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SUMMARY:Witchcraft and the Rise of the First Confucian Empire (巫蛊之
 祸和儒家帝国的兴起) - Dr. Liang CAI (Assistant Professor of Histo
 ry\, University of Arkansas\; Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College\, Univers
 ity of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20130511T130000Z
DTEND:20130511T140000Z
UID:TALK45102@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:31357
DESCRIPTION:This talk offers a new reading of the emergence of the first C
 onfucian empire. It revives a hidden narrative in The Grand Scribe’s Rec
 ords (Shi ji): the rich statistical data the founding father of Chinese hi
 storiography Sima Qian stored in his tabular charts and in voluminous fasc
 inating stories. It shows that different from the standard paradigm that a
 ttributes Confucians’ political success to Emperor Wu (141–87 BCE)\, o
 nly six of the seventy-seven officials—or 7.8 percent—who rose to prom
 inence under his rule were regarded as Confucians by their contemporaries.
  Not only were Confucians a powerless minority in the political realm\, bu
 t that during the first 120 years of the Western Han dynasty the learning 
 community of the Five Classics also suffered from fragmentation. Endeavori
 ng to negotiate and rectify this reality\, Sima Qian invented a coherent i
 deological community that ignited Confucians’ collective consciousness a
 nd eventually contributed to its solidarity. This study argues that the ev
 entual rise of Confucian officials and the emergence of Confucian schools 
 took place only after a witchcraft scandal reconfigured the political powe
 r. Years of witch hunt at the end of Emperor Wu’s rule wiped out the est
 ablished families in the court and gave birth to a new elite class\, among
  whom was a group of Confucians. Providing a cosmological theory to legiti
 mate the dictator Huo Guang and the commoner emperor Liu Bingyi\, Confucia
 ns seized the right opportunity during the imperial crisis to realize thei
 r political dream\, a dream that had been envisioned and pursued by the ex
 emplary sage Confucius hundreds of years earlier. 
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1 (via entrance A)\, King's College\, University of 
 Cambridge
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