Jian Bozan ( zh, s=翦伯赞, t=翦伯贊, p=Jiǎn Bózàn; April 14, 1898 – December 18, 1968) was a Chinese scholar and Marxist historian of Uyghur descent. Born in

Taoyuan County Taoyuan County () is under the administration of Changde, Hunan Province, China. The Yuan River, a tributary of the Yangtze, flows through Taoyuan. It covers an area of 4441 square kilometers, of which is arable land. It is from Zhangjiang To ...

, Hunan Province, Jian became an early supporter of the

Communist Party of China The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Ci ...

. From 1952 to his death, he was Vice President of

Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charte ...

. Like many authoritative academic figures of his generation, he was persecuted during the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goa ...

over a perceived divergence between his own ideas and that of dominant Maoist orthodoxy of the time. Unable to bear torture, Jian committed suicide in 1968.

Biography

Genealogical descent

"Jian" () is very unusual surname in China. Jian Bozan traced his ancestry to a Uyghur general () who served the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty in quelling the earliest of the

Miao rebellions There have been several Miao rebellions in Chinese history: *Miao rebellions in the Ming dynasty (14th–15th centuries) *Bozhou rebellion (1589–1600) *Miao Rebellion (1735–36) *Miao Rebellion (1795–1806) *Miao Rebellion (1854–73) There hav ...

in southeastern China. The Emperor rewarded his family with the surname "Jian" () and married him to his god-daughter, the Duyi Princess. The Jian family then settled in

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangx ...

province for generations, gradually integrating into Han Chinese culture.

Early years and education

In 1916, Jian entered school in Beijing, where he studied and conducted research about Chinese economic history. His graduation thesis was a 50,000-character study of the history of China's currency system. Believing that industry was China's savior, he travelled to the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, University of Califor ...

in 1924 to research economics. During this time, he studied

Anti-Dühring ''Anti-Dühring'' (german: Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft, "Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science") is a book by Friedrich Engels, first published in German in 1878. It had previously been serialised in the newspaper ''V ...

The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State ''The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: in the Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan'' (german: Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats) is an 1884 philosophical treatise by Friedrich Engels. It is p ...

The Communist Manifesto ''The Communist Manifesto'', originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (german: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is a political pamphlet written by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Commu ...

, and other famous Marxist works. He returned to China in 1926. Jian was a patriot, and participated in the protests leading up to the

March 18 Massacre The March 18 Massacre (三·一八惨案) was a massacre that took place on 18 March 1926, amid an anti-warlord and anti-imperialist demonstration in Beijing, China. The date, March 18, was referred to by Chinese writer Lu Xun as the "darkest day ...

of that year.Wang and Zhou, 68 He published his first Marxist interpretation of

Chinese history The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC, from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC), during the reign of king Wu Ding. Ancient historical texts such as the ''Book of Documents'' (early chapter ...

during the 1930s, and joined the

in 1937. In 1934, while serving as secretary to Qin Zhen, deputy head of the

Judicial Yuan The Judicial Yuan () is the judicial branch of the government of the Republic of China on Taiwan.''See'' Constitution arts. 77-82, ''available at'' ''See'' Additional Articles of the Constitution art. 5, ''available at'' It runs a Constitution ...

, Jian went on a tour of numerous countries around the world. As a close ally of the Communist Party, Jian became professor of history at

after the party's rise to power in 1949, and later served as dean of the faculty of history and vice-president of the university.

During the Cultural Revolution

Jian became a target of struggle during the early stages of the

. During the early 1960s, Jian began to advocate historical accounts that combined the methodology of class analysis and

historicism Historicism is an approach to explaining the existence of phenomena, especially social and cultural practices (including ideas and beliefs), by studying their history, that is, by studying the process by which they came about. The term is widely ...

. For this,

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also Romanization of Chinese, romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the List of national founde ...

criticized Jian at the end of 1965.

Qi Benyu Qi Benyu (1931 – 20 April 2016) was a Chinese Communist theorist, mainly active during the Cultural Revolution. Qi was a member of the ultra-left Cultural Revolution Group, director of the Department of Petitions and deputy director of the Secr ...

, a prominent Maoist figure of the time period, also criticized Jian on four counts: opposing the theory of class struggle, denigrating peasant revolutions, praising emperors and kings, and applauding conciliatory policies. Jian also suffered from severe torture and was lynched at the hands of radicals. The ill treatment drove Jian to commit suicide. Jian, along with his wife, took an overdose of sleeping pills and died on December 18, 1968. Jian was posthumously rehabilitated in 1978, at the behest of

Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese revolutionary leader, military commander and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC) from December 1978 to November 1989. Aft ...

Abridged list of publications

* ''Treatise on Chinese History'' () * ''Discussions of Historical Questions'' () * ''Anthology of Historical Works by Jian Bozan'' () * ''Historical Data and the Study of History'' () * ''Recent Capitalist Economy of the World'' () * ''A Course in the Philosophy of History'' () * ''An Outline of Chinese History'' () * ''History of the Qin and Han Dynasties'' () * ''Timeline of Chinese and Foreign History'' () * ''General Reference on Chinese History'' ()

References