Wu Han (historian)

Chinese historian and politician

Wu Han (; August 11, 1909 – October 11, 1969) was a Chinese historian and politician. Wu was one of the most important historians in the development of modern historical scholarship in China during the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1940s he was a leading member of the China Democratic League, a non aligned political organization during most of the Chinese civil war which eventually threw its weight behind the Chinese Communist Party. After 1949, he served as the Vice Mayor of Beijing. In November 1965, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, he came under attack for a play he wrote about an upright Ming dynasty official called Hai Rui Dismissed from Office, which was widely understood as an anti Mao allegory. His political downfall also resulted in the purge of Beijing Mayor Peng Zhen. Wu died in prison in 1969.

Wu Han was born in Yiwu, Zhejiang in 1909. With support from the Wu clan organization and with the money from selling his mother's jewelry, he attended university preparatory schools in Hangzhou and then in Shanghai, where he was inspired by the lectures of Hu Shih. He entered Tsinghua University in 1931 and came under the influence of Tsiang Tingfu. Since he was responsible for the support of his brother and sister, he was unable to go abroad for study. Wu stayed at Tsinghua as a teaching assistant but began to publish important articles on Ming dynasty history using critical techniques to resolve old controversies and raise new questions.