ABSTRACT
The function of history in traditional China was to serve the empire in association with Confucian ideals that valued continuity with past models of good government and personal decorum. Writing and transmitting history was central to Chinese culture almost continuously for 2800 years. With unification of the country in 221 b.c., inaugurating an imperial period of successive dynasties that lasted until 1911, a new dynasty took on responsibility to write the history of the previous dynasty based on an elaborate model established by Ssu Ma-ch’ien, a historian of the former Han Dynasty (second century b.c.). The compilation of dynastic histories was managed by state officials successful in the imperial examination system.
