Historical Background

Abstract

Tangible objects have served both cosmological and political purposes in China since the Zhou dynastic era (approximately 1,000–250 BCE). In order to assert their own legitimacy, rulers typically would display the bronze and jade ritual objects as well as court seals, scrolls, and tax records of either their ancestors or those whom they had defeated. For the same reason, rulers would attempt to monopolize production of these objects (Elliot and Shambaugh 2005: 5–6). What we now know as “heritage objects” were thus originally collected, preserved, and displayed in China for contemporary political purposes, not because they reflected the past per se or for their aesthetic value. Instead, these imperial objects were believed to enable a communicative link with heaven (see Chang 1983). For example, following their conquest of the Song capital of Kaifeng in 1127 AD, the Jurchen, a seminomadic group from Manchuria, looted the imperial warehouses of art, furniture, scrolls, paintings, musical instruments, and even clothing, all of which they transported to their own capital, present-day Beijing, where they established the Jin Dynasty. The Jurchen capital was in turn conquered by the Mongolian leader Genghis Khan in 1234 AD, who named the city Dadu and built a palace on the site of what is now Beihai Park (Elliot and Shambaugh 2005: 24–28). Similarly, when Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), overthrew the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368), his forces seized control of an imperial collection that contained artifacts dating from the ninth-century Tang. After this, he ordered the destruction of the Yuan palaces in Beijing and transported these artifacts to his new capital at Nanjing, only to have the third Ming Emperor, Zhu Di, shift the capital back to Beijing in 1421, following the construction of the Forbidden City between 1406 and 1420.

This chapter describes the development of archeology, heritage, and museums in China. By way of introduction, we review the purpose and methods of traditional historiography, the cultivation of an interest among elites in the past during the Song, Ming, and Qing eras, the role of cultural heritage in the late Qing and Republican periods, and the place of history and heritage in the civil war between Communists and Nationalists. We also introduce the key concept of jingdian (“scenic spot”) and discuss their role in the development of a national class of literati and scholars dating back to at least the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).