Jian Bozan

Jian Bozan a Chinese historian of the twentieth century (1898-1968), a leading Marxist historian and one of the most influential interpreters of Chinese history in the decades after 1949. He wrote extensively on the periodisation of Chinese history, on the history of the peasantry and the economy, and on the history of Chinese thought, and his views became central to a great academic and political controversy of his time.

Early Life and Education

Jian Bozan was born on 14 March 1898 in Taoyuan, in Hunan province, into a family of Uyghur descent that had long settled in the region. He received a classical education as a boy and later studied at universities in Beijing, where he became interested in history and in the social theories that were circulating among the students of the day.

In the 1920s he was drawn into the revolutionary and intellectual currents of the period, and he began to write about history from the point of view of social and economic development. He took part in the political movements of the time and spent periods in danger and in hiding, experiences that reinforced his commitment to a historical understanding oriented to social change.

He studied in the United States for a time and travelled in Europe, encountering Western historiography and the debates over the nature of social development. He returned to China to take up teaching and writing, and by the 1930s he had established himself as a scholar of wide reading and energetic temperament.

Marxist Historiography and Periodisation

Jian Bozan was among the foremost exponents of a Marxist approach to Chinese history, and he devoted much of his career to the question of how the long trajectory of Chinese society should be divided into stages of development. He argued for a particular periodisation according to the dominant relations of production, and he defended the view that China had passed through the successive stages of primitive, slave and feudal society in a manner comparable to other civilisations.

His writings on the subject were learned and closely argued, drawing on the classical histories, on economic records and on the theoretical literature of historical materialism. He engaged with the work of other Chinese and foreign scholars, and he helped to define the terms in which the periodisation debate was conducted during the middle decades of the twentieth century.

The questions he raised were not merely academic. The dating of the transition from slavery to feudalism had implications for the interpretation of the whole of Chinese history and, in the political climate of the day, for the standing of rival schools. His positions made him a central figure in a debate that became entangled with politics and that eventually threatened his life.

The History of the Peasantry and Society

A large part of Jian Bozan's work concerned the history of the peasantry, peasant rebellions and the social conflicts of the imperial period. He studied the conditions of rural life, the mechanisms of exploitation and the recurring risings that punctuated Chinese history, and he sought to explain both the causes of these upheavals and their limited consequences for the structure of society.

He wrote on the agrarian economy, on the concentration of land and on the burden of taxation and rent borne by the peasantry, and he examined the ways in which dynastic governments responded to rural distress. His account of the cycle of rebellion and dynastic renewal was influential and remained a point of reference for later scholarship.

He also studied the history of the Chinese economy more broadly, including commerce and the growth of towns, and he wrote on the great empires of the Tang and Song. His work helped to shift the centre of gravity of Chinese historical writing toward social and economic questions, and it supplied a vocabulary and agenda for a whole generation of researchers.

Thought, Culture and Public Life

Beyond social and economic history Jian Bozan wrote on the history of Chinese thought, on the development of philosophy and on the cultural achievements of the imperial civilisations. He argued for the study of ideas in connection with the social conditions that produced them, while also insisting on the value of the classical heritage as a source of national culture to be understood and preserved.

He held a series of academic and public posts, including leading positions at Peking University and in the research institutes of the Academy of Sciences, where he directed large projects of compilation and editing. He was active in the preparation of the great collective histories and source collections of the period, and he trained numerous students who carried on his approach.

His public essays and lectures reached a wide audience and helped to shape the general understanding of Chinese history in the early years of the new order. He combined an organising energy and an immense capacity for work with a scholar's caution about evidence, and he was regarded as one of the principal stewards of the discipline.

Controversy and Legacy

In the 1960s Jian Bozan became the target of a political campaign directed against historians accused of opposing the prevailing orthodoxy. His views on periodisation, on the role of the peasantry and on the evaluation of historical figures were denounced, and he was removed from his posts and subjected to public criticism. The campaign against him spread to many colleagues and became part of the broader intellectual persecution of the period.

He was persecuted and died on 18 December 1968. His fate was widely regarded, even among those who did not share his theoretical positions, as a warning of the danger to scholarship of political control, and his rehabilitation after the period was accompanied by a reappraisal of his contribution to Chinese historiography.

He is remembered as a historian of great learning and industry who brought the methods of social and economic analysis to bear on the Chinese past and who helped to establish the study of the peasantry and of social change as central concerns of the discipline. His work remains a landmark in twentieth-century Chinese historical writing.

See also

• Marxist historiography
• Periodisation of Chinese history
• Wu Han
• Hou Wailu