The Politics of the Past in Early China

History mattered to the political elite in ancient China. Leung explores why it was so important and to what end.

Introduction; 1. Time out of joint: uses of the past from the Western Zhou to the early warring states; 2. A parenthetical past: deep history and anti-history in the late warring states; 3. Specter of the past: bureaucratic amnesia under the Rise of the Qin Empire; 4. The rehabilitation of antiquity in the early Han Empire; 5. Sima Qian's critical past; Epilogue.