영미사학계의 명대 연구 ― 『케임브리지 중국사: 명사』 8권 상편을 중심으로 ―

Abstract

The recognition of China in the United States and Europe remained in the field of a few specialists until the 1950s but gradually gained new attention due to the political change in the international community and China. Following the increased public interests, the demand for new book increased. the representative Chinese synoptic history book published at that time was The Cambridge History of China. In 1966, Professor Denis Twitchett and Professor John K. Fairbank planned to write a book with support from the U.S. government “to provide Western readers with contents and basic Chinese history,” Unlike the previous Chinese synoptic history books, The Cambridge History of China Vol. 8: The Ming Dynasty was published in 1988 by the participation of locally working American, European and Chinese scholars. Obvious limits were undeniable when British and American researchers investigated Chinese history. In the mid-twentieth century, when this book was prepared and published, direct contact with China was limited. It was not easy to read completely unfamiliar texts and cultures, obtain data, and exchange between scholars. Unlike Chinese researchers, they were unaccustomed to an approach to the historical sources through a long-learning process to train a macroscopic perspective. This article will discuss such as the background of the writing process, the relationship between researchers, the achievement of researches in the U.S. and Europe on Chinese history at that time, and the gap of the times behind the achievement through analysis of “Political History part”, The Cambridge History of China: The Ming Dynasty, Part Ⅰ, published in 1988, with focus on human factors.