Qian Haiyue's History of the Southern Ming and Modern Chinese Historiography.

This paper explores the life and work of Qian Haiyue (1901-1968), a rarely known Chinese historian of the twentieth century. Qian's compilation of the History of the Southern Ming, a grand project that took him four decades to accomplish, virtually fell on deaf ears. It was not until 2006, or almost four decades after his tragic death, that his History of the Southern Ming was formally published. This paper argues that it was personal bad luck, as much as the paradigmic shift from traditional Chinese historiography to modern Chinese historiography, that leads to silence by which Qian and his work were engulfed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]