Historiographic Analysis on Two Major American Journals on the Cultural Revolution in China, 1960-1979

Abstract

Since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the mainstream academic has produced a heap of analysis to explain how the momentous historical event started. This article presents the findings of how the Cultural Revolution started from the historiographical viewpoint of two American journals, China Quarterly and Monthly Review. The Monthly Review is a socialist journal whose authors have sympathized and even supported Mao’s action, and some writers published in the China Quarterly have also argued for the Cultural
Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. The sympathetic stance is rarely seen in the academic field after the 1970s. This study serves as a review to provide the alternative view from the China Quarterly and the Monthly Review on the Cultural Revolution, one of the most important events in the history of contemporary China. Thus, this research critically reviews the purpose, reasoning, and theoretical approaches of these American authors to present the readers how and why these authors had come to their conclusions on the Cultural Revolution