The Reception of the Modern Historiographic Footnote in Twentieth Century China

1 Introduction

Since the 1980s, contemporary scholarship began to examine footnotes in the discipline of historical studies as part of the history of modern humanities. The studies centered on footnotes or footnoting practice in the 1980s and 1990s benefited from perspectives that shaped the directions of Western historiography. These perspectives of cultural history, the history of books and printing culture, and the history of humanities may enhance a comprehensive understanding of the footnote and its role in modern historiography across the globe.

The footnote as the central topic of contemporary scholarship could be traced back to 1984 when Glen W. Bowersock published an article on Edward Gibbon’s footnoting art (Bowersock, 1984). Later, Anthony Grafton seriously studied the history of footnoting art in Western Europe as a modern historiographic practice. In 1994, Grafton first published an article in the journal History and Theory discussing the history of the footnote from De Thou to Ranke. The following year, he published a small book in German due to his visiting research position in Berlin. In 1997, Grafton published an English book titled The Footnote: A Curious History, which generated significant interest in academia. As Grafton pointed out, “Modern historians demand that every brand-new text about the past come with systematic notes, written by its author, on its sources. This is a rule of professional historical scholarship” (Grafton, 1997, p. 31). He argued that the culture of footnotes in historiography rooted in the German research university system in the nineteenth century that favored research originality rather than narrative. The younger generation of historians in Germany began to value footnotes and primary sources as appendixes in their works. They paid much attention to archival materials for historical research and offered detailed annotations in their doctoral dissertations as a combination of the content and style in modern historiography.

Grafton’s study of the footnote revealed the function and significance of footnotes in modern historiography. The extensive footnotes denoted the innovation of the historical papers and assured the legitimacy and authority of historiographic professionalism. The footnote had twofold functions: to persuade readers to believe that historians have done considerable work sufficient to discuss the chosen topic academically and to indicate that historians have used primary historical materials, prompting critical and open-minded readers to explore the process of interpreting texts. Grafton carefully distinguished the nature and function between historical footnotes and traditional annotations and gave them special significance in the modernization and professionalization of historiography, which was very inspiring.

Grafton’s book focused on the history of European historiography. Although he noted the contributions of theologians, philosophers, philologists, and writers to the development of the footnote, he did not touch on the evolution of the footnote in other humanities and social science fields. However, his book inspired many further publications on the history of the footnote. In 2002, Chuck Zerby published a book titled The Devil’s Details: A History of Footnotes, attributing the initial appearance of the footnote to the invention of the British literary tradition in the seventeenth century (Zerby, 2002). Nevertheless, with the emergence of modern disciplinary divisions outside the humanities, the influence of natural sciences, and the evolution of printing technology also impact the rise of the footnote. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, natural scientists might also have used footnotes in their experimental reports and scientific papers. Did this practice affect other disciplines? Furthermore, how was the use of footnotes affected by printing technology? These questions deserve further consideration.

The history of the footnote in East Asia will be another interesting case. In the Sino-graphic cultural sphere of East Asia, the traditional way of writing and publishing works by Chinese and Japanese scholars has long been to leave the top and bottom of each page of the vertically printed books to facilitate readers for taking notes. The traditional writing and printing format in East Asia did not use the footnote due to the vertical arrangement of the text, which was different from the alphabet-based Western texts, which looked more comfortable for readers by writing and printing in the horizontal format. Therefore, using the footnote in East Asia involved the process of writing, printing, knowledge acquisition, and reader cognition. As Betsy Hilbert noted, technological factors indeed impact students’ use of endnotes and footnotes. She pointed out that students in the 1960s and 1970s should have calculated the space reserved for notes at the bottom of the page and often reached compromises with professors to use endnotes. However, their convenience caused readers trouble because people frequently had to turn to the back to read the notes (Hilbert, 1989).

This paper examines the rise and evolution of the footnote in modern Chinese historiography, focusing on the pivotal period from the end of the nineteenth century to the 1950s. This paper traces the evolution of the footnote from its reception in the modern East Asian lexicons to its adoption in some leading journals in the 1930s and to its full reception as a nation-wide historiographic practice in the 1950s.

2 The “Footnote” as a Loanword and a Practice in Early Twentieth Century East Asia

Similar to the distinction between the footnote in modern historiography and the traditional annotations in Europe, there is also a big difference between modern footnotes and traditional annotations in China. The modern footnote in East Asia was an imported tradition from the West as part of the practice of the so-called modern humanities. Traditional annotations have a long history in Chinese traditional learning, appearing in numerous names, such as notes, commentaries, or explanatory notes. Some commentaries are even more well-known than the original texts, including Zuo Qiuming’s 左丘明 Commentary on the Spring and Autumn (Zuozhuan 左传) and Li Daoxuan’s 郦道元 Commentary on the Classic of Waters (Shuijing zhu 水经注). These notes have nothing to do with the modern footnote.

However, it should be noted that the Chinese term “jiaozhu 脚注,” which denotes the modern footnote, appeared very early in Chinese textual tradition. Some scholars pointed out that it had appeared in Buddhist materials as early as the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD). It refers to the notes written in small font characters at the bottom of the page. A manuscript of household registration documents in the Tang Dynasty uncovered from Turfan also used the term “jiaozhu.” Indeed, this manuscript used footnotes written in small font below the main text (Ran, 2008). However, modern Chinese historian Liang Qichao 梁启超 (1877–1929) clearly explained the function of annotations in traditional Chinese historiography. He pointed out that there were two kinds of annotations: exegetical annotations and supplementary annotations. The former refers to the annotations that explained the meanings of terms and technical names in the ancient texts, mainly commentaries. The latter refers to commentaries such as Pei Songzhi’s commentary on the histories of Three Kingdoms (Sanguozhi 三国志), which supplemented more historical sources (Liang, 1985). Liang Qichao’s interpretation of traditional historical annotations is quite different from the functions of modern historical footnotes. The function of modern footnotes in history is more extensive and complex. It must not only cite primary sources to support the arguments in the text but also cite secondary sources to acknowledge the contributions of other scholars.

The “footnote,” as a critical concept in modern historiography, was an “imported” product to modern East Asia. Along with other new terms and concepts, the rise of the footnote in modern East Asian historiography was driven by the imperial expansion of imperialism and colonialism of the modern West. Contemporary scholarship has already studied the process of Western learning entering East Asia at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, paying particular attention to the relationship between new ideas and new terms. For example, a considerable amount of research focuses on emerging new terms in translating Western works in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Huang, 2015; Lackner et al., 2001; Shen, 2008, 2010). For East Asian historiography, the modern sense of “footnote” was also a new term. This term probably entered the East Asian dictionaries for the first time in the first decade of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, there were confusions centered on the Chinese term “jiaozhu 脚注” or “zhujiao 注脚” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both referring to “footnotes” and “annotations,” depending on the contexts in which they were used.

Unlike Chinese terms, Japanese publications in the late nineteenth century often indicated foreign vocabulary by using katakana characters. In Japanese, the katakana “フットノート” (or フット・ノート) is used to refer to footnotes (Arakawa, 1931, 1932). As early as 1916, Japanese publications were aware of the difference in printing format between Japanese and European journals. In Volume 28 of the Zoology Magazine (Dobutsugaku zasshi 動物學雜誌), it states that Japanese texts were all printed vertically. In contrast, texts in European languages were printed horizontally, so it is easier to add the footnote (フット・ノート). The Geology Magazine (Chishitsugaku zasshi 地質學雜誌) published in 1917 and the Journal of Oriental Science and Art (Tōyō gakugei zasshi 東洋學藝雜誌) in 1920, and the book titled Japan in the Pre-historical Era (Yūshi izen no Nihon 有史以前の日本) in 1925 all used the term “フットノート (Fottonoto)” to refer to footnotes. While looking into Zoology Magazine and Geology Magazine, natural science publications commonly needed to cite secondary sources in European languages, so they had to pay more attention to footnotes. When explaining the publication details of the book titled The Insect Realm (Konchūkai 昆蟲界), published by Kato Masayo in 1933, it clearly stated that this katakana フットノート referred to the “footnote,” which was listed together with the errata sheet (Katō, 1933, p. 183). Later, Yamaoka Kinichi’s book Manufacturing and Printing: A Reader of Publishing Technology mentioned that the footnotes (フットノート) in European-language typesetting are equivalent to the Japanese headnotes on each page, which meant using movable types to print the footnotes in small-font characters to the lower part of each page to create a gap between the text and the footnotes (Yamaoka, 1949).

Let us first take a look at how the footnote as a loanword entered the English–Chinese and Chinese–English dictionaries of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Fortunately, the Institute of Modern History of Academia Sinica in Taipei has created an electronic database of English–Chinese dictionaries. It includes the most representative early English–Chinese dictionaries from 1815 to 1919, compiled by foreign missionaries and linguists. The database currently consists of 24 dictionaries. Among them, 14 dictionaries have full texts (including 11 English–Chinese Dictionaries and three Chinese–English dictionaries), with a total of about 113,000 English entries and 18,000 Chinese entries, corresponding to 840,000 Chinese and English explanations, example sentences, and other entries.^[1] Among them, the earliest English–Chinese dictionary compiled by a Chinese scholar, Kuang Qizhao 邝其照 (1836–1891), An English and Chinese Dictionary: Compiled from the Latest and Best Authorities, and Containing all Words in Common Use, with Many Examples of Their Use (1887), which does not have the entries of either “footnote” or “endnote” (Miyata, 2010; Takata, 2009; Uchida, 1998). Largely reprinted from Kuang’s dictionary, Huang Shaoqiong’s An English–Chinese Dictionary, published in Hong Kong in 1895, did not include an entry for a “footnote” either. Four subsequent dictionaries did not contain the entry of “footnote” either (Gale, 1897; Gubbins, 1889; Mathews, 1931; Stent, 1905).

However, the situation changed in the first decade of the twentieth century. The entry “footnote” first appeared in Yan Huiqing’s 颜惠庆 (1877–1950) An English and Chinese Standard Dictionary published in Shanghai in 1908. The entry “footnote” appeared on page 930, with an English annotation saying that as a noun, it refers to “A note at the foot of the page.” A Chinese annotation claims, “note on the corner of the page, bottom note, annotation.” Here, it displayed an entry “footnote” used on the page’s bottom. As the editor of this dictionary, Yan Huiqing was a scholar with a translation degree from St. John’s University in Shanghai. This dictionary even had a preface by the president of St. John’s University when the Shanghai Commercial Press published it. Similarly, the Japanese Dictionary of Loanwords (日本外来語辞典 Nihon gairaigo jiten) published by Sanseido in 1915 also had the entry of “footnote” (page 395). Jiang Yinghao noted that “footnote” as a word had already appeared in Liang Qichao’s writings in 1904, and the word “footnote” appeared at least 10 times in many newspapers such as Chinese Progress (Shiwu Bao 时务报), Pure Discussion (Qingyi bao 清议报), and New Citizen (Xinmin congbao 新民丛报) where Liang Qichao published numerous articles (Jiang, 2004). In the first decade of the twentieth century, “footnote” as an English loanword entered the discussions and lexicography of Chinese scholars and has gradually been accepted by more and more readers.

Liang Qichao’s historiographic knowledge about the footnote might come from Japan, given his close connections with Japanese politicians and scholars in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Fogel, 2004; Kockum, 1988; Tang, 1996). Therefore, it would be interesting to examine how Japanese scholars viewed and adopted footnotes in establishing modern professional historiography in Japan. The professionalization of historical research in modern Japan, referring to the emergence of historians as a new profession and the establishment of professional organizations for historians, appeared in the late nineteenth century, or the late Meiji period, but the process continued into the Taishō and early Showa eras. Although many professional historians were university-trained scholars in Japan or Europe, many philologists and other humanities scholars taught themselves or inherited family traditions as counterparts in modern Europe. However, in modern Japan, professional historians gradually focused on three major fields: Japanese history, Western history, and the history of the Orient. A quick skim of numerous monographs and volumes of collected papers published in Japan in the late nineteenth century, reveals the modern-sense historiographic footnotes were not used at all, which indicated that this modern academic standard and style were not much adopted among Japanese scholars at that time. The Historical Society of Japan (Nihhon Shigakukai 日本史學會) was established in 1889, which was declared at the first meeting of Japanese historians at the Tokyo Imperial University. The establishment of this historical professional society could be regarded as the starting point of the institutional and organizational professionalization of history as a modern discipline in Japan.

From the very beginning of its establishment, the Historical Society of Japan decided to publish the Journal of Historical Society (Shigakukai-Zasshi 史學會雜誌, later renamed Journal of History, Shigaku-Zasshi 史學雜誌), the official journal of the society. However, the call-for-paper announcement of this journal only offered a list of the potential topics for the manuscript submissions, including the following categories: essays on the compilation of national history, institutions, cultural relics, clothing, identifying artifacts, identifying and interpreting texts and collections, collections of historical materials, inscriptions, and other miscellaneous records.^[2] There needed to be a clear style sheet and further information about the submission format. There were no other instructions for potential authors. Nevertheless, this journal targeted potential authors who were members of the Historical Society. At that time, the members of the Historical Society came from a wide range of academic and socio-cultural backgrounds. The membership was not restricted to professional scholars and historians from universities and research institutions. Many others, such as enthusiasts, antiquities collectors, and second-hand bookstore owners also joined this society. It might not be easy to imagine that these members would know how to write modern research papers as professional historians did. They would take time to learn about the norms of historical research as a modern profession. Therefore, the dozen publications published in the nineteenth century used parenthetical notes in the text. These notes should have indicated page numbers and other publishing information for cited sources.

Apparently, within the domestic academia of Japan, the footnote was not accepted as a standard practice in the humanities, including the fields of history, philosophy, archeology, and anthropology in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century. However, Japanese scholars who had experience living overseas and studying in Europe and the United States were different. They usually followed European and American academic styles and norms if they published papers in Europe and the United States. For example, those Japanese scholars who studied Buddhism and religions in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries published English articles with standard footnote format. In 1896, Takakusu Junjiro 高楠順次郎 (1866–1945) published an article with standard footnotes on the interaction between a Buddhist monk and a Christian priest in Tang China in the European Sinology journal T’oung-pao, same as his small book published in Oxford in 1896, and his paper published in the Journal of the Pali Text Society. Nanjō Bun’yū南條文雄 (1849–1927), who published his articles in Europe, also used a contemporary standard academic format and style. Both Takakusu and Nanjō spent several years studying modern Buddhist scholarship in Europe. Takakusu later taught Buddhism as a visiting faculty in the United States and published several books in English in the 1910s.

Traditionally, Japanese scholars only used bibliographic notes in their publications after paying attention to the versions of the citations or offering the page numbers for the readers to attest to their credibility. However, in the late Meiji period, or the first decade of the twentieth century, some scholars in Japan began to realize the significance of the bibliographical notes due to the Western influence. Takebe Tongo 建部遯吾 (1871–1945) was a sociologist who received training in France. His publications were printed in the traditional Japanese vertical format but with Western features in terms of offering detailed bibliographical information in the notes. For instance, in 1904, he published a book introducing modern sociological theories from Europe. The purpose of this book was to describe the objectives, nature, scope, and methods of sociological research. This book was printed in the traditional Japanese vertical format. However, it noted the difference between the main text and the notes. The notes were printed on the upper part of each page, called crown notes 冠注. Takebe claimed that the independence of the national language was a significant element of cultural autonomy and social independence, so he decided that the use of foreign languages should be as minimal as possible in his book. The Japanese language should be used as much as possible. He noted that new terms from other languages could be used to introduce new concepts and subjects. Still, he was worried that introducing many unfamiliar terms could cause trouble to Japanese-language readers. For him, unfamiliar terms might lack stability and elegance, making the writing more complicated. In terms of the format, this book has three parts: the main text, the annotations, and the crowned notes. The main text was printed in prominent characters and focused on Takebe’s writings, quoting some remarks from other scholars, and examining their historical development. The annotations, mostly citations from other scholars’ works, were also printed in large-font characters. The crown notes included the bibliography, some cited sentences, and references about the allusions. The crown notes were numbered consecutively (Takebe, 1904). Functionally speaking, these crown notes were the counterpart of the footnotes in Western-language publications because they mainly offered bibliographical information. They were called crown notes, rather than footnotes, simply because they were printed on the upper top of each page.

The Western-style footnote gradually began to be established in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, but it was not a dominant practice. Due to the printing technology and norms, there was still a transition from using endnotes to adopting footnotes. In the 1920s and 1930s, increasingly Japanese scholars who had studied in Europe returned to Japan and began their academic journey by publishing their works. Their publications were often printed in the vertical format, which technically put the bibliographical notes in the positions of endnotes for convenience. Interestingly, the older generations of scholars who built their reputations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries began to re-issue their early footnote-free publications from the old era by adopting a modern style and format. Some of these reprinted publications began to adopt endnotes and footnotes as a standard practice for academic journals, which should be regarded as a trend of Westernization of academic style and standard, along with introducing Western concepts and ideas since the Meiji Restoration movement. For example, Naitō Konan 内藤湖南 (1866–1934) reprinted numerous works in the early Showa era. Most of these publications first appeared in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries without annotations, leaving endnotes and footnotes alone. However, when they were re-issued or reprinted in the late 1920s and early 1930s, endnotes consisting of bibliographical information were added to these new versions. However, the younger generation of Japanese scholars who grew up in the 1920s and 1930s slowly began to use endnotes or footnotes. For example, Naito Konan’s disciple Tamai Zehaku 玉井是博 (1897–1940), a historian of medieval Chinese economic history who studied in Europe, became accustomed to using footnotes in his articles and books. In 1931 and 1932, Tamai went to London, Paris, Berlin, and San Francisco to investigate the Chinese manuscripts on the socio-economic history of medieval China and discussed with many European and American scholars, so he became familiar with the Western-language scholarship of Oriental studies at that time (Chen, 2013).

3 The Evolution of the Footnote in China in the 1920s and 1930s

In the first half of the twentieth century, Chinese historiography experienced tremendous changes and transformations. On August 28, 1922, Hu Shi 胡适 (1891–1962) commented in his diary on some of his contemporary celebrated scholars at that time: “Nowadays, the Chinese academic community is desperate. There are only four old-generation scholars left: Wang Guowei 王国维 (1877–1927), Luo Zhenyu 罗振玉 (1866–1940), Ye Dehui 叶德辉 (1864–1927), and Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 (1869–1936); followed by some transitional scholars who are semi-new and semi-old, including only Liang Qichao and a few of us. Among these scholars, Zhang Binglin is academically semi-fossilized, Luo and Ye’s scholarship is not organized and systematic, and only Wang Guowei is the most promising” (Cao, 2001). Here, the so-called “old-generation scholars” in Hu Shi’s eyes did not use footnotes in their publications. They would not connect the footnote style with modern scholarship due to their training background and the style of scholarship. However, the so-called semi-new and semi-old scholars such as Liang Qichao and Hu Shi gradually adopted the footnote style in their publications in the 1920s. The establishment of Tsinghua College and the creation of the Boxer Indemnity Fund sent numerous Chinese students to receive higher education in the United States since 1911. Therefore, in the 1920s, when these Chinese students finished their degrees in the United States, they often accepted the American academic style by using footnotes in their theses and dissertations in English. Hu Shih’s dissertation was an excellent testimony to this new academic style among Chinese students (Hu, 1922).

In the 1930s, some Chinese scholars already realized the importance of footnotes, even though they were from outside the discipline of history. For example, as an expert in education, Zhong Luzhai 钟鲁斋 specifically talked about the location of footnotes in his book The Scientific Research Method of Education (Jiaoyu zhi kexue yanjiufa 教育之科学研究法) published in 1935: “Where the notes should be placed depends on the paragraphs of the original text. Perhaps, in Chinese-language works, the notes can be placed at the end or bottom of each page or at the end of each section or each chapter. For English-language works, the notes are mostly placed at the bottom of each page, and a line must be drawn to separate them from the main text” (Zhong, 1935, pp. 22–23). Although he used the term “notes” here, he referred to them as footnotes in academic works.

Literary scholars also paid attention to the academic style of using the footnote. The 1920s and 1930s were transitional periods, so the traditional Chinese format and Western academic style might appear together. For example, the annotations on the top of each page in the traditional Chinese way (which was called eyebrow annotation, or “meipi 眉批” in Chinese) might appear together with footnotes on the bottom of each page. In his compilation of proses from New Literature, Zheng Zhenduo 郑振铎 said, “Nevertheless, in the past, the compiler who selected the proses had the habit of offering eyebrow annotations and footnotes, which could be regarded as fulfilling the duty. Now, here I have to add some “snake feet [abundant things], so it looks to follow the old tradition. I am not a critic, and what I saw and talked about may be ridiculous. If readers use my annotations as footnotes, they may be able to recognize a single accomplishment in my foolish notes” (Zheng, 1935, p. 13). Zheng seems to have already understood the importance of the footnote. In the meantime, he attempted to combine both the old fashion of “eyebrow notes” in China and the modern “footnote” from the West.

A similar dilemma can also be found in the works of He Bingsong 何炳松 (1890–1946), a historian who held both the traditional xiucai秀才 degree from the Qing dynasty and a modern master’s degree from Princeton University. Although he was educated at Princeton, after returning to China in 1916, he published his papers without footnotes, demonstrating that he still followed the old fashion of China in writing and publishing. However, in 1924, when his Chinese translation of James Harvey Robinson’s The New History was published, it had endnotes following the modern academic style. In 1934, when he published an essay for restoring the publication of the Journal of Education (Jiaoyu zazhi 教育杂志), he also used endnotes. In the 1930s, He Bingsong might have used endnotes under the pressure of the widely adopted modern Western style.

It should be noted that in the 1920s, several modern academic journals were founded in China. The editors and the publishing houses had to negotiate with each other and with contributors on the style of submission and publication. In the 1920s, some of the most visible journals in the history discipline included Journal of Historical and Geographical Essays (Shidi congkan 史地丛刊) by the History and Geography Society of Beijing Higher Normal School, Journal of History and Geography (Shidi xuebao 史地学报) by the History and Geography Research Society at Nanjing Higher Normal School, History and Geography (Shixue yu dixue 史学与地学) by the Chinese Society of History and Geography, National Learning Quarterly (Guoxue jikan 国学季刊) by the National Learning Department (or Chinese Classical Studies Department 国学门) of Peking University, Essays on National Learning (Guoxue luncong 国学论丛) by Tsinghua College for National Learning, Historical Journal (Shixue zazhi 史学杂志) by the Chinese Historical Society, and Annals of History (Shixue nianbao史学年报) by the History Society of Yen-ching University. Then, in the 1930s, more academic journals focused on specialized fields of history, such as historical geography and socio-economic history, also appeared. Among these journals, one of the landmarks in modern Chinese academic publishing was the appearance of the Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology (Shiyusuo jikan 史语所集刊) from Academia Sinica. Another noteworthy journal is the Journal of Yen-ching University (Yanjing xuebao 燕京学报). These two journals were instrumental in the history of modern Chinese historiography since they attracted some of the most prominent historians in the 1930s and 1940s.

As a flagship journal of the Institute of History and Philology at Academia Sinica, the Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology continues to be published today. Its history is worth noting, given its prominent role in the modern transformation of the Chinese humanities. When the Institute of History and Philology was founded in 1928, there were three divisions: History, Philology, and Anthropology, which indicated that it adopted modern humanities disciplines, different from the traditional Chinese classical learning centered on four divisions such as Confucian classics (jing 经), history (shi 史), philosophy (zi 子), and literary learning (ji 集). Three heads of the divisions of History, Philology, and Anthropology were scholars trained by Harvard. The head of the History Division, Chen Yinke 陈寅恪 (1890–1969), was a historian trained at Harvard and Berlin. Zhao Yuanren 赵元任 (1892–1982), the head of the Philology division, received his Ph.D. from Harvard. So did Li Ji 李济 (1896–1979), who earned a Ph.D. from Harvard’s Anthropology Department and laid the foundation for modern archeology in China. Therefore, most articles in the Bulletin dealt with topics in history, philology, and archeology. Similar to the Bulletin of the Institute for History and Philology, the Journal of Yen-ching University also organized an editorial board consisting of members with backgrounds of studying abroad in Europe and America. These two journals were signature journals among Chinese scholars in Beijing, combined with some institutes within modern Chinese higher education for making pivotal contributions to the modern transformation of Chinese academia in the 1930s and 1940s.

In the meantime, these publications were joined in introducing modern humanities and social sciences. There were also some journals published in English in China by Western missionary and diplomatic scholars in the late nineteenth century, even before the collapse of the Qing Empire. For example, British and American expatriates founded the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain based in Shanghai in 1857. Subsequently, it began to publish its journal in 1858 till 1948. The format of this journal followed the same format and style of other British publications since it was issued by a British publisher in Shanghai. In the early twentieth century, some leading Chinese scholars and Western scholars who resided in China began to organize more learned societies and published journals. For instance, in 1915, the American minister to China, Paul S. Reinsch, and Chinese minister to the U.S.A., Willington Koo 顾维钧, co-founded the Chinese Social and Political Science Association (CSPSA) in Beijing, and in 1926, they began to jointly publish the Chinese Social and Political Science Review (CSPSR) as its flagship journal. The editorial board had both Chinese and Western scholars as its members. The CSPSA modeled the American Political Science Association, and the journal modeled its American counterpart, following the American standard format and style using footnotes. Later, Fu Jen Catholic University in Beijing also began to publish its Western-language journal Monumenta Serica 华裔学志 in 1935. Like the CSPSR, its editorial board consisted of Chinese and Western scholars, primarily Catholic priests from Europe. It often published articles by Chinese scholars in English, translated from the original Chinese-language versions. These articles frequently did not have footnotes. However, articles by Western scholars often adopted the footnote style.

As the founding director of the Institute of History and Philology, Fu Sinian 傅斯年 (1896–1950) played a significant role in editing the Bulletin of the Institute for History and Philology, which was first published in October 1928. Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868–1940), president of Academia Sinica, wrote a preface to this inauguration issue, followed by Fu’s editorial manifesto of the Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology. In this manifesto, Fu addressed the goals and scope of the Institute of History and Philology by proposing that studying history and philology is equal to natural sciences such as biology and geology. He also claimed that this institute would aim to bring the orthodoxy of scientific Oriental Studies back to China. He called for the professionalization of historiography in China, discontinuing traditional Chinese historical writing (Wang, 2006). This manifesto reflects Fu Sinian’s ambition of integrating what he learned about modern European humanities into the humanities in China, especially modern historiography.

Interestingly, the Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology has printed horizontally since its inception. The announcement of the inaugural issue briefly mentioned the format and style issue but only said that the submitted paper should have a table of contents, a title, and an abstract in English or French. There was no mention of footnotes or endnotes at all. If we reviewed the first few issues of this journal, it would be easy to find that it published articles in both Chinese and English. Since it was printed in a horizontal layout, it would be acceptable to publish articles in English and use footnotes. The first issue appeared in October 1928 and included eight papers by seven scholars. Ding Shan had two articles on literature and history. None of these eight articles used footnotes or endnotes. They all cited primary sources directly in the main text without using footnotes and indicating any bibliographical information. All eight articles followed the traditional Chinese style. Among seven authors, Hu Shih and Fu Sinian both had experience studying abroad. Still, they both published their articles without using footnotes and endnotes in the Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology in 1928.

The first article using footnotes in the Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology was “Phonetic notes on a Lolo dialect and consonant L” published May 1930, which was in English by Sergéi Mikháilovich Shirokogórov (1887–1939), a Russian refugee scholar who had lived in China since he fled from Russia after the October Revolution. The first footnote of this article indicated that the primary source of its research came from Shirokogórov’s fieldwork in southeastern Yunnan in 1928. The second footnote indicated the phonetic notation form of the local people, citing the secondary sources written by French missionary Alfred Liétard (1872–1912) and Paul Vial (1855–1917) (Liétard, 1913; Vial, 1909). The page numbers were noted in both these footnotes and the quoted French texts were analyzed in more detail (Shirokogorov, 1930: 183). This is standard modern historiography footnote form, like other Western-language European publications. In the same issue, Fu Sinian published a Chinese article titled “On the So-called Five Ranks of Nobles” (Fu, 1930), which also used “footnotes.” However, these notes were not accurate footnotes in the modern academic sense because they did not refer to any bibliographic information about primary and secondary sources; instead, they were short one-sentence notes for clarifying a small fact. In this case, till 1930, Fu Sinian, as the director of the Institute of History and Philology, even with his rich experience of study abroad in Europe, was not ready to adopt the footnote as a crucial mark of modern academic style. Like Fu, as a scholar who had studied in Europe and America for more than a decade, Chen Yinke did not publish his academic articles with footnotes either. While teaching at Tsinghua College, Chen Yinke held profound respect toward his colleague Wang Guowei, and he seemed to follow Wang Guowei in terms of writing articles in the traditional Chinese style and format. In his introduction to Wang Guowei’s collected papers, Chen Yinke commented that Wang Guowei’s scholarship was groundbreaking in combining both archaeological materials and traditional texts and concepts from the West and indigenous ideas in China for interpreting history (Chen, 1980), which emphasized Wang’s approaches and skills in using materials. Chen did not say if Wang accepted the modern academic format and style. In other words, for Chen and Wang, the format and style might not be necessary if the argument was solid, the sources were rich, and the approach was novel.

There was a generational gap here. Wang Guowei used to be the tutor to the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, and his significant educational experience was from imperial China. Even though he fled to Japan after the collapse of the Qing Empire, he was primarily a scholar who received training in the traditional Chinese way. His same-generation scholars in Japan included Naito Konan, who also received his significant training and education in Japan, though Naito indeed went to Europe for short-term visits. Chen Yinke was quite different compared to Wang Guowei. When the civil examination system focused on Confucian classic learning was abandoned in 1905, Chen Yinke was 15. He spent his main academic training and education in the modern education system in domestic and international colleges and universities. However, Chen Yinke still adopted a traditional style in writing and publishing his research. As my previous research shows, Chen Yinke might have intentionally followed the conventional style in China due to his cultural nationalism (Chen, 2021). Naito’s students in Japan should be regarded as the same generation as Chen Yinke. They usually also wrote and published articles in traditional Japanese style. However, Chen Yinke’s classmates in Europe, such as Johannes Nobel (1887–1960), who studied Sanskrit literature at the University of Berlin, and Étienne Balazs (1905–1963), who studied Sinology at the same university, had already written their doctoral dissertations by modern German style with very rich footnotes.

Philologists and linguists adopted the footnote in their academic writing and publishing practice earlier than historians. The first article in the Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology that used modern academic style with footnotes was a paper titled “A Preliminary Study on the Chinese-Tibetan Transliteration of the Tangut (Xixia) Texts” by Wang Jingru 王静如 (1903–1990) published in the second part of the second issue in 1930 (Wang, 1930). In this article, there were 12 footnotes in total with continuous numbers. These footnotes provided information about primary and secondary sources, with very detailed bibliographical information, though lacking publication place and specific page numbers. By the time he published this article, Wang Jingru had not yet studied abroad. Earlier in 1927, he entered the Chinese Classical Learning School of Tsinghua College to study with Zhao Yuanren on linguistics. It seems that Zhao introduced Wang to many publications in Western languages so that he closely followed the academic style of the Western-language publications while writing his papers. Given that at that time, Zhao Yuanren was translating Bernhard Karlgren’s (1889–1978) book on the phonetics of the Chinese language, it would not be surprising that Wang Jingru was also familiar with Karlgren’s work.

It must be pointed out that most of the early articles using standardized footnotes published in the Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology were not from the field of history but from the field of linguistics or philology. Besides Shirokogórov and Wang Jingru, other linguists, including Lin Yutang 林语堂 (1895–1976) and Zhao Yuanren, also published articles there. Zhao Yuanren and Lin Yutang first studied at Tsinghua College and then moved to Harvard for graduate school. Zhao received his doctorate from Harvard, while Lin moved to the University of Leipzig and earned his doctorate in classical Chinese phonetics there. Although by 1930, Chen Yinke already established his reputation in introducing European Oriental Studies to China, he never used footnotes.

Nevertheless, in the 1930s, humanities and social sciences in China gradually transformed toward modern professionalization, paying more attention to academic conventions and style. Scholars in different disciplines might have different attitudes toward modern academic norms and stylistic practices. Social sciences, such as political science, economics, sociology, and demography, might be better prepared and accepting of modern academic conventions and styles. As a standard academic norm in the 1930s and 1940s, endnotes were more popular than footnotes in Chinese-language academic publications. For example, Wu Leichuan’s 吴雷川 book titled Christianity and Chinese Culture, published in 1936, had extensive endnotes. Zhu Qianzhi’s 朱谦之 book The Influence of Chinese Thought on European Culture, published by the Commercial Press in 1940, also had highly detailed endnotes. Its references included secondary sources in Western, Chinese, and Japanese languages. Most of the footnotes offered page numbers, and some notes even indicated that some Western-language books had multiple translations in Chinese.

Most scholars remained silent about why they did not use footnotes. There might be no way to know why many who spent years studying in Europe and America still did not accept the footnote culture as a crucial academic practice. However, there was a fascinating case in which a scholar explained why he would not like to use footnotes. A highly claimed historian, Chen Yuan 陈垣 (1880–1971), stated that he was not convinced of the tradition of footnotes in modern historiography. On April 8, 1946, in a letter to his son Chen Lesu 陈乐素, Chen Yuan, said that he believed an article should not have too many quotations. If there were too many quotations, it might be straightforward for the author to make mistakes in writing and typesetting. Chen Yuan also told his son that there should not be too many two or three-line notes in small font; instead, he suggested reducing these notes and incorporating them into the main text as much as possible. Chen Yuan claimed that annotations might be more suitable for literary genres such as poems, rhapsodies, eulogies, and inscriptions because the sentence length of these genres was often minimal, so self-annotation would be required if the authors could not express themselves sufficiently. However, historical and biographical essays are different and should not use too many annotations. Then, Chen Yuan turned to his practice. He said that recently while writing his articles, he attempted to avoid notes. He incorporated all quotations, explanations, textual analysis, and commentaries into the main text. He sighed that he did not know what the future of this style would be, but he tried it and hoped it would become a trend in academia. He just wanted scholars to understand that if the notes were significant enough, they should be in the main text; if they were insignificant, they should not be offered (Chen, 2010: 1141–1142). Chen Yuan also used The Yuan Statutes (Yuan dianzhang 元典章) to illustrate how the transformations between the main text and small notes could result in mistaken printing, so he insisted on avoiding notes but focusing on the main text while writing papers. This might be similar to Chen Yinke’s approach to annotating articles.

4 The Establishment of the Modern Footnote as a National Standard in China

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Marxism has become the official guiding principle for studying history across the higher education system. Examining the evolution of the footnote in modern Chinese historiography in the 1950s shows that Marxist historiography eventually played a pivotal role in establishing the footnote as a national standard in Chinese academia. In 1954, the Chinese Academy of Sciences established a new Institute of Historical Research and this institute began to publish its organ journal called Historical Research (Lishi yanjiu 历史研究). Before the founding of this new journal, there was already a significant journal the Journal of Literature, History, and Philosophy (Wenshizhe 文史哲) created at Shandong University.

Interestingly, while looking into the articles published in these two major journals in Shandong and Beijing, most scholars followed the modern academic style more carefully by adopting standard footnotes. They cared about the standard editions of sources they cited, especially the works by classical Marxist writers etc. Old-generation scholars such as Chen Yuan and Chen Yinke usually did not care about the footnotes, which made them different from other scholars who followed the modern academic style. However, they also published several articles in Historical Research. The dominant group of scholars aimed to establish scientific historical studies in China, which echoes the spirit of the New Culture Movement and the May 4 Movement: science and democracy and modernized the nation against Western imperialism, colonialism, and feudalism within China itself. Fu Sinian, one of the spearheads of the May 4 Movement, already called for equaling historical studies to natural sciences in 1928. Now, Guo Moruo 郭沫若 (1892–1978), the President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, again advocated the modern scientific historical study. In his opening statement for the launch of the Historical Research, he emphasized that history is a modern science, historians must “promote the use of scientific historical viewpoints to study and interpret history.” (Guo 1954: 1). For this purpose, in terms of the subjects and content of their historical studies, Chinese historians turned to study working class and lower social class from the perspective of social and economic history, in a sharp contrast with the old-generation historians who often focused on the ruling class from the perspective of political history. They also attempted to pay attention to the modern academic style. In this sense, the Institute of Historical Research continued Fu Sinian's legacy.

Finally, in 1955, the Chinese government officially issued the Principles and Regulations on the Promotion of Horizontal Arrangement of Chinese Books and Magazines for publishing practice. This was a turning point for abandoning the old fashion of printing books and publications vertically. As part of its state-building project to promote literacy among the working class, Chinese government established a state association to reform the Chinese language by promoting simplified characters and adopting a horizontal printing format to make it more accessible to common people. Since the state had a policy of implementing the horizontal printing standard for academic publications, the footnote became a common practice in Chinese academia.

5 Conclusions

To sum up the discussion above, it shows that the evolution of the footnote in modern Chinese historiography has a very sophisticated history because Chinese historiography experienced tremendous changes in the first half of the twentieth century due to various political, cultural, and technical reasons at both domestic and international levels. Domestically, there were encounters between traditional Chinese and modern academic cultures. Internationally, some Chinese scholars studied abroad and learned much about Western and Japanese academic norms and practices. The rise of modern academic journals and research institutions introduced new ideas, concepts, norms, and styles into the Chinese academic community. Although the footnote was originally a “foreign” concept and practice, it eventually took root in Chinese academia due to the professionalization of modern historiography in China and the state-building process of the People’s Republic of China.

Although the word “footnote” has long existed in the written documents of the Chinese, which could be dated to the medieval period, it was re-introduced as a term for modern academic practice in China in the early twentieth century. In China and Japan, it was gradually incorporated into the dictionaries in the first decade of the twentieth century as a loanword from the West. This study also shows that, in the early twentieth century, most scholars from both China and Japan used footnotes while writing their dissertations and publishing their papers in Western languages in Europe and the United States; back in their homelands, they still followed the traditional academic format and style, which was due to the restrictions of vertical printing format in East Asia. However, by the 1930s, more and more young-generation scholars realized the significance of the footnote and began to adopt the footnote as a modern academic practice.

In the first half of the twentieth century, social science disciplines in China, such as anthropology, sociology, and political science, seemed more likely to accept modern academic practice, including using the footnote. Perhaps, due to its long tradition, Chinese historiography is among the most conservative fields in accepting new concepts, ideas, and norms for its persistence in traditional practice. As a discipline, history was regarded as a source of national pride for its long history and glorious tradition for old-generation scholars in China. As Liang Qichao said in his work New History (Xinshixue 新史学), published in 1902, “Among the various disciplines popular in Europe and the West today, the only one unique to China is history. Historians are the most profound and important scholars of knowledge. They are also the mirror of the nation. It is also the source of patriotism. The reason European nationalism is developed today, and the countries are becoming more and more civilized, half of the contribution is made by history” (Liang, 1985, p. 241). Many great scholars in the 1920s and 1930s, such as Wang Guowei, Liang Qichao, Chen Yuan, and Chen Yinke, did not use footnotes but still held high regard in Chinese academia. With the establishment of the Institute of History and Philology, which Fu Sinian aimed to establish the scientific study of “oriental studies” in China, linguistics and philology scholars, such as Zhao Yuanren, Lin Yutan, and Wang Jingru, first adopted the footnote as a standard practice while having dialog with Western scholars such as Karlgren. Historians were still reluctant to accept this modern academic practice at that time.

Nevertheless, by the mid-twentieth century, scholars continued Fu’s legacy of emphasizing history as a science. This practice enormously helped establish footnotes as a standard format in Chinese historiography. Given the modern functions of historical footnotes, such as persuading readers to provide evidence for checking primary and secondary documents and helping readers further search for research progress in related fields, the acceptance of this international standard academic format is also one of the crucial signs of Chinese historiography going global.