Shang Yue

Shang Yue (Chinese: 尚钺; pinyin: Shàng Yuè; Wade–Giles: Shang Yüeh;[4] 1902 – January 6, 1982),[1] rendered as Sang Wol[5] (Korean: 상월[6]) in Korean, was a Chinese Marxist economic historian, author and professor at the School of History at Renmin University of China. Before becoming a historian, he also wrote fiction. He taught literature to Kim Il-sung for a short time at Yuwen Middle School in Manchuria. In China, he is primarily known for his work on the idea of the sprouts of capitalism: that proto-capitalism and class struggle had existed in the earlier Chinese history. His purge in 1958 foreshadowed the Chinese Cultural Revolution as his ideas on Chinese economic history conflicted with those of Mao Zedong. After his purge he continued to work on history, but stayed out of public until Mao's death in 1976. His work also gave a lasting effect in Korean nationalist historiography.

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Shang.
Shang Yue
尚钺
Born1902
Luoshan, Xinyang, Henan province, China[1]
DiedJanuary 6, 1982(1982-01-06) (aged 79–80)
Beijing[2]
Resting placeBabaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery
NationalityChinese
Other namesSang Wol (in Korean)
Alma materPeking University
OccupationProfessor at Renmin University of China
Known forTeacher of Kim Il-sung, idea of the sprouts of capitalism
Notable work
Essays on the Debate on the Sprouts of Capitalism in China
ChildrenShang Jialan (eldest daughter), a second daughter, Shang Xiaoyuan (a third daughter) and a son[3]

Career

Shang enrolled in the English faculty of the Peking University in 1921 and left the institution in 1926 without graduating.[1] In 1928, Shang worked at private Yuwen Middle School as a teacher of literature and Chinese.[7] There he taught literature and aesthetics to the future North Korean leader Kim Il-sung for six months in 1928. At the time, Shang was a member of the Chinese Communist Party's Manchurian branch. Kim credits Shang with having influenced him in his autobiography, With the Century. Kim reminisces Shang introducing him to both Chinese classics, such as Dream of the Red Chamber, and contemporary literature of Lu Xun and Chen Duxiu, as well as Russian literature, including Gorky's The Mother and Enemies.[5][8] Shang reinforced Kim's views on peasant nationalism, possibly reflecting a shift of policy in the Chinese Communist Party following the second Chinese revolution (1925–1927). Shang also encouraged Kim to become a proletarian writer, always stressing the social mission of literature. Shang's influence can be seen in the political dramas Kim would author in the 1930s, such as Sea of Blood.[5] Shang lost contact with Kim after he was arrested by the Nationalist Chinese.[8] Shang's daughter later attested that her father had thought of Kim as "diligent, putting good questions both inside and outside the class."[7]

Until 1939, Shang worked as an editor at a number of radical periodicals.[1] Shang Yue became a professor of Renmin University after 1949.[8] He was one of the historians in Mainland China who contributed to the idea of the sprouts of capitalism, describing features of the economies of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. His work was published in two volumes named Essays on the Debate on the Sprouts of Capitalism in China.[9] His Outline of Chinese History (1954) became a widely used textbook.[1]

Shang Yue's theory of capitalism in China gained wide support until at least the Anti-rightist campaign of 1957. Shang's theory contradicted Mao Zedong's idea that indigenous capitalism in China did not exist before, but that it could have eventually developed on its own in China. Shang was purged in 1958.[9] However, even in the early 1960s, an officially approved work by historian Jian Bozan reiterated Shang's arguments. Shang's influence finally waned during the Cultural Revolution,[10] during which he suffered.[9] He continued to write about history but remained out of public until Mao's death in 1976.[1]

Shang Yue lived and worked during his career at Jilin, Harbin, Shanghai, Beijing, Hankou, Chongqing, Ningxia and Yan'an. According to Kim Il-sung, he was once the Chief Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee of Manchuria.[11] Before becoming a historian, he also wrote fiction. He was once famous for his collection of short stories Giant Pirates. It takes place in Xinyang, Shang's hometown.[12]

Sprouts of capitalism
Shang Yue
Further information: Sprouts of capitalism

The core argument of Shang Yue's idea on the sprouts of capitalism is that proto-capitalism existed under late Ming and early Qing China from the 16th to the 17th century, as evidenced from large quantities of factory products that entered metropolitan markets. He thought that large amount of factories implied the existence of proletarian and bourgeois classes, and of a commodity economy. For him, the existence of a bourgeois class was a prerequisite for the formation of the Chinese nation. He argued that the delayed development of Chinese capitalism was caused by both the Mongol and Manchu conquests of China.[9]

Shang Yue's work was part of the efforts by Chinese historians to make the formation of Communist China seem like a natural outcome. He saw the Donglin movement as a proletarian struggle in the late Ming China, and, unlike Soviet sinologists, promoted the idea that the Chinese nation had a much more developed history of class struggle than European nations of that time. He gave China a more equal, or even more advanced, historical status compared with European society of the period.[9]

However, Mao Zedong argued that China would have developed into a Capitalist society even without foreign imperialist influence. Mao claimed that bourgeois and proletarian classes did not exist before the imperialist powers started to affect China after the Opium war. Mao thought that for China, imperialism was even worse a threat than the bourgeois class. Liu Danian complained that Shang Yue's theory glorified opium trade as a progressive force, and degraded Qing government and its subjects for active resistance. Shang was forced to admit in early 1958 that he had produced revisionist historiography, and was purged later that year. Jungmin Seo argues that reactions to Shang's theory show Chinese historians' fear that greater emphasis on internal proto-capitalism might divert too much attention from foreign capitalism's influence that transformed China into a semi-colonial or semi-feudal status.[9]

Chinese economic reform after Mao's death initially renewed the theory of sprouts of capitalism. However, the sprouts of capitalism is currently regarded in Chinese historiography to not have been a distinctive phase of economic development.[13] Both North and South Korean nationalist historians adopted and advanced the theory of sprouts (MR: maenga) of capitalism to downplay Japanese influence on the origins of Korean industrialization.[14] They claimed that industrial development had been halted by annexation of Korea in 1910. Since 1980s the South Korean historians have been largely denying validity of the theory.[15]

Bibliography
  • Shang Yue. Giant Pirates.
  • — (1955). The Historical Relationship between Marshal Kim Il Sung and I in His Boyhood.[11]
  • — (1956). Zhongguo zibenzhuyi guanxi fasheng ji yanbian de chubu yanjiu [A Preliminary Study on the Emergence and Transition of Chinese Capitalism] (in Chinese). Beijing: Sanlian shudian.[9]
  • — (1957). Zhōngguó zīběn zhǔyì méngyá wèntí tǎolùn jí 中國資本主义萌芽問題討論集 [Essays on the debate on the sprouts of capitalism in China] (in Chinese). Beijing: Renmin University of China. OCLC 19619860.
  • — (1960). Zhōngguó zīběn zhǔyì méngyá wèntí tǎolùn jí: Xù biān 中國資本主义萌芽問題討論集 : 續編 [Essays on the debate on the sprouts of capitalism in China, continued] (in Chinese). Beijing: Renmin University of China. OCLC 866366372.
  • — (1954). Zhongguo lishi gangya [Outline of Chinese History] (in Chinese). Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe.[10]
  • — (1984). Shang Yue shixue lunwen xuanji [Selected Historical Essays by Shang Yue] (in Chinese). Beijing: Renmin.[1]
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See also

References
  1. Albert Feuerwerker (June 3, 2014). "Shang Yue [Shang Yüeh] (1902–1982)". In D.R. Woolf (ed.). A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing. Routledge. pp. 830–831. ISBN 978-1-134-81998-0.
  2. "Lìshǐ xué jiā — shàng yuè" 历史学家——尚钺 [Historian — Shang Yue] (in Chinese). Yunnan University. August 3, 2005. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved May 14, 2015.
  3. "Meeting for Remembering Kim Il Sung Held in China". KCNA. April 9, 2014. Archived from the original on October 11, 2014. Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  4. Wan, Grace; Johnson, Wallace (2009). "An Advanced Reader in Chinese History" (PDF). University of Kansas, Center for East Asian Studies. p. 274. Retrieved May 14, 2015.
  5. David-West, Alzo (January 2009). "The Literary Ideas of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il: An Introduction to North Korean Meta-Authorial Perspectives" (PDF). Cultural Logic. 12: 5–6. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 23, 2015. Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  6. Kim, Il-sung. "제3장 길림시절" [Chapter 3: In Jilin]. Segi wa tŏburŏ 세기와 더불어 [Reminiscences: With the Century] (in Korean). 1. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  7. Bradley K. Martin (April 1, 2007). Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. St. Martin's Press. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-4299-0699-9.
  8. Chih-yu, Shih (May 28, 2014). Harmonious Intervention: China's Quest for Relational Security. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 69. ISBN 978-1-4094-6487-7.
  9. Jungmin, Seo (March 2005). "Nationalism and the Problem of Political Legitimacy in China". In Lynn White (ed.). Legitimacy : Ambiguities of Political Success or Failure in East and Southeast Asia. Series on Contemporary China. 1. River Edge, NJ: World Scientific Publishing Co. pp. 141–182. doi:10.1142/9789812569349_0005. ISBN 978-981-256-092-6. Archived from the original on April 18, 2015. Retrieved April 18, 2015 – via ProQuest ebrary.
  10. Arifk Dirlik (January 1982). "Chinese Historians and the Marxist Concept of Capitalism: A Critical Examination". Modern China. 8 (1): 111. JSTOR 188834.
  11. Kim, Il-sung (1994). Reminiscences: With the Century (pdf). 1. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House. p. 23. Retrieved April 18, 2015.
  12. Zhong-hua Li (July 15, 2014). "The Development Process of Henana Literature Before the Founding of the P.R.C and the Reasons Analysis Behind the Backwardness of Henan Literature of this Period". International Conference on Humanity and Social Science (ICHSS2014). DEStech Publications, Inc. p. 51. ISBN 978-1-60595-195-9.
  13. Willard J. Peterson (1978). The Ch'ing Empire to 1800. The Cambridge History of China. 9. Cambridge University Press. p. 644. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521243346. ISBN 978-0-521-24334-6.
  14. Eckert, Carter J. (March 1, 2014). Offspring of Empire: Koch'ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism 1876–1945. Offspring of Empire. University of Washington Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-295-80513-9.
  15. Cha, Myung Soo (November 2004). "Facts and Myths about Korea's Economic Past" (PDF). Australian Economic History Review. 44 (3): 278–290. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8446.2004.00122.x. Retrieved May 16, 2015.

Further reading
  • Shang Yue xian sheng 尚钺先生 [Mr. Shang Yue] (in Chinese). Renmin University of China Press. 2011. ISBN 978-7300141480.


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