Wu Han (historian)

Wu Han (Chinese: 吴晗; August 11, 1909 – October 11, 1969) was a Chinese historian and politician, and a leading scholar on the Ming dynasty. Wu was one of the most important historians in the development of modern historical scholarship in China during the 1930s and 1940s.
In the 1940s he was a leading member of the China Democratic League, a non-aligned political organization during most of the Chinese civil war which eventually threw its weight behind the Communist Party of China. After 1949, he served as the Vice-Mayor of Beijing.
In November 1965, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, he came under attack for a play he authored about an upright Ming dynasty official called Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, which was later branded as an anti-Mao allegory. His political downfall also resulted in the purge of Beijing Mayor Peng Zhen. He died in prison in 1969.

Biography

Early life and education

Wu Han was born in Yiwu, Zhejiang in 1909. With support from the Wu clan organization and with the money from selling his mother's jewelry, he attended university preparatory schools in Hangzhou and then in Shanghai, where he was inspired by the lectures of Hu Shi. He entered Tsinghua University in 1931 and came under the influence of Tsiang Tingfu. Since he was responsible for the support of his brother and sister, he was unable to go abroad for study. Wu stayed at Tsinghua as a teaching assistant but began to publish important articles on Ming dynasty history using critical techniques to resolve old controversies and raise new questions.

1937 - 1953

When the war with Japan broke out in 1937, Wu joined National Southwestern Associated University in Kunming. While there, he wrote a full scale biography of the founder of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, published in 1943, expanded and revised in 1947. He became a leading intellectual in the democratic movement of the 1940s, as well as a widely published essayist. Through his part in the China Democratic League he was enlisted in the founding of the People's Republic in 1949.

When the new United Front was founded, as a member of the Democratic League, Wu was asked to take the position of Vice Mayor of Beijing in charge of education and cultural affairs for the 6 county municipal area that became a model for municipalities across the PRC. In the 1950s, Wu represented China abroad on cultural tours and popularized his research at home, using figures from history as models and allegorical figures. He became a member of the Chinese Communist Party secretly in the mid-50s; this was not known by his colleagues or by Party members except at the very highest level. It was only revealed in the Cultural Revolution by the Red Guard accusations after they found his files.

Later years

Wu wrote a series of articles and a play originally published in 1951 and revised many times, on the life of Hai Rui, a Ming dynasty official. In 1960 Wu's Beijing opera, Hai Rui Dismissed from Office became a great success. In November 1965 Yao Wenyuan, later one of the Gang of Four, fired one of the opening shots of the Cultural Revolution when he attacked Wu and his play on the grounds that Hai Rui was metaphorically equated with Peng Dehuai, and therefore Mao himself with the un-approachable Ming emperor. Wu admitted ideological mistakes but denied that his motives were counter-revolutionary.

Over the next months the controversy grew, and Wu was finally jailed. Although there were reports that Wu Han committed suicide while in prison in 1969, fellow prisoners later reported that he was beaten in prison about a year before he died. It is also thought his tuberculosis may have recurred so it cannot be established how he died.