The evaluation of Li Hongzhang is very different at all times and at home and abroad. Praise, such as Liang Qichao called it "a figure in the history of China for thousands of years" and "a figure in the history of the world in the nineteenth century"; Americans believe: "As a soldier, he has made valuable contributions to the country in important battles;" As far as politics is concerned, he has provided China people with recognized excellent facilities. ". Those who are degraded are mostly covered by the word "traitor". So, can all these evaluations accurately summarize Li Hongzhang's whole person? In the past, due to the limitation of historical materials, it was difficult to accurately evaluate Li Hongzhang. The newly compiled Complete Works of Li Hongzhang reveals a lot of new historical materials, which provides a new perspective and new basis for correctly evaluating Li Hongzhang.
"If you try your best that day, you will know that the effect will not stop there; If there is no way to show up in the evening festival, what about the theory of scholars? " This is an elegiac couplet written by Yan Fu, a famous thinker in modern times and a former subordinate of Li Hongzhang, when Li died. Since then, Li Hongzhang has been dead for a whole hundred years, but his evaluation is still mixed, and the coffin has not yet been decided.
"All the people were slandered for a while"
As an important minister and minister in the late Qing Dynasty, Li Hongzhang was always at the center of the whirlpool of various contradictions in China's historical stage in the second half of the 19th century. As the leader of the Huai clique of the most powerful Westernization School and one of the important decision makers and executors of the Qing government, in order to cope with the irresistible changes of the times, he modernized his early Westernization in China. Someone summed him up vividly in eight words: "The power is tilted for a while, and the world is full of slander."
What really discredited Li Hongzhang was the defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. At that time, Zhang Yingting was played, and the Chinese people were reviled. Therefore, Wu Rulun, one of the four disciples of Zeng Guofan, stood up and defended Li Hongzhang. In a letter to his friend Pan Lige, he said, "Since the Japanese invasion, Fu Xiang has been reviled by the China literati, and this was promoted by the government, while the backward people heard it. My brother has been operating with Fu Xiang for a little more than 3 years, and everything was being written in the first ten years; In the middle ten years, the manuscript was still played or the staff was fake; Letters to the General Administration are all handwritten. In the latter ten years, confidential events were all in telegrams, and they refused to ask people to do it for them, so they would be personally ordered. Now it is planned to compile these three books into a book, so the painstaking efforts to support the crisis and strive for prosperity over the years are all in the simplified book, and it is also a way to slander. " This is the origin of the printed complete works of Li Wenzhong handed down from ancient times. The purpose of compiling The Complete Works by Wu Rulun is very clear, that is, to show the achievements made by Li Hongzhang during his reign to the world. Therefore, he textual research the manuscripts preserved by the shogunate over the years and divided them into two sets of books, detailed and simplified. However, for one thing, Li's descendants had limited funds; for another, some manuscripts were still taboo to publish at that time; for another, Wu himself died young due to illness, so this complete work, which was later compiled and published by his nephew Lian Quan, was only a simplified edition. Although the number of words was not small, it only accounted for more than one third of the detailed edition. Another two-thirds of the manuscripts were unpublished. After liberation, the detailed version was carefully collected and protected by the late Mr. Gu Tinglong, and remained in the stacks of Shanghai Library until the mid-198s.
"Only Li does things, but not him"
In this way, it is bound to bring great one-sidedness to Li Hongzhang's research and evaluation. Because the first premise of any scientific and comprehensive historical judgment is to fully possess historical materials. Over the past 1 years, more than 4 monographs and more than 1,4 papers on Li Hongzhang have been published, based on the main historical materials, including The Complete Works of Li Wenzhong, The Official Letters of Li Wenzhong and other published Li Hongzhang manuscripts, with a total word count of about 7 million words. The number of research results is so large, which shows that historians pay great attention to such a key figure in modern history; However, the lack of historical data makes the research conclusion unsatisfactory. For example, Mr. Jiang Tingfu, a famous historian, famously said: "When you look at the complete works of Li Zhi, you can only see Li doing things, but you can't see him as a man." In fact, this can only be said that he accurately interpreted the original intention of Wu's Complete Works, but not that he accurately judged Li Hongzhang.
Seeing both Li's work and Li's life
The newly compiled Complete Works of Li Hongzhang was edited by Gu Tinglong and Dai Yi, and was exclusively funded by Anhui Education Press, which organized more than 3 scholars from all over the country to start compiling in 1992. First of all, the editorial board received a detailed manuscript of about 19 million words compiled by Wu Rulun in that year, as well as other manuscripts of Li Hongzhang in the library. Then it included the scattered manuscripts discovered in various places one after another, and the published manuscripts of Li Hongzhang with about 3 million words.
among these manuscripts, the largest number is playing manuscripts. After the Sino-Japanese War, Li Hongzhang went to Beijing to work in the cabinet, either because he had no money, or because there were rules in the system of being a Beijing official, or more likely because he avoided suspicion and didn't invite an aide again, so there was no manuscript for Guangxu's 21-25 years. In the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu, he became the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, and there were six volumes of "Du Yue Played Draft", in addition to the two volumes of playing draft scattered pages in Changle Road Library above. Although all these manuscripts have been read by Wu Rulun, leaving traces of editing, many of them only have months without accurate dates. In addition, there was an unexpected gain: I found a relatively complete set of problem books during Li Hongzhang's tenure as governor of Zhili, that is, the governor's supervision department of Zhili, and according to the routine official documents reported by the county, state and government at different levels, I stamped the official seal of the governor of Zhili on the envelope and played it in the name of Li Hongzhang. Although it can't be regarded as Li Hongzhang's own writing strictly, it is quite valuable for studying the official administration and provincial conditions of Zhili at that time.
As Li Hongzhang's activities cover almost all fields of modern military affairs, politics, economy, diplomacy, ideology and culture, the coming of this large number of new historical materials will play an important role in the breakthrough in the study of modern history and even the personal evaluation of Li Hongzhang. For example, judging from the manuscripts, most of the folding films selected in Wu Rulun's engraving are sampled according to the facts, which are not coherent with each other. The newly compiled complete works were compared with the military records. First, the date was calibrated. Second, after receiving the memorial, the Military Department recorded the imperial edict attached at the back, which reflected the highest authorities' handling opinions on everything reported by Li Hongzhang, which was not available in the final edition. Third, there are more than 2,3 folding pieces that are not in the manuscript. From these materials, we can clearly see how Li Hongzhang, as the leader of the Huai Group, recruited talents and twisted them into such a huge power group in modern times. Then, at present, the arrangement of the draft has been as complete as possible, with several pieces folded, plus the appendices and other ministers' pieces (handed down by the Qing court to Li Hongzhang for "proper discussion and performance"), we can clearly understand the decision-making process of the Qing government on some major policies; At the same time, you can also see the ins and outs of one thing. So Li Hongzhang is both doing things and being a man.
With the disclosure of a large number of new historical materials, the evaluation of Li Hongzhang will be deepened and refined with the deepening of research, from the previous macro qualitative evaluation to the micro concrete quantitative analysis with specific objects. For example, the study of Li Hongzhang and Huai Group can focus on analyzing the function and position of this group in the modern social process of China; Li Hongzhang's specific practices in every specific matter of modern military diplomacy have detailed information for study and examination; Another example is Li Hongzhang's official management methods, Li Hongzhang's disaster relief measures, Li Hongzhang's thought of enriching the people and financial management experience, Li Hongzhang's interpersonal relationship, Li Hongzhang's educational reform, and so on. No matter its success or failure, other mountains' stones still have certain reference function for today.