Abstract
This article reviews Yu Yingshi's book, Zhu Xi's Historical World: A Study on the Political Culture of the Scholar-Officials in the Song. It contains two parts. The first part indicates the contribution of the book: detailing the court politics of the first four emeperors in the Southern Song. The book helps readers understand several important issues of the political culture of the Southern Song scholar-officials, such as what the designation "daoxue" 道學 meant politically; how the daoxue scholars acted potically; what was the relationship between the scholar-official politics, the primary minister, and the emperor; and the historical factors to ban Neo-Confucianism. In the second part, this article critically reexamines what the author proposes in each chapters. It argues that in many issues the author either over-interpreted or misread the historical documents. Therefore, several statements made by the author should be accepted cautiously or even rejected, such as the linkage between the Northern Song political culture with the term, "hou sandai" 後三代 (the Later Three Dynasty), the over-emphasis of the idea of "ruling the world with the scholar-officials", the legalization of the national statement (guoshi 國是). Aside from the historical issues, this article also inspects how the author wrote history, and contends that what the author did is exactly in accordance with what the post-modern theorists propose which is attacked by the author seriously. In conclusion, this book is good for whomever interested in all aspects of the Song to read. However historians who want to cite the author's opinions must be very cautious and had better to reexamine them.