ABSTRACT
Historians like Wang Gungwu do much more than record the past. From the late 1950s until the present day, Wang has been performing historical inquiries; reassessing and re-valuing Chinese history, the agency of the Chinese outside China, and what revolution, empire, and tianxia meant and mean in China.1 In his career, he has always opted for pursuing an inside/outside approach to his subjects, and he has had a similar effect on the field. That is, he has both used scholarly inquiry as an astute insider, and critiqued scholarship for its misapplication of terms (empire, nationalism, overseas Chinese) and theories (China threat theory, Marxism) as they applied to Chinese history and the Chinese within Asia. As a result of his efforts, scholarship aiming to understand China has broadened and deepened its methodological and epistemological visions. This process has been essential for contributing to a better awareness of the entities identified as China and Chineseness (a very typical Wang Gungwu expression) both for China-watchers outside and Chinese policy makers and academics within China’s territorial borders.
