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Ban Gu's History of Early China. By Anthony E. Clark. Amherst, New York: Cambria Press, 2008. Pp. xix + 302, figs. $109.95.
As the "other" Han historian, Ban Gu has received less attention than his more famous Western Han counterpart, Sima Qian. In part, the reasons for this relative inattention are clear. Ban Gu undoubtedly had less personal appeal than Sima Qian, who is surrounded by a body of romantic mythology. In addition, Ban's History of the Han Honshu), which is narrower in temporal and thematic scope, lacks the flair and pathos of Sima' s Historical Record (Shiji). Yet Ban Gu is arguably as important as Sima Qian in the historiographical tradition, for Ban's work set the pattern for the writing of imperial histories over the next two millennia. And Ban continues to be our best and most complete source for the Western Han period. For these reasons, Andrew E. Clark's new study is a welcome addition to a growing body of literature on the Han.
Clark's major accomplishments are twofold. First, he provides a definitive reading of a central but overlooked figure and text. As such, his book should be read as a complement to a handful of important studies on the historiographical traditions of early China, including but not limited to Stephen Durrani's Cloudy Mirror (1995), David Schaberg' s Patterned Past (2001), and Li Wai-yee's Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography (2008). Second, as with these more recent works, Clark moves away from tired questions about the reliability of our sources. Instead, he gives us a dynamic reading of the Honshu, which he treats not as a conveyor of raw data but as an object to be analyzed in terms of what it did - what it did for Ban Gu and his clan, as well as for Han rulers...