ABSTRACT
The recording and interpretation of history has, for the past two millennia, contained a special significance in China. More than in most other countries, history was and is considered a mirror through which ethical standards and moral transgressions pertinent to the present day could be viewed. This perspective on history was based in Confucian doctrine, which admonished followers to plumb the past for such lessons. It became a method of commentary about contemporary times that members of the literati class learned how to manipulate, sometimes as a means of flattering an incumbent emperor and government - but sometimes as a stratagem for chastising the imperial court. After all, in a centrally controlled empire it was always safer to place one's criticisms in a past age than to write directly about the present court. Well aware of this potential for allegory, suspicious emperors and their entourages kept a watchful eye open for subversive intent in the historical treatises of the literati. Repeatedly, purges and persecutions in imperial China were rooted in alleged 'historical' aspersions, real or imagined, against the imperial majesty.
