Mao Tse-tung as Historian

In: The China quarterly, Band 28, S. 82-105

Abstract

The label "history" is conventionally used with at least two distinct meanings: history-as-actuality and history-as-record. The events lying beneath the abstraction termed the social and economic history of the Roman empire constitute the former; Rostovtzeff'sSocial and Economic History of the Roman Empireis an example of the latter. Our concern in this paper is with "history" in still a third sense. When an individual, through either intent or accident, comes to occupy a dominant position in the history of a people, a country or an institution, his personal views on history and the historical process assume significance for the historian.The Peloponnesian War, Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, The History of the Russian Revolution, andThe Second World Warare important sources not only as records of past events but also because Thucydides, Julius Caesar, Trotsky and Churchill were themselves involved in the making of history. The recorded views of such event-making individuals are of intrinsic, albeit uneven, value because the men had personal knowledge of the events described—because they were, in short, actors before they were authors.