Wu Han, Historian, is the result of many years of dedicated and meticulous study of a key figure in the intellectual history of modern China. Not only does this important book examine the personal, social and historical contexts that produced a man with complex legacies, but it also skilfully maps out some of the key issues in the lives of 20th-century Chinese intellectuals, who navigated between their personal beliefs, family duties, societal expectations, relationships to traditional and modern cultures, and commitments to their political alliances. In the case of Wu Han, these issues resulted in his devotion to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and caused his tragic death during the Cultural Revolution.
This book, however, is not just another “victim” tale of Maoist persecution. It successfully moves beyond one man's biography to offer multi-faceted historical accounts that will appeal to a broad audience. For example, the book adeptly contextualizes Wu Han's personal journey in the early history of Tsinghua University, including its wartime merger with the Southwest United University, its spirited student movements and dedicated professors such as Wen Yiduo and Zheng Zhenduo. Mazur also explores the history of mentorships between important leaders of the intelligentsia, such as Hu Shi, and their talented students, including Wu Han, and their eventual break-up due to differences in political beliefs and scholarly orientations.
This study also provides a miniature history of the Democratic League, its break away from the KMT nationalist government in 1948, and Wu Han's significant role in leading it to participate in the founding of the PRC. In explaining the CCP's subsequent persecutions of Luo Longji and Zhang Bojun during the Anti-Rightist movement of 1957, Mazur traces fundamental differences between Wu, Luo and Zhang back to 1949. Before agreeing to join the CCP-led coalitions, Luo and Zhang had requested in vain that the Democratic League be granted an option to withdraw from the coalition government, in order to protect its own third-party status. Mazur thus clarifies, more convincingly than her predecessors, that it was this fundamental difference with his cohorts that led to Wu's open denunciations of Luo and Zhang in 1957; it was not simply a cowardly act of Wu to break ranks with his former peers to support the CCP campaign.
Most importantly, this learned study emphasizes the crucial, inevitable and often fatal link between the study of history in modern Chinese society and its political culture. Wu Han's aspiration to be a responsible historian to explore history for contemporary use stemmed from his undergraduate student days, when he planned to evaluate the past to shape the new culture that Zheng Zhenduo and other major intellectuals envisaged. As Mazur rightly points out, by the 1930s Wu had already become a deconstructionist and a Maoist in his relationship to the present. Ironically, it was Mao's personal charm and scholarly interests in ancient history that attracted Wu to Mao's cause. Wu's persistent efforts to explore the ancient past in order to answer the present needs of society, however, led to his repeated revisions of his writings on Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming Dynasty founder, whose strengths and weaknesses fascinated both Wu and Mao. Mao turned against Wu after he innocently criticised Zhu for murdering too many people to consolidate his political power, a reference which could be seen as implicitly referring to Mao's rule. This fascinating account corrects the conventional wisdom that it was Wu's Peking opera, Hai Rui Dismissed from Office (Hai Rui ba guan), that brought down Wu, an event seen as the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Mazur has shown that Wu's downfall was caused by more complex intellectual, cultural and ideological factors than we have given credit for. Wu Han and many of his fellow intellectuals indeed helped construct Maoist ideology and its practice, such as “borrowing from the past to benefit the present,” in their tireless efforts to shape the new culture, rather than being its mere victims.
As Mazur acknowledges, her PhD dissertation focused on the first half of Wu Han's life, and she expanded on Wu's post-1949 life for this book project. It is apparent that her examination of Wu's pre-1949 years is the stronger part of this study. The sections that cover Wu Han's later life, and especially his contributions to the field of history studies in the PRC, are substantial, yet Mazur could have explored more of his life during the Cultural Revolution. Some PRC biographers of other key intellectuals and revolutionary leaders have been able to reconstruct their years of persecution by interviewing prison guards, Red Guards and relatives. Ye Yonglie's excellent biographies of the members of the Gang of Four, for example, were particularly valuable in this regard.
In terms of sources and data used by the author, the most valuable are the several hundred interviews with Wu's family members, social networks, well-known intellectuals and writers, which help to build and preserve an oral history of his life and career. One noticeable shortcoming of the study is its repetitiveness in some accounts. Wu's wife's relationship with Dong Biwu as his early student, Dong's friendship with Wu and Wu's respect for Dong, for instance, is mentioned several times throughout the book.
A few weaknesses aside, this book is a significant contribution to the field of modern Chinese history, culture and society. It is a well-written book without jargon. It will be a valuable source to scholars and students of Chinese literature, history, political science and intellectual history.
