative approaches, they do not entirely replace them. The various caveats notwithstanding, comparisons remain an important part of historiographical practice in contemporary China.

4. Sources/Literature

Han Dayuan 韓大元. ‘Bijiao xianfa gainian zai jindai Zhongguo de yanbian’ 比較憲法概念在近代中國的演變 [The development of the concept of constitutional comparison in modern China]. Bijiaofa yanjiu 比較法研究, no. 6 (2015): 70–79.

He Aiguo 何爱国. ‘Zhongshuo fenyun “da fenliu”’ 众说纷纭《大分流》 [The controversial ‘great divergence’]. Shixue lilun yanjiu 史学理论研究, no. 3 (2005): 137–47.

Hou Wailu 侯外廬, Zhao Jibin 趙紀彬 and Du Guoxiang 杜國庠. Zhongguo sixiang tongshi 中國思想通史 [General history of Chinese thought]. 5 vols. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1957–63.

Huang Shisu 黃式蘇. ‘Zhong-Xi renwu bijiao: Xiang Yu, Napolun’ 中西人物比較：項羽拿坡崙 [A comparison of Chinese and Western figures: Xiang Yu and Napoleon]. Xin shijie xuebao 新世界學報, no. 4 (1902): 78-85.

———. ‘Zhong-Xu renwu bijiao: Yao, Shun, Huashengdun’ 中西人物比較：堯舜華盛頓 [A comparison of Chinese and Western figures: Yao, Shun, and Washington]. Xin shijie xuebao 新世界學報, no. 6 (1902): 6-7, 11-12.

Kaelble, Hartmut. ‘Historischer Vergleich’ [Historical comparison]. Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte. 14. August 2012. http://docupedia.de/zg/kaelble_historischer_vergleich_v1_de_2012.

Kurtz, Joachim. ‘Chinese Dreams of the Middle Ages: Nostalgia, Utopia, Propaganda.’ Medieval History Journal 21, no. 1 (2018): 1–24.

Li Dazhao 李大釗. ‘Fa-E geming bijiao guan’ 法俄革命比較觀 [A comparative view of the French and Russian revolution]. In Li Dazhao xuanji 李大釗選集 [Selected works of Li Dazhao], 101–104. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1959.

Li Ji 李濟. ‘Lishifa yu bijiaofa’ 歷史法與比較法 [The historical method and the comparative method]. Kexue huabao 科學畫報 1, no. 18 (1934): 681.

Li Xuetao 李雪濤. ‘Cong bijiao zhexue dao kuawenhua zhexue: Yasibei‘ersi “Zhexue de shijieshi” zhi yiyi’ 從比較哲學到跨文化哲學：雅斯貝爾斯哲學的世界史之意義 [From comparative philosophy to transcultural philosophy: The meaning of Karl Jaspers’ World History of Philosophy]. Bijiao zhexue yu bijiao wenhua luncong 比較哲學與比較文化論叢 16 (2021), 19–28.

Ma Shiguang 馬士光. ‘Bijiao zongjiao shixue jianshe qian’ 比較宗教史學建設前 [Before the construction of a comparative religious history]. Shengjiao zazhi 聖教雜志 25, no. 9–10 (1936): 528–536, 583–90.

Mao Lei 毛磊 et al. Zhong-xi 500 nian bijiao 中西500年比较 [A 500-year comparison between China and the West]. Beijing: Zhongguo gongren chubanshe, 1991.

Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. 1, Introductory Orientations. With Wang Ling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954.

Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Most recent Chinese edition: Da fenliu: Zhongguo, Ouzhou yu xiandai shijie jingji de xingcheng 大分流：中国、欧洲与现代世界经济的形成. Translated by Huang Zhongxian 黄中宪. Beijing: Beijing Ribao chubanshe, 2021.

Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent. Before and Beyond Divergence: The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 2011. Chinese version as Da fenliu zhi wai: Zhongguo han Ouzhou jingji bianqian de zhengzhi 大分流之外：中国和欧洲经济变迁的政治. Translated by Zhou Lin 周琳. Revised by Roy Bin Wong [Wang Guobin 王国斌] and Zhang Meng 张萌. Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2018.

Studer, Roman. The Great Divergence Reconsidered: Europe, India, and the Rise to Global Economic Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Chinese version as Da fenliu chongtan: Ouzhou, yindu yu quanqiu jingji qiangquan de xingqi 大分流重探：欧洲、印度与全球经济强权的兴起. Translated by Wang Wenjian 王文剑. Shanghai: Gezhi chubanshe; Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2020.

Vries, Peer. State, Economy and the Great Divergence: Great Britain and China, 1680s-1850s. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015. Chinese version as Guojia, jingji yu da fenliu: 17 shiji 80 niandai dao 19 shiji 50 niandai de Yingguo he Zhongguo 国家、经济与大分流：17世纪80年代到19世纪50年代的英国和中国. Translated by Guo Jinxing 郭金兴. Beijing: Zhongxin chuban jituan, 2018.

Wagner, Rudolf G. ‘Living up to the Image of the Ideal Public Leader: George Washington’s Image in China.’ The Journal of Transcultural Studies 10, no. 2 (2020): 18–77.

Wang Qingjia 王晴佳 [Edward Q. Wang] and Ku Wei-ying 古偉瀛. Houxiandai yu lishixue: Zhong-Xi bijiao 後現代與歷史學：中西比較 [Postmodernism and historiography: A comparison between East and West]. Taibei: Juliu tushu gongsi, 2000. PRC edition in Jinan: Shandong Daxue chubanshe, 2003.

Wong Young-tsu 汪荣祖. Shizhuan tongshuo: Zhong-xi shixue zhi bijiao 史傳通說：中西史學之比較 [A comprehensive account of Histories and Biographies: A comparison between Chinese and Western historiography]. 1^st edition. Taipei: Linking, 1984. 1^st PRC edition (reprint) in Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989.

Wu Huaiqi. An Historical Sketch of Chinese Historiography. Heidelberg: Springer, 2018.

Xiang Guanqi 项观奇. Lishi bijiao yanjiufa 历史比较研究法 [Historical comparative research methods]. Jinan: Shandong jiaoyu chubanshe, 1986.

Yan Jicheng 嚴既澄. ‘Bijiao zongjiao xue gailun’ 比較宗教學概論 [An introduction to comparative religious studies]. Minduo zazhi 民鐸雜志 4, no. 4 (1923): 1–9.

Yang Kun 楊堃. ‘Jiazu yanhua zhi lilun’ 家族演化之理 [The evolutionary theory of the family]. Qinghua daxue xuebao 清華大學學報, no. 3 (1934): 631-680.

Zhang Weiwei 张伟伟. ‘Quanqiu shi zhong de Zhongguo shi’ 全球史中的中国史 [China’s History in Global History]. Shijie jin xiandai shi yanjiu 世界近现代史研究 (2005): 25–44.

Zhao Yifeng 赵轶峰. ‘Da fenliu’ haishi ‘da heliu’: Ming-Qing shiqi lishi qushi de wenming shiguan 「大分流」还是「大合流」：明清时期历史趋势的文明史观 [‘Great Divergence’ or ‘Great Convergence’: A civilizational history perspective on the historical trends during the Ming and Qing periods]. Dongbei Shida xuebao 东北师大学报, no. 1 (2005): 42–48.

[1] Han Dayuan 韓大元, ‘Bijiao xianfa gainian zai jindai Zhongguo de yanbian’ 比較憲法概念在近代中國的演變 [The development of the concept of constitutional comparison in modern China], Bijiaofa yanjiu 比較法研究, no. 6 (2015).

[2] See Joachim Kurtz, ‘Chinese Dreams of the Middle Ages: Nostalgia, Utopia, Propaganda,’ Medieval History Journal 21, no. 1 (2018): 9.

[3] Huang Shisu 黃式蘇, ‘Zhong-Xi renwu bijiao: Xiang Yu, Napolun’ 中西人物比較：項羽拿坡崙 [A comparison of Chinese and Western figures: Xiang Yu and Napoleon], Xin shijie xuebao 新世界學報, no. 4 (1902): 78-85; Huang Shisu, 黃式蘇,‘Zhong-Xu renwu bijiao: Yao, Shun, Huashengdun’ 中西人物比較：堯舜華盛頓 [A comparison of Chinese and Western figures: Yao, Shun, and Washington], Xin shijie xuebao 新世界學報, no. 6 (1902). These two particular sets of comparisons were exceedingly common across late 19^th– and early 20^th century East Asia. On George Washington in China see Rudolf G. Wagner, ‘Living up to the Image of the Ideal Public Leader: George Washington’s Image in China,’ The Journal of Transcultural Studies 10, no. 2 (2020).

[4] Li Dazhao 李大釗, ‘Fa-E geming bijiao guan’ 法俄革命比較觀 [A comparative view of the French and Russian revolution], in Li Dazhao xuanji 李大釗選集 [Selected works of Li Dazhao] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1959), 101-104.

[5] Hou Wailu 侯外廬, Zhao Jibin 趙紀彬, and Du Guoxiang 杜國庠, Zhongguo sixiang tongshi 中國思想通史 [General history of Chinese thought], 5 vols., (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1957–63).

[6] See Wu Huaiqi, An Historical Sketch of Chinese Historiography (Heidelberg: Springer, 2018), 448–49.

[7] Yang Kun 楊堃, ‘Jiazu yanhua zhi lilun’ 家族演化之理 [The evolutionary theory of the family], Qinghua daxue xuebao 清華大學學報, no. 3 (1934): 631-680.

[8] Li Ji 李濟, ‘Lishifa yu bijiaofa’ 歷史法與比較法 [The historical method and the comparative method], Kexue huabao 科學畫報 1, no. 18 (1934): 681.

[9] Yan Jicheng 嚴既澄, ‘Bijiao zongjiao xue gailun’ 比較宗教學概論 [An introduction to comparative religious studies], Minduo zazhi 民鐸雜志 4, no. 4 (1923): 1-9; Ma Shiguang 馬士光, ‘Bijiao zongjiao shixue jianshe qian’ 比較宗教史學建設前 [Before the construction of a comparative religious history], Shengjiao zazhi 聖教雜志 25, no. 9–10 (1936): 528–536, 583–90.

[10] Li, ‘Lishifa yu bijiaofa.’

[11] Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, with Wang Ling, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 4.

[12] Wu, An Historical Sketch of Chinese Historiography, 16.

[13] E.g., among many others, Wong Young-tsu 汪荣祖, Shizhuan tongshuo: Zhong-xi shixue zhi bijiao 史傳通說：中西史學之比較 [A comprehensive account of Histories and Biographies: A comparison between Chinese and Western historiography], 1st ed. (Taipei: Linking, 1984; 1st PRC ed., reprint, in Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989); Xiang Guanqi 项观奇, Lishi bijiao yanjiufa 历史比较研究法 [Historical comparative research methods] (Jinan: Shandong jiaoyu chubanshe, 1986); Mao Lei 毛磊 et al., Zhong-xi 500 nian bijiao 中西500年比较 [A 500-year comparison between China and the West] (Beijing: Zhongguo gongren chubanshe, 1991); Wang Qingjia 王晴佳 [Edward Q. Wang] and Ku Wei-ying 古偉瀛, Houxiandai yu lishixue: Zhong-Xi bijiao 後現代與歷史學：中西比較 [Postmodernism and historiography: A comparison between East and West] (Taibei: Juliu tushu gongsi, 200099; PRC edition in Jinan: Shandong Daxue chubanshe, 2003).

[14] Ibid.,  479.

[15] Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). Most recent Chinese edition: Da fenliu: Zhongguo, Ouzhou yu xiandai shijie jingji de xingcheng 大分流：中国、欧洲与现代世界经济的形成, trans. Huang Zhongxian 黄中宪 (Beijing: Beijing Ribao chubanshe, 2021).

[16] Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Before and Beyond Divergence: The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 2011), Chinese version as Da fenliu zhi wai: Zhongguo han Ouzhou jingji bianqian de zhengzhi 大分流之外：中国和欧洲经济变迁的政治, trans. Zhou Lin 周琳, rev. Roy Bin Wong [Wang Guobin 王国斌] and Zhang Meng 张萌 (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 2018); Peer Vries, State, Economy and the Great Divergence: Great Britain and China, 1680s-1850s (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), Chinese version as Guojia, jingji yu da fenliu: 17 shiji 80 niandai dao 19 shiji 50 niandai de Yingguo he Zhongguo 国家、经济与大分流：17世纪80年代到19世纪50年代的英国和中国, trans. Guo Jinxing 郭金兴 (Beijing: Zhongxin chuban jituan, 2018); Roman Studer, The Great Divergence Reconsidered: Europe, India, and the Rise to Global Economic Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), Chinese version as Da fenliu chongtan: Ouzhou, yindu yu quanqiu jingji qiangquan de xingqi 大分流重探：欧洲、印度与全球经济强权的兴起, trans. Wang Wenjian 王文剑 (Shanghai: Gezhi chubanshe; Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2020).

[17] For an overview over discussions on Pomeranz’ book itself see He Aiguo 何爱国, ‘Zhongshuo fenyun “da fenliu”’ 众说纷纭《大分流》 [The controversial ‘great divergence’], Shixue lilun yanjiu 史学理论研究, no. 3 (2005): 137-147.

[18] Zhao Yifeng 赵轶峰, ‘Da fenliu’ haishi ‘da heliu’: Ming-Qing shiqi lishi qushi de wenming shiguan 「大分流」还是「大合流」：明清时期历史趋势的文明史观 [‘Great Divergence’ or ‘Great Convergence’: A civilizational history perspective on the historical trends during the Ming and Qing periods], Dongbei Shida xuebao 东北师大学报, no. 1 (2005): 42-48.

[19] Hartmut Kaelble, ‘Historischer Vergleich,’ Version: 1.0, in: Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 14.08.2012. http://docupedia.de/zg/kaelble_historischer_vergleich_v1_de_2012.

[20] Zhang Weiwei 张伟伟, ‘Quanqiu shi zhong de Zhongguo shi’ 全球史中的中国史 [China’s History in Global History], Shijie jin xiandai shi yanjiu 世界近现代史研究 (2005), 25–44.

[21] See Li Xuetao 李雪濤, ‘Cong bijiao zhexue dao kuawenhua zhexue: Yasibei’ersi “Zhexue de shijieshi” zhi yiyi’ 從比較哲學到跨文化哲學：雅斯貝爾斯哲學的世界史之意義 [From comparative philosophy to transcultural philosophy: The meaning of Karl Jaspers’ World History of Philosophy], Bijiao zhexue yu bijiao wenhua luncong 比較哲學與比較文化論叢 16 (2021): 19-28.

Connectivity (關聯)

1. Etymology

The Chinese term guanlian 關聯, ‘to be related, to be connected, to be linked, to concern’ has been attested since the 4^th century BC military classic Wei Liaozi 尉繚子. It consists of the two lexemes guan 關 (‘to close, to shut,’ hence ‘pass, checkpoint’ and also ‘to go through, to pass’) and lian 聯 (‘to connect, to link’). In the 20^th century, it has become possible to add the nominalizing suffix –xing 性 (corresponding to ‘-ity’), resulting in a range of meanings including ‘relevance’ and ‘connectivity.’

.

2. Conceptual transfers

Guanlian is part of the common East Asian Sinitic vocabulary: Japanese kanren 関連; Korean kwallyŏn 관련. In Japanese, the second character 聯 has largely fallen into disuse since the writing reform of 1946 and is now mostly replaced with the homophonous and synonymous character 連. In Vietnamese, the order of the constituent parts is reversed, resulting in the word liên quan 聯關 (‘to concern’).

In the late 20^th century, the term has been used to match two English academic concepts: ‘relevance’ and ‘connectivity.’

3. Conceptual history

Guanlian has gained traction as a technical term in various fields since the 1990s, including the social sciences and historiography. It has been used as an equivalent to the English ‘relevance,’ ‘connectivity,’ and ‘relational(ity).’ However, no unambiguous correspondence in either direction of translation has been established. Connectivity has also been translated as liantongxing 連通性 and lianjiexing 連接性, while relevance is also rendered as xiangguanxing 相關性.

In sociology, guanlianxing has been taken up by Taiwanese writers concerned with the construction of democracy in an ethnically diverse country. In his work on collective action and cultural identity, anthropologist Ya-Chung Chuang 莊雅仲, for example, argues that a ‘connectivity’ (guanlianxing) in the Habermasian sense of intersubjective communication is what has characterised the revitalised local identity in Taiwan after the end of martial law in 1987[1]:

Of course, this is not the culture I want to bring back here. For more than a decade, critical anthropologists have been busy deconstructing cultural concepts, proposing ideas such as ‘flexible citizenship’ (Ong 1993), ‘traveling cultures’ (Clifford 1997), or ‘disjuncture’ (Appadurai 1996) to go ‘beyond culture’ (Gupta and Ferguson 1997), but few have focused on ‘connectivity’ (guanlianxing) in the age of globalization, i. e., the desire to recreate a sense of community/place, like Habermas’ intersubjective communication (Habermas 1984; 1987). In other words, through political and social movements, the search for this ‘connectivity’ reveals what I call a revitalized Taiwanese identity (…). Although still subject to numerous limitations, this is a desire and attempt to reconnect with the land, the people, the ethnic groups, the history, the meaning, the politics, the life and the community in the age of post-authoritarian flexible development and globalization.[2]

當然這些並非我想在這裡帶回來的文化。十幾年來，批判人類學家忙於解構文化觀念，提出了諸如彈性公民權（flexible citizenship）（Ong 1993）、旅行文化（Clifford 1997）、或者錯置（disjuncture）（Appadurai 1996）以「超越文化」（Gupta and Ferguson 1997），不過卻很少有人著力檢視全球化時代下的「關聯性」（connectivity），換句話說，就是希望可以重塑一個社區/地方的感覺，像哈伯馬斯筆下的交互主體的溝通（Habermas 1984; 1987）。也就是透過政治與社會運動搜尋這個「關聯性」，顯現出我所謂的一個重生的台灣認同（……）， 雖然仍受許多限制，這是一個想要在後威權、彈性發展與全球化時代下，重新連結土地、人民、族群、歷史、意義、政治、生命與社區的欲求與企圖

In historiography, the term guanlian has been used both vertically—in the temporal sense of ‘relevance’ of one event to the other—and horizontally—in a geographical sense. The Reader in Public History, edited by Ningbo University professor Qian Maowei 錢茂偉, explains the sense of ‘relevance’:

Billy So’s 蘇基朗 academic proposition according to which ‘historiographical relevance’ (shixue guanlianxing) ‘means a strong correlation between the content of historiography and the objects of presentation of its results,’ makes people’s eyes light. If we look at the ‘human world’ from the binary division between the state and society, it is always either ‘the state and the population’ or ‘the government and the masses.’ If we think in historiographical terms, there are two major directions of connection, one with the government and the other with the public.[3]

苏基朗提出的“史学关联性”,“意指一种史学其内容和其成果展示对象间有强烈的相关性”[1],这是让人眼前一亮的学术命题。从国家与社会二元划分来观察“人世”,无非是“国家与民间”或“政府与民众”。如果以史学为中心来思考,会有两大方向的联想,一是与政府相关联,一是与公众相关联。

Here, the use of the term guanlianxing demonstrates its double valence as both relevance and connectivity. Billy So did not use the term shixue guanlianxing (historical relevance/­connectivity) in his chapter in the same book, but his essay is a reflection on a ‘history of relevance’ (rushi de shixue 入世的史學), i.e. a historiography that is relevant in both its connections to the state and to society, as Qian Maowei interprets it in his foreword.

It is Zhang Genghua 張耕華, professor at Eastern China Normal University, who has theorized the most on the use of ‘relevance’ in historiography, however not so much in the sense of its importance to the broader society, but rather in context of the historians’ objects of study. Zhang uses the term guanlianxing to translate Maurice Mandelbaum’s (1908–1987) idea of ‘relevance’ in history, as expressed, among others, in his book The Problem of Historical Knowledge: An Answer to Relativism (1967).[4] Mandelbaum had argued that the category of ‘relevance’ was objective and that ‘the relevance of one statement to another depends upon causal factors which relate the events to which the statements refer.’[5] Zhang critiques Mandelbaum’s centralization of ‘relevance’ the centerpiece of historical narratives as too rigid and instead maintains that the ‘relevance’ of a historical event for the other could have at most a ‘constraining’ (jimi 羈縻) function on historical narratives:

Since historical narratives are influenced by both the past and the present, and by both historical facts and the historians, the related research should not be limited to the aspect of ‘past and historical facts,’ but also analyse the aspects of ‘the present’ and ‘the historians,’ which are neglected by Mandelbaum and on which later studies need to supply expansions or corrections.[6]

历史叙事既然受到来自过去与当下、史实与史家两方面的影响，有关的研究就不能局限于“过去、史实”这一方面，还要分析“当下、史家”这一方面，而这是曼德尔鲍姆所忽视的，后人的研讨需要在此基础上加以补充或有所纠偏。

Horizontally, ‘connections’ (guanlian) have featured in writings about global history as a way of overcoming methodological nationalisms and amending the shortcomings of the traditional approaches focusing on ‘comparisons’ and ‘exchanges’ between civilizations and nations. Beginning from 2011, Fudan University in Shanghai organized a series of conferences together with the University of Tokyo and Princeton University, which resulted in the publication of the proceedings in the three different editions in China, Japan, and the United States.[7] As the introduction to the English version stressed,

A majority of the studies in our volume, therefore, address the interconnectivity of history in East Asia, which combines the ‘local’ and the ‘global’, into a ‘new’ world history. For example, we reconsider the scope of the globalized ‘rise of the West’ narrative circa 1500–1800 and begin to see things in East Asia regionally as they were dynamically developing from the inside, rather than seeing them passively from the outside in hindsight.[8]

The Chinese-language edition makes the ‘connectivity’ aspect even more salient, as it titles one of the parts of the book ‘Entanglements and connections: Historical research on the East Asian countries’ (jiaocuo yu guanlian: Dongya zhuguo de lishi yanjiu 交错与关联：东亚诸国的历史研究; English title: ‘Doing “World” or “Global” History as “Transnational” History). The contributions to this part as well as to the whole volume do not provide a definitive answer to the question what ‘global history’ means, but rather show a wide diversity of research agendas.[9] Nonetheless, a red thread can be found in the focus on connectivity, i.e. ‘the piling of thoroughly researched and well-documented cases that intuitively show how wrong-headed the historiography artificially constrained to the bounds of a national space is.’[10]

‘Connections’ have found application in the upcoming field of global history in China. As a review article by Yang Hua 杨华and Chen Zugen 陈祖根 emphasizes,

Global history transcends the barriers of the nation-state, emphasises transcultural interaction and explores global connections in space and time, all of which are refreshing to scholars in China.[11]

全球史跨越民族国家的藩篱，强调跨文化互动，探寻全球在时空上的关联，这些都令国内学者耳目一新。

Nonetheless, although the article’s title foregrounds ‘interconnections’ as parallel to ‘interactions’ (hudong 互动),[12] it barely uses the concept except as a function of those interactions. China, it explains, is ‘closely connected to the global’ (Zhongguo dou yijing yu quanqiu jinmi guanlian 中国都已经与全球史紧密关联), and Chinese scholars ‘should consciously integrate China’s particular experience into globally interconnected interactions (ying zijue jiang Zhongguo de teshu jingyan rongru dao quanqiu de guanlian hudong 应自觉将中国的特殊经验融入到全球的关联互动中去).[13] Hence, while connectivities are used in recent Chinese global historiography, they only rarely challenge the dominance of the nation-state as the central unit of analysis, and are mostly used as an addition to other approaches like ‘comparisons’ and ‘interactions’ with the aim of uncovering China’s place in and contribution to world history.

4. Sources/Literature

Appadurai, Arjun. ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.’ Public Culture 2, no. 2 (1990): 1–24.

Chuang, Ya-Chung. Democracy on Trial: Social Movements and Cultural Politics in Postauthoritarian Taiwan. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2013.

——— 莊雅仲. Minzhu Taiwan: Hou-weiquan shidai de shehui yundong yu wenhua zhengzhi 民主台灣 後威權時代的社會運動與文化政治. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2014.

Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translocation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.

Elman, Benjamin A. and Chao-hui Jenny Liu. The ‘Global’ and the ‘Local’ in Early Modern and Modern East Asia. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Chinese version: Fudan Daxue wenshi yanjiuyuan 复旦大学文史研究院. Quanqiushi, quyushi yu guobieshi: Fudan, Dongda, Pulinsidun sanxiao hezuo huiyi lunwenji 全球史、区域史与国别史——复旦、东大、普林斯顿三校合作会议论文集 [Global history, regional history and national history: Proceedings of the Fudan-Todai-Princeton conferences]. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2016. Japanese version: Haneda Masashi 羽田正, ed. Gurōbaru historī to Ajia-shi グローバルヒストリーと東アジア史 [Global History and Asian History]. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku shuppankai, 2016.

Elman, Benjamin A. ‘Introduction: An Overview.’ In The ‘Global’ and the ‘Local’ in Early Modern and Modern East Asia, edited by Benjamin A. Elman and Chao-hui Jenny Liu, 1–7. Leiden: Brill, 2017. 

Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson. ‘Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.’ In Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, edited by Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, 33–52. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997.

Mandelbaum, Maurice. The Problem of Historical Knowledge: An Answer to Relativism. New York et al.: Harper Torchbooks, 1967.

Mervart, David. Review of Gurōbaru Historī to Higashi Ajia-Shi グローバルヒストリーと東アジア史 [Global History and East Asia], edited by Haneda Masashi 羽田正. International Journal of Asian Studies 16, no. 1 (2019): 53–55.

Ong, Aihwa. ‘On the Edge of Empires: Flexible Citizenship among Chinese Diaspora.’ Positions 1, no. 3 (1993): 745–78.

Yang Hua 杨华 and Chen Zugen 陈祖根. ‘Kuayue, guanlian, hudong: Quanqiushi zai guonei de chuanbo ji yingxiang’ 跨越、关联、互动——全球史在国内的传播及影响 [Strides,Interconnection and Interaction——The Spread and Influence of Global History in China]. Qinghua Daxue xuebao (Zhexue shehui kexue ban) 清华大学学报(哲学社会科学版) 35, no. 4 (2020): 36–44.

Zhang Genghua 张耕华. ‘Lu lushi xushi de “guanlianxing”: Yi shixue anli lai fuhe Mande’erbaomu de yi ge guandian’ 论历史叙事的“关联性”———以史学案例来复核曼德尔鲍姆的一个观点 [The ‘relevance’ of historical narratives: rechecking Mandelbaum’s viewpoint with historical cases]. Wuhan Keji Daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban) 武汉科技大学学报（社会科学版） 23, no. 3 (2021): 339–45.

[1] Chuang Ya-Chung 莊雅仲, Minzhu Taiwan: Hou-weiquan shidai de shehui yundong yu wenhua zhengzhi 民主台灣 後威權時代的社會運動與文化政治 (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2014), 119; Chuang Ya-Chung 莊雅仲, Democracy on Trial: Social Movements and Cultural Politics in Postauthoritarian Taiwan (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2013), 107.

[2] Chuang, Minzhu Taiwan, 119; cf. the translation in Chuang, 107. The cited works are: Aihwa Ong, ‘On the Edge of Empires: Flexible Citizenship among Chinese Diaspora,’ Positions 1, no. 3 (1993): 745-778; James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translocation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997); Arjun Appadurai, ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,’ Public Culture 2, no. 2 (1990): 1-24; Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, ‘Beyond “Culture”: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference,’ in Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, ed. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 33-52.

[3] Qian Maowei 钱茂伟, Gongzhong shixue duben 公众史学读本 [Historiographical Reader for the Public] (Hangzhou: Hangzhou Daxue chubanshe, 2018).

[4] Maurice Mandelbaum, The Problem of Historical Knowledge: An Answer to Relativism (New York et al.: Harper Torchbooks, 1967), 203–72.

[5] Ibid., 270.

[6] Zhang Genghua 张耕华, ‘Lu lushi xushi de “guanlianxing”: Yi shixue anli lai fuhe Mande’erbaomu de yi ge guandian’ 论历史叙事的“关联性”———以史学案例来复核曼德尔鲍姆的一个观点 [The ‘relevance’ of historical narratives: rechecking Mandelbaum’s viewpoint with historical cases], Wuhan Keji Daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban) 武汉科技大学学报（社会科学版） 23, no. 3 (2021): 339–45.

[7] Benjamin A. Elman and Chao-hui Jenny Liu, The ‘Global’ and the ‘Local’ in Early Modern and Modern East Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2017). Chinese version: Fudan Daxue wenshi yanjiuyuan 复旦大学文史研究院编, Quanqiushi, quyushi yu guobieshi: Fudan, Dongda, Pulinsidun sanxiao hezuo huiyi lunwenji 全球史、区域史与国别史——复旦、东大、普林斯顿三校合作会议论文集 [Global history, regional history and national history: Proceedings of the Fudan-Todai-Princeton conferences] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2016). Japanese version: Haneda Masashi 羽田正, ed. Gurōbaru historī to Ajia-shi グローバルヒストリーと東アジア史 [Global History and Asian History] (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku shuppankai, 2016).

[8] Benjamin A. Elman, ‘Introduction: An Overview,’ in The ‘Global’ and the ‘Local’ in Early Modern and Modern East Asia, ed. Benjamin A. Elman and Chao-hui Jenny Liu (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 1.

[9] David Mervart, Review of Gurōbaru Historī to Higashi Ajia-Shi グローバルヒストリーと東アジア史 [Global History and East Asia], ed. Haneda Masashi 羽田正, International Journal of Asian Studies 16, no. 1 (2019): 54.

[10] Ibid., 55.

[11] Yang Hua 杨华 and Chen Zugen 陈祖根, ‘Kuayue, guanlian, hudong: Quanqiushi zai guonei de chuanbo ji yingxiang’ 跨越、关联、互动——全球史在国内的传播及影响 [Strides, Interconnection and Interaction——The Spread and Influence of Global History in China], Qinghua Daxue xuebao (Zhexue shehui kexue ban) 清华大学学报（哲学社会科学版）35, no. 4 (2020): 36–44.

[12] See the entry on ‘exchanges (交流) and interactions (互動),‘ https://www.writing-history-with-china.phil.fau.de/project/keywords-in-global-history-writing/#collapse_2

[13] Ibid., 36; 44.