This article investigates the formation of the Shatan scholarly group and the contribution of its leader, Zheng Zhen. Zheng benefitted from a vigorous trans-regional cultural network of returned local scholars such as Li Xun and Mo Yuchou and prominent scholar-officials from outside such as Cheng Enze and He Changling. Zheng Zhen remained true to the approaches and research topics of evidential research, i.e., historical philology and exegesis of pre-Qin classics, bibliography, and an inquiry into ancient institutions and technology, in an era when the general intellectual trend turned toward statecraft studies and the politicized Modern Text School, promoted by scholars like Gong Zizhen and Kang Youwei. The contribution of the Shatan group, Zheng Zhen in particular, embodies the rise of evidential research, a passion for facts, as well as concerns about society. More importantly, it prompts us to rethink Guizhou as an active agent in the late Qing Chinese cultural landscape.
KeywordsLate Qing, evidential research, Zheng Zhen, Mo Youzhi, Guizhou
I N T R O D U C T I O NPast historical research on Guizhou, a mountainous southwestern province heavily inhabited by non-Han Chinese ethnic minorities, has focused on its historical relationship with the central government before and after it became a Chinese province in the fifteenth century, as well as the rebellion of the Miao or other indigenous peoples after the replacement of local chieftains with regular imperial bureaucracy (gaitu gui liu 改土歸流) in the early eighteenth century. 1 Overall, the study of Chinese borderlands Allegheny College, email: gwu@allegheny.edu This research was supported by the Jonathan E. and Nancy L. Helmreich History Research and Book Fund Grant of Allegheny College, Allegheny College Academic Support Fund, and the National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Fudan University, China. The author is grateful to Benjamin Elman, Ge Zhaoguang, Jodi Weinstein, Hanchao Lu, Doug Reynolds, Qiong Zhang, and Huang Wanji for offering suggestions or reading the drafts. I also thank the anonymous readers for helpful comments.