"If you make full use of your plan on the same day, you will know that the effect will not stop there; If you can't even show up at the evening festival, what about the scholar's theory? " This is an elegy 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.
"Powerful people are in power and slander the world."
As an important and powerful minister in the late Qing Dynasty, Li Hongzhang was always at the center of various contradictions in the historical stage of China in the second half of the19th century. As the most powerful leader of Westernization School and one of the important decision makers and executors of Qing government, he did the most things in China's early Westernization-modernization activities, which caused the most controversy and criticism. Someone summed him up vividly in eight words: "power is tilted for a while, and the world is full of slander."
What really discredited Li Hongzhang was the defeat of the Sino-Japanese War. At that time, Zhang Yingting was tricked and the people of China were reviled. Therefore, Wu Rulun, one of Zeng Guofan's four disciples, stood up to defend Li Hongzhang. In a letter to his friend Pan, he said: "Since the Japanese invasion, Fu Xiang has been reviled by China literati, which was promoted by the government and heard by backward people. My brother and Fu Xiang have been in business for more than 30 years, and everything was written in the first ten years. In the middle ten years, the manuscript was typed or the staff was fake; Letters to the general administration are all handwritten. After more than ten years, confidential events were all in telegrams, and if they refused to ask someone to do it for them, they would personally order them. Now I plan to compile these three books into one book. So many years of painstaking efforts to support the crisis and strive for prosperity are all in the simplified books, which is also a way of slander. " This is the source of the Complete Works of Li Wenzhong handed down from generation to generation. The purpose of compiling The Complete Works by Wu Rulun is very clear, that is, to show the achievements of Li Hongzhang during his reign to the world. Therefore, he researched the manuscripts preserved by the shogunate over the years and divided them into two sets: detailed and simplified. However, on the one hand, Li's descendants have limited funds; On the other hand, some manuscripts were still taboo to be published at that time; On the other hand, Wu himself died of illness, so this complete work edited and published by his nephew Lian Quan is only a simplified edition. Although the number of words is not small, it only accounts for more than one-third of the detailed version. The other two-thirds of the manuscripts have not been published. After liberation, the detailed edition was carefully collected and protected by the late Mr. Gu and kept in the stacks of Shanghai Library until the mid-1980s.
"I only know that Li See is doing something, but I don't regard him as a person."
In this way, it will inevitably 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 100 years, with the published manuscripts of Li Hongzhang such as Complete Works of Li Wenzhong and Official Letters of Li Wenzhong as the main historical materials, more than 40 monographs and 1400 papers about Li Hongzhang have been published, with a total word count of about 7 million words. The large number of research results shows that historians attach great importance 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 that Li See is doing something, but you can't see that he is alone." In fact, this can only be said that he accurately interpreted the original intention of the Complete Works of Wu, but not that he accurately judged Li Hongzhang.
Look at both Li's work and Li's life.
The newly compiled Complete Works of Li Hongzhang was edited by Mr. Gu and Mr. Dai Yi, and was exclusively funded by Anhui Education Publishing House. More than 30 scholars from all over the country were organized to start compiling on 1992. First of all, the editorial board received about 654.38+09 million words of Wu Rulun Detailed Edition and other Li Hongzhang manuscripts collected by Shanghai Library. Subsequently, scattered manuscripts found in various places and Li Hongzhang's manuscripts with about 3 million words have been published.
Among these manuscripts, the largest number is typing. After the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Li Hongzhang went to the cabinet office in Beijing, either because he had no money, or because there were rules in the system of being an official in Beijing. More likely, he didn't ask for an aide because he avoided suspicion, so there was no draft for Guangxu 2 1-25. In the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu, he became the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, and Du Yue's Manuscripts consisted of six volumes, plus two volumes of Manuscripts from Changle Road Library above. Although all these manuscripts have been read by Wu Rulun, leaving traces of editing, but many of them are only a few months without accurate dates. In addition, there is an unexpected gain: I found a relatively complete set of questions during Li Hongzhang's tenure as governor of Zhili, that is, the Zhili Governor's Supervision Office, and stamped the envelope with the official seal of Zhili Governor according to the regular official documents reported by the county, state and governments at all levels, and typed 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.
Since Li Hongzhang's activities almost cover modern military, political, economic, diplomatic, ideological and cultural fields, the advent of this large number of new historical materials will play an important role in the breakthrough of modern history research and even in Li Hongzhang's personal evaluation. For example, judging from the manuscript, most of the pieces selected in Wu Rulun's engraving are actually sampled and are not coherent with each other. The newly compiled complete works are compared with military records. First, the calibration date. Second, after receiving the memorial, the military department recorded the imperial edict attached to it, which reflected the opinions of the highest authorities on everything reported by Li Hongzhang, which was not available in the final edition. Third, more than 2,300 folded pieces are not in the manuscript. From these materials, we can clearly see how Li Hongzhang, as the leader of the Huai clique, recruited talented people 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, and several pieces have been folded, plus appendices and fragments of other ministers (handed down by the Qing court to Li Hongzhang for "appropriate discussion and performance"), so that we can clearly understand the decision-making process of the Qing government on some major policies; At the same time, we can also see the ins and outs of one thing. Therefore, Li Hongzhang is both doing things and being a man.
With the disclosure 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 specific quantitative analysis of specific objects. For example, the study of Li Hongzhang and Huai Group can focus on analyzing the role 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 investigation; Another example is Li Hongzhang's official management method, 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. Regardless of its success or failure, the stone from other mountains still has certain reference function today.