The Interpersonal Network of “The Anti-moralism Association” during School-Detention of Qingyuan Period

School-Detention of Qingyuan (Qingyuan dangjin), the political events occurred in the mid-Southern Song Dynasty, was an important academic issue. It results from the differences in philosophy, the pursuit of power and long-term political struggles between the daoxue scholars and the bureaucrats in power during Emperor Xiaozong period. Particularly, after the daoxue scholars crowned emperor Ningzong to the throne, they were involved in a power struggle between Prime Minister Zhao Ru-yu and Han Tuo-zhou. And therefore, the daoxue scholars gradually divided into two parties, recriminated against each other, and brought about a political movement that caused the school-Detention. For the reason that the eminent philosopher and scholar-official, Zhu Xi, was a major in the banned party, this political affair especially aroused much attention of Chinese Historians. The illustrious book, Yu Yingshi's Zhu Xi's Historical World: A Study on the Political Culture of the Scholar-Officials in the Song, is one of the abundant research of those moralists. Since historical materials were dispersed in many ancient books and were difficult to be collected and collated, the Research of School-Detention of Qingyuan period needs further elaboration. Regarding this event, there were two significant records included in a book, Qingyuan Dangjin (Records of School-Detention of Qingyuan period), which divided those literati-scholars into two associations: one included 59 devoted partisans of daoxue-Moralism; another included 36 staunch protesters. The identities of the advocators, objectors and the relationships among the members of the two groups are the crucial point to understanding the academic and political development during the mid-Southern Song Dynasty. As basic comprehension of School-Detention of Qingyuan period, this project is intended to systematically list the biographies of the members of the “Anti-moralism Association” in chronological order, and to explore their interpersonal networks. Also, this study will make use of a combination of both the ancient contexts of anthologies which help organize as case studies, and the database of CBDB (China Biographical Database Project), of which Harvard University, Peking University and Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology developed, to investigate each members’ inclination and to realize the formation process and interpersonal networks of the two opposed parties.

Project ID:PE10406-0769
External Project ID:MOST104-2410-H182-020