Draft History of Qing

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The Draft History of Qing was a draft of the official history of the Chinese Qing Dynasty compiled and written by a team of more than 100 historians hired by the Republic of China's government. The final copy was never completed because the Chinese Civil War caused a lack of funding for the project. This massive book was started in 1914, and the rough copy was finished in about 1927. The draft attempts to follow the format of previous official histories, containing four sections:

• 纪 (Ji), containing information about relevant emperors
• 志 (Zhi), containing events that happened, i.e. astronomical events
• 表 (Biao), containing lists of people who held important posts or were royalty
• 传 (Zhuan), containing information concerning notable figures.

The draft was later criticized for being biased and against the Republican government's Xinhai Revolution. Notably, it does not have records of historical figures in the revolution, even those that had been born before the end of the Qing Dynasty, although it includes biographies of various others who were born after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty.

Because of the lack of funding, the authors were forced to publish quickly, and consequently this project was never finished, remaining in the draft stages. The authors openly acknowledged this, and admitted there may have been factual or superficial errors.

1,100 copies of the Books were published. The Republic Government moved 400 of the original Draft into the northern provinces, where it re-edited the content twice, thus creating three different copies of the book.

[edit] Further reading

• Hsi-yuan Chen, 'Last chapter unfinished. The making of the official Qing History and the crisis of Traditional Chinese Historiography', in: Historiography East and West, 2 (2004), pp. 173-204.

[edit] References