“World History” in Traditional Chinese Historiography

Tokyo College YouTube Channel（https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGI2NUAxXMyN8-Up3n4piaQ）

Lecture：https://youtu.be/L9Zs5st4K-c

Dialogue：https://youtu.be/rvX5G0vaYOI

This lecture will talk about how the world has been comprehended and narrated in traditional Chinese historiography. The compilation of Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian) in the second century BC has set in motion a view of the world and the narration of world history as “the middle kingdom being the center, and the neighboring countries being the periphery.” In the following two thousand years, although there have been three possible but unrealized opportunities for change, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that the traditional historiography experienced a fundamental shift with the introduction of Western learning. The textbooks began to incorporate new ways of understanding the world and world history, and as these new narratives became the new common sense, they slowly replaced older narratives of world and world history in traditional Chinese historiography. 

【Lecture】Modern Memories: “World History” in Traditional Chinese Historiography  Speaker: GE Zhaoguang 

【Dialogue】 GE Zhaoguang × OTSUKA Osamu (Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo)

Ge Zhaoguang:
Graduated from Peking University with a Master’s degree in Chinese Language and Literature. Full professor of Tsinghua University (history) in 1992. Distinguished Professor of Fudan University in 2006. Guest Professor at Kyoto University (1998), the University of Tokyo (2015), Princeton University (2011-2013), and Chicago University (2015). Research fields include intellectual history, cultural history, and religious history of East Asia and China.